Can't disable AOFO/snapshots

[Steve-O_ZA]

I use VMWare and mount my servers at the file level for daily backups using VCBmounter, which create a sort of symbolic link into the hard drives of each VM, so on my backup server it would come up as

v:\server1\letters\c\.....

When I do a backup the backup works fine, but the jobs always has the exception

V-79-57344-34110 - AOFO: Initialization failure on: "V:". Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft ... VSS Snapshot error. The Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshot provider selected return...

The event viewer shows this.

Event 12293

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on a Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine details IVssSnapshotProvider::IsVolumeSupported() failed with 0x8000ffff [hr = 0x8000ffff].

Operation:
   Add a Volume to a Shadow Copy Set

Context:
   Execution Context: Coordinator

I have turned off AOFO in Options and on the job itself, but it still tries to use it.

Any idea how I can prevent this?

Thanks

Steven

[Colin_Weaver]

VSS Snapshot requests are not only created by enabling AOFO as such you may not be able to disable it and you should be looking at the stability of VSS on the system

What does VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS SHOW just prior to when the Backup Exec job runs? If any of the writers show an invalid state this will be the cause.

Also you should probably be considering Backup Exec's own VMWare agent (with GRT) which also does VMDK level backups similar to VCB Mounter but using the vSphere vStorage API.

[Steve-O_ZA]

VSS works fine for all other jobs, it's only for these "symbolic links" that there is a problem, I've even excluded that drive from VSS using the registry key, but that hasn't helped

[Colin_Weaver]

Unfortunately, what you are doing might come under the heading of not tested by Symantec making it an Alternative Configuration instead of a Supported Configuration.

As such I go back to my earlier comment about why you can't use the Backup Exec Agent for VMWare which makes use of the vStorage API to give both VMDK level backup to DR a complete VM and File System GRT backup to restore individual files (in one pass)

[Steve-O_ZA]

Unfortunately I am running BE 12, and as far as I know you need 2010 for the vStorage API ?

I will not get budget to upgrade to the next version for another year.

The strange thing is, I was using this exact same method with Server 2003, and it didn't have any problems, maybe VSS handles things differently in 2008