Typically this suggests that there are problems or inconsistencies with particular Exchange storage groups with regard to VSS.

I suggest you check your system for any VSS consistency or instance errors for all volumes and storage groups on that host.

James.

Hi Aleksandr ,
In addition to what James pointed out, I had the same issue several of times, typically the problem is that the Exchange Information Store is not running or a SG cluster resource is down so the VSS reports that 'lack' of communication.

Let us know how it turns out,
Idan.

Hi James,

Is there any other way of checking what is going on with VSS other than using vssadmin list [providers|writers]?

Hi there
Well VSS is pretty good at letting the user know of issues through the event viewer.

Are you trying the appset creation against all SGs or just one? If all, then try creating the appset one SG at a time to find out which or all are problematic.

To narrow down the issue you have,

1st - go through the appl and system event logs and check for VSS errors.
I would expect there are. Share them here, strip out personal info first.

2nd - if you do not find any in event viewer, put vss into debug mode
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/887013
then run the appset creation again and check the event viewer and debug log file (the debug file is heavy going).


3rd - I would run an online integrity check, or else an online defragmentation to make sure that the VSS errors you are getting are not a symptom of a more serious underlying data integrity issue.

4th - if nothing comes from that, offline the particular SG and online it again and check for errors.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384631(VS.85).aspx also has a vssagent which is VSS diagnostics tool from MS, normally used by ISVs.