Unable to repair encryption keys because they are not available or corrupted

[tpayne]

support case ID: 03681648

The error occurs when rescanning the destination backup repository when attempting to "seed" a backup.

There are remote offices with physical servers that we are backing up with Veeam. the following procedure has worked until update 9.4 U4a:

1. Attach External drive to source remote physical server
2. from Veeam B&R server at Corp add a "direct attached" repo pointing to the external hard drive
3. from B&R at Corp, deploy the agent to the source remote server and configure a backup (Exclude the external drive) and enable encryption using a stored key targeting the repo that points to the external drive
4. run backup
5. eject and ship the external drive to corp
6. plug in external drive to repo server at corp
7. copy backup job folder to target repo
8. rescan target repo
9. supply encryption key
10. change the backup job to point to the destination repo and map the backup to the proper job.
11. clean up reference to the seed repo made in step 2

I get the warning /error at steps 8 and 9 now. Anyone else having this issue? I have even been able to reproduce it in a separate environment.

[HannesK]

Hello,
thanks for bringing this up.

Just to clarify: this worked with 9.5U4 GA? The only version where you have that issue is 9.5U4a? Any chance that you can try with update 9.5U4b?

Best regards,
Hannes

[tpayne]

Hannes,

I am not entirely sure this was ever attempted on 9.5U4 GA i believe we skipped that and went to 4a. I was unable to reproduce the issue on a 4b test environment.

Thanks,
Tim

[tpayne]

I also want to add that there are many other backup jobs that are encrypted using the same key and imported using the same method (just in an earlier version of Veeam) that continue to back up fine. Also, if i use the "Import" tool in Veeam B&R and point to the vbk, I supply the encryption key and i can restore from it. I can also extract the data using the Veeam.Backup.Extractor.exe utility. Unfortunately, importing this way doesn't seem to allow me to map a backup job to it. Using the Import tool on the vbm gets me the same error.

[Dima P.]

Hello Tim,

Just to make sure we are on the same page - which agent version you are referring to? Thanks!

[tpayne]

whichever one is bundled with the respective Veeam B&R versions. I deployed them using Veeam B&R... the successful test of 9.5U4b, the agent is 3.0.2.1170 on the unsuccessful attempts on 4a, it is 3.0.1.1039.

Thanks,

Tim

[Dima P.]

Thank you for the clarification (was worried about the version mismatch which might be critical for older versions). I'd suggest to upgrade all your agents and B&R installations to the latest versions but if that's not possible - please continue to work with our engineers and let us know how the investigation goes. Cheers!

[tpayne]

Is there any risk to modifying the encryption password from within Veeam and just typing in the same password? i want to avoid needing to do active fulls if it thinks the encryption password changed...

[HannesK]

Hi,
no risk from Veeam side.

Best regards,
Hannes

[tpayne]

Hannes, I had support tell me re-entering the encryption keys in the "Manage passwords" menu would cause the backups using it to perform active fulls. so I have not done this yet. They are still investigating the issue.