Backups failing with "There is a time and /or date difference between the client and server"

Question

Seeing sporadic error on main sql server: Seems to always happen at midnight - not every night.  The error states that a time difference exists , but when we check - there is no time difference and we don't see any log of a time change occuring on either server.  The backup starts at 11:17 pm, runs fine until midnight  and then errors cause it to fail.  Happens once or twice weekly, not on the same nights.  See errors below:  Both errors occur on the main sql server.  No errors on the backup server.

1398(There is a time and/or date difference between the client and server.) [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3202)  A nonrecoverable I/O error occurred on file "<our networked backup file location>"59(An unexpected network error occurred.). [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3271)  BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3013)

Windows error log:

The Security System detected an authentication error for the server cifs/<our backup file location>. The failure code from authentication protocol Kerberos was "The time at the Primary Domain Controller is different than the time at the Backup Domain Controller or member server by too large an amount.

Answer 1

A restart of the WEindows Time service usually sorts this out.

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Peter Carter http://sqlserverdownanddirty.blogspot.com/

Answer 2

Restarted the time service on both the main server and the backup server.  That did not fix it - at least not permanently.  Backup ran fine for several days - then this am at midnight...got the error again.  Seems to always happen at midnight? 

Answer 3

Any other ideas out there?  Restarting the time service did not solve the problem.

Answer 4

I am having this issue as well. Just sprang up for the first time a week ago.. when the maintenance plan does a full backup on the largest database (500-600 GB) to a network share. Manual full backups run fine. Any ideas?