log shipping backup fails every so often on only one server I was asked to change the DFS share for our log shipping on all our SQL servers (SQL 2008 on windows 2008) to point to the new share due to some IO issues on the previous one. But now, ocassionally, on one of the important production server, I get the following error every so often. Please note that I do not get this for every transacton file and also that the error seems to be occuring only from one of the server. Once the log shipping fails with this error, our DR logshipping is broken (ofcourse) But all the consecutive log shipping backups for this server just continue working fine.

Message
2012-06-18 09:40:35.37  * Error: Backup failed for Server 'XXXX'. (Microsoft.SqlServer.SmoExtended) 
2012-06-18 09:40:35.37   Error: An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch.(Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo) 
2012-06-18 09:40:35.37   Error: Write on "\\...FILE23.trn" failed: 2(The system cannot find the file specified.)
BACKUP LOG is terminating abnormally.
100 percent processed.(.Net SqlClient Data Provider) *
2012-06-18 09:40:35.39  ----- END OF TRANSACTION LOG BACKUP   -----

My questions:


Why would the backup for a transaction fail every few hours only? The consecutive backups just run fine.
What are the factors I need to check for this type of issue?
Why would I get an error as "cannot find the file" when it is supposed to be doing a write?


Any help on this is deeply appreciated. 

Thanks in advance
Since your network drive is available most of the times and the backup job only fails randomly, I would first check the network. It could very well be the network issue. I would also look at the intervals the backup job fails, to see if there is a pattern to it.

Coming to restarting the logshipping part - the easier method is to restore the full backup and the standby server and reconfigure. But it depends on the size of your database, resources available etc