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Backup Exec 16 VSS issues with server 2012 R2

Fairholme
Level 3

I have a new setup with Backup Exec 16 installed on Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit. Mostly working fine with 2 virtual hosts and an exchange server, and speed is good. However, we also have a new file server to back up which is experiencing some difficulty. 

The server is running windows server 2012 R2 and has over 64TB of storage, so we initially ran into the error:

Final error: 0x8004230c - 0x8004230c (2147754764)

Backup - Snapshot Technology: Initialization failure on: "System?State". Snapshot technology used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

V-79-10000-11223 - VSS Snapshot error. The Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshot technology that you selected cannot snap this volume. Some reasons for this could be:

- The snapshot provider that you selected does not support the volume that you are trying to snap. Try selecting the default snapshot provider, and then run the job again.

-A disk with a size greater than 63 terabytes or a 4K sector disk may exist on your computer. These types of disks can cause VSS to stop unexpectedly when it creates snapshot.

We reconfigured the storage in the RAID controller so that all disks presented to the OS are 62TB or less. All disks are also either 512 or 512E sectors.

After running a test backup, the error was gone. However, a week later after migrating data to the new server, the same error returned. Data backs up OK, but volume shadow copy is not used.

I've tried the following to resolve the issue:

* Rebooting the target server

* Removing and re-installing the remote agent, 3 times so far.

* Completely rebuilding the Backup Exec 16 server from bare metal.

There are no errors in any logs for VSS or VSC. vssadmin list writers shows no issues.(All writers present and stable) When the backup starts, the VSSVC.exe and VDS.exe services show up in task manager temporarily, but the system quickly falls back to normal file copies. VSS fails on all volumes and system state, not just the large ones. All other servers back up correctly.

Testing with Windows Server Backup, Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE, and just manually creating a shadow copy on the server all succeed. 

The only thing I can think of is that the agent is timing out too early or testing for an issue and failing too quickly? I also don't know why the job succeeded once before more data was copied to the server.

2 ACCEPTED SOLUTIONS

Accepted Solutions

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

For the 63TB issue you can create/adjust a registry key

http://www.veritas.com/docs/000024505

- however be aware that the 63TB is kind of a Microsoft recommended limit for VSS operations and as such using larger volumes and increasing this too far might introduce other issues (timeouts etc)

 

Also be aware that the way you calculate 63TB might be at fault as the limit is 57.3TB if using by 1024 multipliers/divisors

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Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

If it does not exist already you create it and as far as I know you do it on the server being backed up , however it won't harm to do it on both places.

View solution in original post

8 REPLIES 8

DarthBilly
Level 5
Employee

Sounds like you need to open a support ticket. Our VSS errors are usually spot on, but like you mentioned you've done manual jobs and they've succeeded, so it might be a timing issue.

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

For the 63TB issue you can create/adjust a registry key

http://www.veritas.com/docs/000024505

- however be aware that the 63TB is kind of a Microsoft recommended limit for VSS operations and as such using larger volumes and increasing this too far might introduce other issues (timeouts etc)

 

Also be aware that the way you calculate 63TB might be at fault as the limit is 57.3TB if using by 1024 multipliers/divisors

Thanks for the reply about this. I'll try that registry key as my solution up until now was to switch to agentless backup over SMB and this is nearly half the speed of the agent-based solution.

Regarding the limit being 57TB, whe initially researching this I came across the following Microsoft article which seems to state otherwise: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/950141

The relevant line is "The system returns this Stop error as long as the operation is on a volume that is larger than 64 TB minus 8 GB (70,360,154,226,688 bytes)."

I took this to mean that the limit was denoted in 1024-based TiB rather than 1000-based TB. I changed the raid controller to present a virtual disk of 62TiB rather than trying to run close to the limit. This would still be over by your recommendation, but I can't see it being a problem given the Microsoft technote above?

As mentioned, after resizing I ran a backup of the bare install to test and it executed with no issues. I will try this registry key and be attentive to any other errors.

Actually, that tech doc is a little unclear as to whether the registry entry needs to be created or changed on the BE server or the server being backed up. Could you confirm?

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

If it does not exist already you create it and as far as I know you do it on the server being backed up , however it won't harm to do it on both places.

Yeah, not very clear. It does state "on the client to allow the maximum size of a volume" but I really think that should state source.

OK, I've increased that value from 63 to 69, which should still be correct according to the microsoft technote. A test backup of the just the system drive has now succeded where it previously failed, and the full backup is now running, though I can see that it's using a shadow copy. I'll confirm tomorrow when the backup is finished, as it takes about 16 hours to do a full backup. 

Yes, this is all working great now.