BE 2014 won't backup VMs on Hyper-V 2012 R2

Is the backup set to use the Microsoft VSS provider in the Advanced Open File options ?

If the Hyper-V host is running any AV, do add exclusions for the BE processes.

Is this a stand-alone host or a clustered one ?

Lastly, if the failure occurs on backup of specific VMs, try reinstalling the Hyper-V integration tools inside of that VM.

The Advanced Open File option is set to "Automatic". Should I try changing to System or Hardware?

The Hyper-V host is not running any AV.

The host is stand-alone, and the only specific VMs that are affected are the ones on the Hyper-V 2012 R2 server. The Hyper-V 2008 R2 VM backups are running perfectly fine.

See if this helps - http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH216944

Any errors in the event viewer of the VMs itself ?

And you can try setting the Advanced Open File option to "System".

If I remember, If you want to do a GRT backup of a windows 2012 R2 VM, you must to have a backup exec 2014 installed on a windows 2012 r2 server.

The OS of the backup server must be newer than the OS of the VM.

I had a lot of problems when I backup Win 2012 r2 VM on a ESX and my backup server is on win 2008r2.

it generate NTFS error 55 in the system events.

after a inplace upgrade to Windows server 2012 r2 and a repair of backup exec 2014, it works well.

There are informations in a symantec TID

Do you have a link to confirm this information? I'm having a hard time finding anything.

I'm having a hard time enabling the BERemote logging, but I can confirm that we are getting the same exact Event Viewer errors that are listed in that article.

The only errors in the Event Viewer of one of the VMs is this:

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error calling routine ConvertStringSidToSid(S-1-5-21-332934923-1340491104-1234779376-3418.bak).  hr = 0x80070539, The security ID structure is invalid.
.

Operation:
   OnIdentify event
   Gathering Writer Data

Context:
   Execution Context: Shadow Copy Optimization Writer
   Writer Class Id: {4dc3bdd4-ab48-4d07-adb0-3bee2926fd7f}
   Writer Name: Shadow Copy Optimization Writer
   Writer Instance ID: {a155e180-8e78-483d-9e4a-1fc5d030a5d3}

I'm going to investigate the Hyper-V integration services now.

in this TID : http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH214822

you can read :

The Backup Exec Media Server Operating System should be at least the same version as the Operating System of the VM being backed up via GRT to avoid this alert being created.

in another TID, if you want to do a backup GRT of an AD on a windows server 2012, you need to have a media server on a windows server 2012.

veritas support recommand me to upgrade the OS of the media server to Win server 2012r2

it doesn't solve all bugs

we can't do a GRT backup of an AD using a grt backup of the VM, we must to do a backup of the server using the windows agent

we have lot of errors on diff backups of a sharepoint 2010 on a real server.

I doubt that running BE from a 2012 R2 host will make any difference for the problem you are experiencing, as I am doing that also with BE 2014, and it has never worked.  I've had a case open with Symantec since July 30th, and after a number of calls, emails, log files, etc., it was escalated to advanced tech support.  We worked on it for a few hours today, and he is going to involve some additional support on his end, so it might be a few days before I hear back.

Anyway, I have the exact same details you list in #1 and #2.  My client has 2 identical-hardware servers both running Server 2012 R2 as the host, with 2003 R2, 2008 R2, and 2012 R2 virtual machines between the 2 hosts, none of which will back up when selecting them as entire virtual machines to backup.  There is a matching 10178 error (your #1) for each machine, and with your indication of no issues with a 2008 R2 host, this leaves the 2012 R2 host as the common denominator.

From Server 2008 on, you cannot actually uninstall the integration services.  You can attempt it, with Setup/ uninstall via the integration iso, but unless you've done something really weird in getting that virtual machine on that host, it's just going to tell you that it's up to date.  If you upgrade a host server, you can update the integration services, but that should be fairly automatic, with inserting the integration disk being the most you might have to do to initiate it.

BE 2014 will run fine on Server 2008 R2, but, as previously mentioned, you cannot do GRT backups of anything above that level of OS.

The Symantec tech did grab this link to add in to my support case, so hopefully they'll check this link now and then for any updates that might help solve this.  I will try to remember to post back if and when we have a solution.

Thanks for post, man. Glad to hear we aren't the only ones having this problem.

We have 3 Hyper Visors set up. The VM backups didn't start failing until we upgraded two of the Hyper Visors to Hyper-V 2012 R2. The VM jobs on the last Hyper-V 2008 R2 machine still run fine, so I think it's safe to say that 2012 R2 is the problem.

I'd really appreciate it if you updated when you get the chance. I'm playing with the Integration Services on the VMs now but I'm not making much headway.

Hi all.

I have just installed a brand new server with Hyper-V 2012 R2 with 4 VMs all running 2008 R2.

I have launched my first complete backup.

I am getting errors :

event id 10172 : VSS writers inside virtual machine 'XXXXXXXXX' failed to perform BackupComplete to its shadow copy (VSS snapshot) set: Catastrophic failure (0x8000FFFF). (Virtual machine ID 0E06A47D-69A6-44A1-B130-C0D13912DC3A).

Problems with VSS / Hyper-V exist in Backup Exec for years : I am really wondering if competition has so many issues ...

Best regards.

TheSMB