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frossmark's avatar
frossmark
Level 2
8 years ago

Solution for VSS exceptions with VMware guests / VM tools

Hi everyone, 

We have been experiencing VSS issues with VMware guests in regards to the installed Backup Exec Agent and a previously installed VMware Tools VSS option.

Uninstalling the VMware Tools VSS option in various ways including restarts did not fix our issues. If you search the internet for solutions, you find many attempts but no real solution or explanation. 

One of our admins spend several hours with the Veritas support without a solution, he was about to escalate the issue with them, when we found the root cause and could actually fix our issues.

 

First the steps to solve this:

  1. Uninstall the VMware Tools VSS option (no restart will be requiered)
  2. Make sure VMware VSS service was deleted
    1. If this is not the case, you might need to do so manually and remove additional DLL's etc. as well as restart the system, but this is independent from this solution
  3. You might have already done steps 1 and 2 but you still get VSS exceptions from the backup that says you have more than one VSS agent installed:
    1. V-79-8192-38331 - The backup has detected that both the VMware VSS Provider and the Symantec VSS Provider have been installed on the virtual machine 'hostname'. However, only one VSS Provider can be used on a virutal machine. You must uninstall the VMware VSS Provider.
    2. Now you wonder what causes this and you get stuck
    3. You could uninstall the Veritas/Symantec Backup Exec Agent and only back the system up per VMDK
    4. You would lose the GRT / granular backup / restore capabilities 
  4. Check your registry for the following reg key
    1. HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\BeVssProviderConflict
    2. If this key exists, but your VMware VSS provider is uninstalled, you need to follow up with step 5 
  5. Open a notepad as administrator
  6. Open this file in the notepad
    1. C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Tools\manifest.txt
  7. Search for the following two entries:
    1. Vcbprovider_2003.installed
    2. vcbprovider.installed
  8. Make sure both of them are set to FALSE, most likely one of them is TRUE
  9. Run a test backup
    1. This test backup now should not show the exception anymore
    2. The registry key should vanish (refresh/press F5) without you taking action

 

So what happened?

You uninstalled the VMware Tools VSS provider, but this manifest file did not get updated. We actually could see that it sometimes does get updated and sometimes does not. This seems to be some kind of issue with the VMware Tools uninstalled/installer.

 

But why this manifest.txt file?

As we found out, there scripts that get executed by Symantec/Veritas Backup Exec before the backup. You might find them in two locations, and it seems to depend a bit on the Windows version which script is executed (at which location). You could edit them both and just undo the checks in the scripts, but this wouldn't be correct. It is more correct to update the manifest.txt file. If you want to, you can check the date/time of the manifest.txt file before you change it - you might see it was not updated while you uninstalled the VMware Tools VSS provider (assuming you did only do this and not do additional installs/uninstalls within the VMware Tools / please note as well that this only is true when you still experienced those issues).

Now, back to those scripts, you find them here:

  • C:\Windows
  • C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\RAWS\VSS Provider

The name of the script that matters:

  • pre-freeze-script.bat

This script checks several DLLs, registry entries, paths and on Windows 2008 and newer the ProgramData-Path for this specific manifest.txt file and the two entries mentioned. 

Once you uninstall the VMware VSS provider, and the file did not get updated, you might see this issue and wonder how to solve it. The solution is to simply update it to mirror the uninstallation of the VMware VSS provider (vcbprovider). We double checked this with several installations and could see if the file actually gets updated, those two values are set to FALSE, if it doesn't, at least one of the values remains true, what causes the pre-freeze-script.bat to write the registry key mentioned earlier and therefor causing the issue in the backup - exceptions. 

If you still have the same issues after updating the manifest.txt, simply check all the DLL's that are mentioned in the script and make sure they don't exist. You might also consider to manually delete the registry-key (it seems to be just a dumy-key) to make sure there is no issue that prevents the script from deleting it. Make sure it does not re-appear after a backup! Otherwise you might still have some DLLs left on your system that cause the script to re-create the registry key.

 

Hope this helps a few of you out there. This was an ongoing issue for a while and I came accross those issues many times ever since Windows 2008. This applies to Windows 2008 R2, Windows 2012, Windows 2012 R2 and pretty sure to Windows 2016 as well.

It helped us getting rid of those issues completely and actually not even needing a single restart of the guest VM to solve the issues (removing the VMware VSS provide did not need a restart).

 

Regards

Florian Rossmark

  • Thanks to the information from Florian we have now updated an existing technote with regards to the issue

     

    https://www.veritas.com/docs/000009506

     

    For those reading this it is important to note that there have been changes in Backup Exec 16 FP1 when used in combination with VMware Tools 10.1.x (which we have included in the TN.)

  • Thanks to the information from Florian we have now updated an existing technote with regards to the issue

     

    https://www.veritas.com/docs/000009506

     

    For those reading this it is important to note that there have been changes in Backup Exec 16 FP1 when used in combination with VMware Tools 10.1.x (which we have included in the TN.)

  • frossmark

    Hi Florian - another couple of quick clarifications

     

    Did you find you had to remove  for the registry the key called

        HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\BeVssProviderConflict

    ?

    or did adjusting the manifest.txt file content alone solve the condition?

    Also I know you found you did not have to reboot the VM but between steps 8 and 9 did you have to restart the BE Remote Agent service or did you just find that the backup job could be run?

    Thanks

     

    Colin

     

    • frossmark's avatar
      frossmark
      Level 2

      Hi Colin,

      To clarify this a bit - I did exactly what I wrote - I did not need to delete the reg-key since the script will take care of this automatically. If you look in to the script you will realize that it does checks and if they are sucessfull it will delete the reg-key in question. 

      While correcting the manifest.txt, the script will be successful. The issue is not BUEX, it is related to some circumstances that cause the manifest.txt not to change... 

      Therefor you don't need to restart any services as well, BUEX does exactly what it needs to do. 

      It was even more clear that this only happened when the manifest.txt wasn't updated after changing the installation (modify) and e.g. removing the VSS provider. The date of the file never changed.

       

      Florian

  • Hi Florian, this looks like very useful information

    Can I clarify some points:

    At what point in your steps do you re-install the VMware tools? (As they are uninstalled in Step 1)

    Also when you re-installed the VMware tools did you choose the custom install option so that you can choose not to install the VMware VSS driver?

    Thanks

     

    Colin Weaver

    Backup Exec Technical Support

    • frossmark's avatar
      frossmark
      Level 2

      Hi Colin,

      The VMware Tools never get uninstalled, you only MODIFY/CHANGE them via Control Pannel / Programs and disable/uninstall the option Volume Shadow Copy Services Support.

      This does not need a restart and you won't need to do a new installation of the tools and avoid installing the VMware VSS provider.

      Please let me know if you have any further questions, and sorry for the confusion.

       

      Regards

      Florian Rossmark

  • An easy way to ensure that the BE VSS provider is used in place of the VMTools provider is to re-install the BE remote agent in the VM's after any VMTools update.

  • Hi Florian,

     

    This is valuable...too valuable to be left in the forums. I'd suggest adding this as an Article or even a Blog so that it doesn't get lost.

    AlexMatts is it possible to pin this to the forum too?

    Thanks!

    • AlexMatts's avatar
      AlexMatts
      Level 6

      Hello, VOX community members:

      CraigV, thank you for highlighting this matter for our review; we are agreed on the import of the content shared by frossmark, and I am now in the process of determining the best means of showcasing this solution, alongside the Veritas Support Engineering team.

      I will update you all upon this thread with the results.

      Again, we appreciate your dedication to the VOX community, and assisting its members in seeking and identifying solutions. They say it 'takes a village to raise a child,' though I'd also argue it 'takes a village to run effective infrastructure.' Not as catchy, perhaps, but no less accurate!

       cc JustineVelcich TylerWelch