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Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and Windows 2003 - installing hotfixes it makes your life a whole lot better

Darren Duke  May 21 2012 02:08:26 PM
If you have any type of data on a Windows server being backed up, chances are you are going to need Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) at some point. This is basically Microsoft's API to allow consistent backups of files on the system. You have probably also seen lots of VSS errors in either the backup application (Backup Exec, Veeam, etc) and/or the Windows Event Viewer.

If you are using Window 2003 Server then make sure you have the roll up hotfixes installed on each and every server you are backing up. I have found this to fix a ton of various issues over the years and can make failed backup using VSS turn into a successful one.

The roll up is available via the MS KB904349.
Comments

Gravatar Image  1Bill Dorge  5/21/2012 3:43:09 PM  Especially in a Virtual Environment

If your running in a virtual environment, you should check for the wayward snap shots also, there maybe some help snap shots not listed in the Snap Shot manager. Need to get those cleaned up or you could have some problems later down the road, performance, corruption, etc.

vSphere 5 give you an option to Consolidate those in the Snap Shot menu, vSphere 4 is a command line fix.

This issue has been giving me fits lately, and still have that one VM even with all the fixes just doesn't work right, you got to love computers somedays.

Gravatar Image  2Darren Duke  5/21/2012 5:00:24 PM  Especially in a Virtual Environment

Yep, good point. Veeam now has an option to remove vm snapshots that have been orphaned. Would be nice to have VSS ones deleted too.

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Gravatar Image  4Darren Duke  7/16/2012 3:53:40 PM  On a somewhat related note....

This may clear up some issues too:

{ http://www.petri.co.il/forums/showthread.php?t=40267 }

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