Hi John
I have looked up the "Auto Close" feature, and it is indeed a feature for servers with lagging resources, so if there are no active connections to the database, SQL closes it down, to save memory.
As described I had some databases which had this option set to True, and worked, but on further investigation it turned out that they had some activity, so the database wasn't closed.
Sadly when SMSQL comes along to do a backup, it does not connect to the database, or at least not in a way which opens the database, or maybe it closes right after, I don't know, I can only tell what I am seeing.
After setting this "Auto Close" option to False, the databases showed up normal in SMSQL, and I am able to do backups of them with no problems.
As to the placement of the database files, they are all on the same LUN, except of cause master/model/msdb and tempdb, done by the book, and as mentioned earlier I was able to do backups of the other databases on the same LUN.
But I would call this "solved", may even request an enhancement on NetApp's part, maybe they could connect to the database in a way that would allow the backup to run, and then let SQL close down the database... but not sure if this is actually a SMSQL issue or a SQL issue.... one thing is for sure, it's not mentioned in the manuals or Now anywhere I was able to find it... but I guess I'm used to that 🙂
/Heino