Recently, I encountered an interesting error message.

For a database, we needed to add a new file to existing filegroup to help alleviate storage limitation of allocated subsystem. but as I ran the following script, I got the following error.

[sourcecode language=”sql”]
ALTER DATABASE [DBName]
ADD FILE
(
NAME = ‘StopGap_Primary.ndf’
, FILENAME = ‘T:\SQLData\Data\StopGap_Primary.ndf’
)
TO FILEGROUP [PRIMARY]
[/sourcecode]

Msg 3023, Level 16, State 2, Line 1
Backup, file manipulation operations (such as ALTER DATABASE ADD FILE) and encryption changes on a database must be serialized. Reissue the statement after the current backup or file manipulation operation is completed.

This is the first time I saw this error. After re-reading the error message several times to decipher the possible reaasons behind the error, I started following up on each leads.

I checked if the

• LOG backup is running
• Database backup (FULL/DIFF) is running
• If anyone else is logged into server running any ALTER DATABASE queries.

It’s a small team that has direct access or has ‘sa’ access to this server, so it was easy to rule out that nobody is running any major database level operation.

Of all the above, I found out that the database backup that started this morning was still running. It was supposed to have completed 30 minutes after starting. but its still running after 10 hours.

Okay, now. I have a new problem at hand. Got to go fix the backup process first before adding any more files.

Hope this helps,
_Sqltimes