VSS Failures on 2008 Server w/ USB Drive

Question

Been battling a VSS failure on a 2008 Server and NetWorker 8.1 build 199 (server and client) and indirectly came to figure out I think what is causing it. It isn't a NetWorker failure, but a failure to create the VSS snapshots in general. It is a fairly large server that has an attached 2 or 3TB USB hard drive. Turns out VSS is prone to problems in general if there is even a USB drive with 4K block size attached. So I realize its a non-supported config with MS, but wondering if I can safely bypass VSS with NetWorker. We aren't even trying to backup that drive with NetWorker, it just happens to be attached.

MS talks about it here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2510009

The USB drive is there just to mirror the data to for a "rapid" recovery using a program that mirrors file by file once a day like a robocopy. We are trying to backup the real data volume with NetWorker for retention, and dont even have that USB drive in the client config save set.

After adding this VSS:*=off, which I only happened to find on the internet, backups are working. Anybody else run into this, any better workaround? I see similar complaints on various backup product forums for people who have attached USB drives to servers.

Apps & Modules Tab on client -> Backup -> Save operations: VSS:*=off

ble1 · Answer

You can use non-VSS approach, but MS does not recommended it. One thing that you will miss is handling of open files. Also, you will loose DR option as I believe that one is not supported if using non-VSS approach.  Data itself will be backed up well, but if you run any application which requires VSS writer, you might get bad surprise upon restore in terms of consistency. So, non-VSS approach would be ok only for flat file backup.

crazyrov · Answer

Josh,

Instead of turning off VSS for all the drives you can turn it off on just your USB drives by doing a registry entry. The solution is Microsoft based, you can try this and see that resolved you issue. The details are on this link - Excluding Files from Shadow Copies (Windows). All the Best.

pawankumawat · Answer

Hello,

When you use VSS:*=off to turn off VSS components, following things will happen -

1. Backup will run good for drives.

2. The files which are in use, will not be taken in backup.

3. You will not be able to take backup of DR components, which is required for disaster recovery.

Can you please post here error logs when backup failed ?

You can check output of "vssadmin list writers" command on windows client to know if there is any issue with writers.

Also you can try to run backup after restarting Volume shadow copy service.

Regards,

Pawan

pawankumawat · Answer

Hello,

Writer name: 'FSRM Writer'

Writer Id: {12ce4370-5bb7-4c58-a76a-e5d5097e3674}

Writer Instance Id: {49dc5281-ddab-47c6-adc6-3c4b7bffa98a}

State: [7] Failed

Last error: No error

FSRM writer enumerates the FSRM configuration files that are used for system state backup.

State of this writer shows - Failed.

It will cause VSS components backup failure.

Its not a Networker issue. I am not sure if there is a patch from Microsoft to fix FSRM writer issue for Windows 2008 server.

Regards,

Pawan

jmfolcik · Answer

Thanks for the information guys. This is just a simple file server, no application backups just data in file shares.

For excluding using that registry key, I made a key named USB in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToSnapshot and its data was "G:\*.* /s"

It doesn't help. And makes sense, this is a post-prosessing setting, a snapshot of everything still takes place:

"After a file is added to the appropriate registry key value, it is deleted from the shadow copy during creation by the shadow copy optimization writer on a best-effort basis."

Here are those VSS and NetWorker errors the other fella asked for:

Each time it tries, there's two Application EventLog errors. First one is:

Source: VSS, EventID 12293

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on a Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine details EndPrepareSnapshots({f4d76fc8-6a8f-4f14-b34b-3a5407c7cbdc}) [hr = 0x8000ffff].

The Second one is:

Source: NetWorker, EventID 1

Could not perform a VSS save operation. Unable to save the SYSTEM STATE save sets: cannot create the snapshot.

And it repeats these pairs total of four times. NetWorker shows the same types of errors in NMC and fails the job.

The vssadmin list writers has always been healthy output, thats what I checked way early on when I researched VSS problems with NetWorker.

>vssadmin list writers
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Writer name: 'System Writer'
   Writer Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
   Writer Instance Id: {9c3a34c0-bad8-4c30-a8d3-2e2ec65cfa89}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'ASR Writer'
   Writer Id: {be000cbe-11fe-4426-9c58-531aa6355fc4}
   Writer Instance Id: {7816a39a-0a15-4065-8e95-20ddf98c3109}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'FSRM Writer'
   Writer Id: {12ce4370-5bb7-4c58-a76a-e5d5097e3674}
   Writer Instance Id: {49dc5281-ddab-47c6-adc6-3c4b7bffa98a}
   State: [7] Failed
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Registry Writer'
   Writer Id: {afbab4a2-367d-4d15-a586-71dbb18f8485}
   Writer Instance Id: {bdf09a57-2bd7-4210-a16f-1f9d999b5e5f}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Shadow Copy Optimization Writer'
   Writer Id: {4dc3bdd4-ab48-4d07-adb0-3bee2926fd7f}
   Writer Instance Id: {4501044d-0b7c-4bcb-9687-69499d12e3c4}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'IIS Config Writer'
   Writer Id: {2a40fd15-dfca-4aa8-a654-1f8c654603f6}
   Writer Instance Id: {8362593e-bb0c-448f-828e-1b859d90eae0}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'BITS Writer'
   Writer Id: {4969d978-be47-48b0-b100-f328f07ac1e0}
   Writer Instance Id: {4a4b842f-b088-4e18-bd9f-1860b13b94b1}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'WMI Writer'
   Writer Id: {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0}
   Writer Instance Id: {31bd5db0-404d-46e8-84bd-f07b18558140}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'COM+ REGDB Writer'
   Writer Id: {542da469-d3e1-473c-9f4f-7847f01fc64f}
   Writer Instance Id: {d70cfcf6-40d9-4dea-b089-cd3d56045666}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'IIS Metabase Writer'
   Writer Id: {59b1f0cf-90ef-465f-9609-6ca8b2938366}
   Writer Instance Id: {f9573717-302c-46dd-9d31-ae82de349753}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

>

jmfolcik · Answer

I saw that same writer failed in a posting where someone had a 2008 server with a USB drive and problem went away when rebooting without the drive. System is in another country so I cant simply do a test to prove it out.

Server is all patched up (couple days ago freshly again and problem has been for a long time)

I'm accepting that VSS is broken due to that 4K sector size USB drive since there are a multitude of people having that problem and solution of removal of the USB drive fixing it. I guess I have my answer that were probably fine just doing backups without VSS on this server until it gets upgraded to 2012 someday where that USB drive shouldn't be breaking VSS. That was my main question is if that setting in NetWorker to go without VSS was still a "current" setting to use and will just do a normal sweep of the file system without VSS and non-open locked files.

NetWorker

VSS Failures on 2008 Server w/ USB Drive

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