Backup failure with Linked Server to another MS SQL unavailable

SQL Server Administration
1

Overnight backups (diff, log, full) fail when the instance has a linked server to a remote MS SQL database that is unavailable. During a network outage, even though my prod instance and databases were up and running, I have a linked server to MS SQL instance at another location.

This is the error:
Executed as user: AD\SAgent. Named Pipes Provider: Could not open a connection to SQL Server [53]. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 53) OLE DB provider "SQLNCLI11" for linked server "SQLREMOTE" returned message "Login timeout expired". [SQLSTATE 01000] (Error 7412) OLE DB provider "SQLNCLI11" for linked server "SQLREMOTE" returned message "A network-related or instance-specific error has occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. Server is not found or not accessible. Check if instance name is correct and if SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. For more information see SQL Server Books Online.". [SQLSTATE 01000] (Error 7412). The step failed.

Is there a way to ignore linked server connectivity in a backup?

I am using Ole Hallengren jobs.

Sherrie

2

There could be many reason behind this error. There might be the possibility that Firewall on the server may be blocking the connection.
Did you check the N/w Latency between both servers?
Check the port number using following command:
USE master
GO
xp_readerrorlog 0, 1, N'Server is listening on'
GO

3

The network is having problems, there is not only latency, there is no connection! But I don't want my backup to fail just because a linked server database is unavailable. I'm not backing up the remote server, but the local one. Spectrum network was out for over 6 hours, the two could not talk.

Is there a way for the backup to continue and be successful, even though a remote server is unavailable.