SQL Server 2008 Maintenance Plans Failing because Database is in use

Question

I've created a couple of maintenance plans on our Sql Server 2008 databases that perform back-ups (full and differential) to run overnight, but they keep failing with a message saying the database is currently in use.

We typically have little to no traffic during the times the maintenance plans are scheduled to run so I'm not sure why I'm getting this error. Is there a command I can add to the maintenance plan or a configuration change I can make to the plan(s) to allow the plans to execute?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I can speak for 2000/2005 and say that backups should not be affected by a database being in use. Are there other steps in the maintenance plan that could be causing this? Have you set up the reporting/logging options of the maintenance plan to write to a log file? That might give a little more info.

Answer 2

Seems that one of my databases was getting "stuck" in a restore state. Removing that database from the plan seemed to take care of it. Now on to figuring out what was causing that database to get "stuck"...