Volume Shadow Copy Service Failure

[ramone]

Hi,
It seems that many of our backups are failing due to the VSS service stopping unexpectedly on our servers running windows server 2003?

The service is set to automatic, and even upon restarting it manually, it appears to stop overnight.

Has anyone seen this before? Or would have any suggestions to prevent this from continuing. It is really becoming a nuisance. If I restart the service on the affected servers and then run a full backup, the job completes successfully.

Cheers,
John

[Shilpa_pawar_2]

Hi,
Are you using OFO? What is the exact error?

We would suggest you to go through the following technote:
How to troubleshoot the error "A failure occurred querying the Writer status" using VSSADMIN http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/261993.htm
__________________________________________

It would be better if you directly upgrade free of cost to BE v9.1:

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/264658.htm
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[ramone]

This is still driving me nuts!

The problem here is that the VSS service is STOPPING UNEXPECTADLY for no reason on the servers included within the backup task, thus causing veritas to indicate that 'THE JOB HAS FAILED' due to shadow copy components.

I dont think this is a veritas issue, but MS were less than helpful. Suprising hey?

We are currently on V10.

Anyone else having this problem?????

John

[nlsblkry]

does it crash your server too?
While backing up the VSS service it crashes on our server.

-nlsblkry

[ramone]

No it doesnt actually crash the server. Im not sure I understand? Im not backing up the VSS service. Its just that the service stops unexpectadly half way through the backup causing the job to show as failed.

Very annoying!

[ramone]

Would anyone have any suggestions?

[tejashree_Bhate]

Hello,

Most probably this seems to be a microsoft issue,however please check in the application event logs if there are any errors with regards to VSS and also please let us know their describtion.

Are you using AOFO with Exchange and SQL?.
If yes then please uncheck the option AOFO while backing up Exchange and SQL. You can create 2 separate jobs: 1 with AOFO and the other without AOFO

Also refer to the following microsoft articles

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;833167

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-

us;887827

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;887013

Have you installed Windows 2003 SP1?

Thanks.


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[in_vino___]

I am experiencing the same issue since I upgraded from 9.1 to 10. I have a call with Microsoft and have been researching the issue everywhere. It seems MSFT blames it on Veritas and Veritas blames it on MSFT. Any help would be fantastic regardless of who owns the blame.

[Mohammad_Alslim]

After updating to Veritas 10 the 'Shadow copy components' part of my backup started to fail with following error message

-The job failed with the following error: Unable to initialize the snapshot because the Advanced Open File Option (AOFO) is not installed on the target computer. You must install this option, restart the computer, and then run the job again.

After long search and debugging of this issue I came to the following conclusions. Hopefully someone in Veritas will look into this and work on a permanent fix for everyone.

Putting the backup login account in the 'backup operators' built in security group is not enough to allow backup of 'Shadow copy components' on Windows 2003 standard edition.

At minimum the account need to reside in the power users group in order to allow for 'Shadow copy components' backup to be processed.

Problem noticed when using
Media server Veritas 10 and Remote backup agent Veritas 10.
This problem does not happen if the backup agent is version 9.

Which led me to believe that the problem is in Veritas remote backup agent version 10?
Advanced Open File Option (AOFO) was not used on media server or server being backed up.

Hope this will help.
Mohammad

[Ajit_Kulkarni]

Hello,

I would like to know if you have tried the solution given by Veritas representative. If yes, then what are the results ?


Regards,


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