Shadow Copy Components & Snapshot provider

[Peter_van_Leeuw]

I'm having trouble getting the Shadow Copy Components backed up on a 2003 server with no AOFO selected:

Final error: 0x8004230f - 0x8004230f (2147754767).......
Backup - \\SERVER1
OFO: Initialization failure on: "Shadow?Copy?Components". Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). VSS Snapshot error. Unexpected provider error.

I've tried the suggestion of manually starting the MS Shadow Copy Provider and Volume Shadow Copy service and reselecting the target in the selection list as described in document 265927 but that results in:

Event Type:Error
Event Source:VSS
Event Category:None
Event ID:12298
Date:29-9-2005
Time:0:47:22
User:N/A
Computer:SERVER
Description:
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: The I/O writes cannot be held during the shadow copy creation period on volume \\?\Volume{b33e84fb-c3d3-11d9-8936-806e6f6e6963}\. The volume index in the shadow copy set is 0. Error details: Open, Flush, Release, OnRun.

Data:
0000: 43 4f 52 4c 4f 56 4c 43 CORLOVLC
0008: 39 35 34 00 00 00 00 00 954.....
0010: 43 4f 52 4c 4f 56 4c 43 CORLOVLC
0018: 38 35 36 00 00 00 00 00 856.....


One thing I should mention is that the system is also running the Veritas Cluster Volume Manager and hence the Veritas VSS provider. Could those 2 snapshot providers be in each other way ?

Thanks ,
Peter

[Ashutosh_Tamhan]

Please paste the output of "vssadmin list writers" here.

Regards,
Ashutosh

NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answered and would be moved to answered questions pool.

[Peter_van_Leeuw]

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001 Microsoft Corp.

Writer name: 'System Writer'
Writer Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
Writer Instance Id: {d7f1c4ee-8f7f-48dd-9f8c-2ed35a948705}
State: Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'MSDEWriter'
Writer Id: {f8544ac1-0611-4fa5-b04b-f7ee00b03277}
Writer Instance Id: {0dc731fb-f572-4851-8ffa-205076aadc4f}
State: Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Registry Writer'
Writer Id: {afbab4a2-367d-4d15-a586-71dbb18f8485}
Writer Instance Id: {ef510910-0d71-4b17-be4a-dcd91450c063}
State: Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Event Log Writer'
Writer Id: {eee8c692-67ed-4250-8d86-390603070d00}
Writer Instance Id: {f6d17ef3-4c94-4cd8-b2ea-c7f9a93a798e}
State: Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'COM+ REGDB Writer'
Writer Id: {542da469-d3e1-473c-9f4f-7847f01fc64f}
Writer Instance Id: {b3feb1d8-a9ce-4db8-bbc5-58feae28e48a}
State: Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'BITS Writer'
Writer Id: {4969d978-be47-48b0-b100-f328f07ac1e0}
Writer Instance Id: {753dd058-b49a-4623-9fa1-601139e94d96}
State: Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'WMI Writer'
Writer Id: {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0}
Writer Instance Id: {20c90b66-f416-4ab9-9ace-5d687333164c}
State: Stable
Last error: No error

[Peter_Olofsson]

The thing to focus on here is this line: "The I/O writes cannot be held during the shadow copy creation period" which basically means that there is too much disk activity for the shadow copy creation to complete.
Look into running a pre job/post job command to stop and, after the backup job is complete, start your antivirus program. Look into what, if any, other programs that are running during the backup job. Something that generates disk activity.
For my part, I discoved this when I was troubleshooting VSS problems, and turned on the debugging feature for VSS. I specified that the log file should be created in the root of the C: drive. As it turned out, so much information was written to the file that it grew to over 120MB over just two backupjobs. This generated the "The I/O writes cannot be held.." error message in my case. When I turned off the debugging feature, the error message went away.

Hope this was somewhat helpful.

[Peter_van_Leeuw]

Thanks for the input Peter.
That makes sense. I'll have a go at that.