CPS "Snapshot deleted by external source" (NOT HIGH I/O, DISK SPACE, TOO MANY SNAPSHOT)

[Alex_Goodyear]

I have to servers that are pair together and are running CPS on each other. All is well untill the month end of the 3 month when the system reports as follows:

 Snapshot created on '25/07/2008 18:00:24' for server 'DATALINK', volume 'D:\' containing backup destination 'Datalink' has been deleted by an external source.

Dated 1st October 2008

 This is a copy from the event log, the same message comes up on the other server of the pair. This error occours on the 1st of the month when the retention policy is using the last entry of the month to create a month end snapshot. There is no errors in the event log that is from "volsnap" and there is roughtly 30 snapshot on the catalogue when this occures, and there is 100gb's spare space on the disk.  Wndows shadow copy is disabled in both instances, and i have check the retention policy in CPS.  How would find  i find out what external source is deleting the oldest snapshop and why??

 I have run out of ideas......

Many thanks

Alex

[ajagdman]

The same event is the result at my site.

Also I don´t know what is happened.

Looks like an external initiated VSS snapshot.

Maybe it´s CPS itself?

Any solutions are welcome.

Andreas

[rayjay]

There are some notes in the whitepaper on "VSS best practices" or "CPS best practices" or something like that saying that there will be entries in the eventlog (system ? ) around the time or just before the error is logged by CPS. I've solved my problem so don't remember what the event ids  were but from memory it is a service control manager information event and the text inside the event will specify the reason that the VSS software deleted the snapshot. Also check diskmanagement/properties/shadowcopies on all the disks to make sure that they are not shadowing to the disk you are having issues with.

[rayjay]

FYI my issue endeds up being low disk, refer to

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/281173.htm

although yuo may have read it already.

Example of Low Disk Space causing a snapshot to be deleted
Event Type:      Information
Event Source:      VolSnap
Event Category:      None
Event ID:                  33
Date:            12/27/2005
Time:            7:41:31 AM
User:            N/A
Computer:      SERVER
Description:        The oldest shadow copy of volume G: was deleted to keep disk space usage for shadow copies of volume G: below the user defined limit.