The underlying provider failed to open

Received the error “The underlying provider failed to open” when backup was attempting to email notifications of completion of backup jobs. The error occurred multiple times for sql and transaction log backups between 11:30 pm and 1:30 am. The errors stopped after there was a message at 1:25 am that sqlbackupandftp lost contact with the local server and then 2 minutes later the sqlbackupandftp server reconnected/was on-line.

Did sqlbackupandftp have an issue on their servers on 10/11/23 into the early morning on 10/12/23?
Was this type of error created from internal communications where the sqlbackupandftp was installed?

FYI, the actual backups were completed without errors. It was the notification via email that caused the errors.

thanks.

Hello Doug_Burckhardt,

Thank you for the details. We have checked the issue, and it appears to have been a temporary network problem. Could you please check to see if everything is working smoothly now?

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Thank you, and sorry for the inconvenience.

Was the network problem at sqlbackkupandftp company servers or the customer site?

Hello Doug_Burckhardt,

Sorry, but it seems there was a temporary issue on our side.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Thank you, and sorry for the inconvenience.

Alexander,

A notification should be emailed to the user organization when your network causes disruption of the backup software or email notifications that are NOT caused by internal network issues. We spent numerous hours investigating the warning messages caused by your network being offline since we assumed it was our network.

Another suggestion is to notify users when there a planned outage, so when errors/warnings are generated, we know when they’re going to occur.

“Sorry” is not a sufficient response.

Hello Doug_Burckhardt,

Yes, you are absolutely right, and we always send notifications to our users about scheduled maintenance times. However, this time, a network error occurred unexpectedly and was unplanned for us as well.

We regret that you had to spend your time on this, and we hope for your understanding.

Thank you!

Alexander,

So, in the future you will be notifying when there’s an unplanned even?

Hello Doug_Burckhardt,

Yes, during scheduled maintenance, if it affects our customers, we will definitely notify them. Unfortunately, we cannot alert customers promptly if a failure has already occurred; we deeply regret any inconvenience this may have caused. We can confirm that the outage that occurred was unplanned and unexpected for us. Such issues happen extremely rarely; at the moment, we cannot even recall the last time such an incident took place.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

I didn’t ask to be notified prior to UNPLANNED OUTAGE, but why couldn’t you notify customers after an unplanned outage occurred, so they know there was a problem with your service?

Hello Doug_Burckhardt,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. You are absolutely right; if a similar situation occurs in the future, we will consider notifying our users to alleviate any concerns.

Once again, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused, and we appreciate your understanding in this matter.

Alexander,

So what will the new policy be?
What will the time-frame notification be?
Without a set policy and time-frame for notification nothing’s changed and we’re set to wonder what the issue is…

Hello Doug_Burckhardt,

Thank you for your suggestion; we will consider your request.

Thank you for using SQLBackupAndFTP.