EQL + Hyper-V 2012 + DPM 2012: unable to create some snapshots

Hello,

First thing if you want to keep using the H/W provider that comes with HIT/ME is to upgrade to HIT/ME 4.7.1.

However, MS has phased out H/W snapshot support in SP3 for DPM 2012 anyways.

•

•DPM Backups today need Volume snapshot to get the stable copy of Application

• DPM now with Windows Server 2012 R2 can use VM snapshot to Backup instead of volume snapshot

• Volume Snapshot is avoided using Dummy VSS provider (DPM Null Provider)

• HyperV has made changes to give DPM and App consistent VM snapshot.

• Backups are done from Live Volume

• Hardware or software provider are not necessary anymore as DPM does not need volume snapshot.

Only Applicable to HyperV over Windows Server 2012 R2

• Prereq - support.microsoft.com/.../2919355

support.microsoft.com/.../2919355

• Used only for CSV volume and Remote SMB. Not used for NTFS, REFS etc.

• Installed along with agent as separate service (VssNullProvider)

• Production Server Needs Reboot after patch installation before Null provider can work.

• “Vssadmin list providers” can be used to confirm the installation

VSS Provider priority in DPM

• Null Provider (default, can be disabled using Regkey)

• Software provider (if forced using Regkey)

• Default Provider (can be software or hardware)

To disable Null provider (on production server)

reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\Agent" /v UseNullProvider /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Regards,

First of all, thanks for your answer, you're always helpful!

Currently I'm running only 2012 products, not R2: so I have Windows 2012 (not R2) as host and guest OS and DPM 2012 SP1 (again not R2).

Does this apply to Win 2012/DPM 2012 too?

Provided that I'm not using ASM, could stopping the service lead to problems?

You can try that.   Or unregister the EQL HW provider is another option.

Solution Title HOWTO: Temporarily disable the EqualLogic VSS provider?

Solution Details Under some circumstances, you may need to disable the EqualLogic VSS hardware provider module, but be able to re-enable it later.

Please note that the content of this solution is not officially documented or supported. This has been observed to work in the past, but is not guaranteed to be stable or functional in the future. Until this is documented, we should not provide it to customers.

This can be done with the "eqlvss" command under Windows:

C:\Program Files\EqualLogic\bin>eqlvss /unregserver

You can confirm it has been removed with the following command:

C:\Program Files\EqualLogic\bin>vssadmin list providers

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool

(C) Copyright 2001 Microsoft Corp.

Provider name: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'

Provider type: System

Provider Id: {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}

Version: 1.0.0.7

To add it, do the following:

C:\Program Files\EqualLogic\bin>eqlvss /regserver

C:\Program Files\EqualLogic\bin>vssadmin list providers

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool

(C) Copyright 2001 Microsoft Corp.

Provider name: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'

Provider type: System

Provider Id: {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}

Version: 1.0.0.7

Provider name: 'DELL EqualLogic VSS HW Provider'

Provider type: Hardware

Provider Id: {d4689bdf-7b60-4f6e-9afb-2d13c01b12ea}

Version: 3.1.1.0