Windows Server Backup Fails on SBS2011

Hi,

Could you perform a "vssadmin list writers" (without quote) and see any errors found.

Here it is:

C:\Users\admin>vssadmin list writers
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Writer name: 'Task Scheduler Writer'
   Writer Id: {d61d61c8-d73a-4eee-8cdd-f6f9786b7124}
   Writer Instance Id: {1bddd48e-5052-49db-9b07-b96f96727e6b}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'VSS Metadata Store Writer'
   Writer Id: {75dfb225-e2e4-4d39-9ac9-ffaff65ddf06}
   Writer Instance Id: {088e7a7d-09a8-4cc6-a609-ad90e75ddc93}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Performance Counters Writer'
   Writer Id: {0bada1de-01a9-4625-8278-69e735f39dd2}
   Writer Instance Id: {f0086dda-9efc-47c5-8eb6-a944c3d09381}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'ASR Writer'
   Writer Id: {be000cbe-11fe-4426-9c58-531aa6355fc4}
   Writer Instance Id: {b6577a26-77dd-4f19-997f-eef2b676efeb}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'System Writer'
   Writer Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
   Writer Instance Id: {c3749a27-4227-4ff2-9c40-0a22d23010df}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'SqlServerWriter'
   Writer Id: {a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a}
   Writer Instance Id: {1d3fd09e-879e-48cb-b8de-560cd48c28a5}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'SharePoint Services Writer'
   Writer Id: {da452614-4858-5e53-a512-38aab25c61ad}
   Writer Instance Id: {a32adfaa-d267-4909-b2d2-cdb6bfcfc9ba}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'FSRM Writer'
   Writer Id: {12ce4370-5bb7-4c58-a76a-e5d5097e3674}
   Writer Instance Id: {ce3523b5-f3ce-43b4-8d8f-91af6927f6c2}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'BITS Writer'
   Writer Id: {4969d978-be47-48b0-b100-f328f07ac1e0}
   Writer Instance Id: {0ea16e8c-310b-42eb-9062-5602943b27fc}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'IIS Config Writer'
   Writer Id: {2a40fd15-dfca-4aa8-a654-1f8c654603f6}
   Writer Instance Id: {ec6830d3-ec18-4227-8e0c-abe02436efb6}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'WMI Writer'
   Writer Id: {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0}
   Writer Instance Id: {8df43f96-83ca-448c-9263-9699fc01d16d}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'IIS Metabase Writer'
   Writer Id: {59b1f0cf-90ef-465f-9609-6ca8b2938366}
   Writer Instance Id: {5e7ff494-a695-4c0a-b0f0-d8e192ce1ee0}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Registry Writer'
   Writer Id: {afbab4a2-367d-4d15-a586-71dbb18f8485}
   Writer Instance Id: {5c4e673b-02a2-48ac-9e8d-9cd6bb01a0da}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'NPS VSS Writer'
   Writer Id: {35e81631-13e1-48db-97fc-d5bc721bb18a}
   Writer Instance Id: {fcfc2ad2-3fe3-4658-a168-6e289fe34f5c}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Shadow Copy Optimization Writer'
   Writer Id: {4dc3bdd4-ab48-4d07-adb0-3bee2926fd7f}
   Writer Instance Id: {289318f6-0cf1-40e6-83b2-a6632ac62337}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'MSSearch Service Writer'
   Writer Id: {cd3f2362-8bef-46c7-9181-d62844cdc0b2}
   Writer Instance Id: {025db462-83dc-4078-a796-48186ad0cbf3}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'COM+ REGDB Writer'
   Writer Id: {542da469-d3e1-473c-9f4f-7847f01fc64f}
   Writer Instance Id: {a8982d4f-a1d5-4e28-8d37-274d49f5b4a2}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Certificate Authority'
   Writer Id: {6f5b15b5-da24-4d88-b737-63063e3a1f86}
   Writer Instance Id: {1fe69935-8b21-4d72-a16a-d1f20d50c11e}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'FRS Writer'
   Writer Id: {d76f5a28-3092-4589-ba48-2958fb88ce29}
   Writer Instance Id: {5f469184-936f-4aa8-bac2-7a1824f260b0}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Microsoft Exchange Writer'
   Writer Id: {76fe1ac4-15f7-4bcd-987e-8e1acb462fb7}
   Writer Instance Id: {5314cdef-3b30-4adf-83ca-6ca5c9f86bc7}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'TS Gateway Writer'
   Writer Id: {368753ec-572e-4fc7-b4b9-ccd9bdc624cb}
   Writer Instance Id: {69d66448-d2c4-4cb5-9baf-8c3db3bd123d}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Dhcp Jet Writer'
   Writer Id: {be9ac81e-3619-421f-920f-4c6fea9e93ad}
   Writer Instance Id: {517fbf22-51e7-4837-86bd-f4f95146aecc}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'NTDS'
   Writer Id: {b2014c9e-8711-4c5c-a5a9-3cf384484757}
   Writer Instance Id: {973443ec-97a1-47ec-939d-302054894462}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'SPSearch4 VSS Writer'
   Writer Id: {35500004-0201-0000-0000-000000000000}
   Writer Instance Id: {689949d8-afb1-4286-afad-c1f101e56af6}
   State: [8] Failed
   Last error: Out of resources

Have you read my comment yet?

"the built in windows backup does not work with USB 4k sector drives" - I hope this to be the case. Tomorrow I will replace 3TB with 1TB and keep the result posted.

If it works,it might be nice of you to update the chart unless you are running a generic USB backup.

Make sure that you can restore too,as what's the point of backing up if you can't restore?

M$ knew this was going to be a problem years ago,and yet they have done very little to even publicize the issue.

"If it works,it might be nice of you to update the chart unless you are running a generic USB backup." ---> what do you mean by this? Current 3TB USB External is by Seagate and I will use another Seagate external USB Drive tomorrow.

Wow. I thought I could use ANY External USB Drive as a backup device.
Maybe I should use SBS2011 Backup to backup OS & Exchange portion on a compatible smaller Seagate USB drive (because I can restore the HD image easier should the RAID fails in the future) and use Symantec Backup Exec to backup entire data on the file server on the new Seagate 3TB external drive.

I use :

http://www.symantec.com/products/trialware.jsp?pcid=pcat_storage&pvid=1603_1

and don't have those issues.

The built in backup has a major software flaw related to 4 k drives,most 3rd party apps don't

@sglee - Are you going to look at my comment (posted first), or is the 3TB drive and 4K block size all you are going to focus on.  If you are - then I'll delete my comment and leave you to unpick your own problems, now and in the future.

Alan

Dude ,what we might have here is a twofold problem.

Your pointing out an issue with the Spack may be relevant,but my pointing out the 4k sector issue is also relevant.

As it stands now,very few USB drives above 2 tb are supported with the built in SBS 2011 backup.

Not to sound like a marketing knucklehead,but our posts may be synergistic in nature.

@alanhardisty,
Please accept my apology. I did not meant to ignore your comments. I have been in and out all day, so I did not have time in front of the SBS2011 to try out things your post suggested because I wanted to understand what I needed to do first.
I should be able to read it again and try them tomorrow or Tuesday.
I will keep you posted.

No problems - a simple comment acknowledging my comment advising what you just did would have been appreciated.

@pgm554 - If your 'Dude' comment is aimed at me - my name is Alan, not Dude.  Whoever it is aimed at, the fact that your comments are getting responses is the part that I am taking issue with, not the relevance of the other comments.

SBS 2011 backups work very nicely for a while, then SharePoint SP1 gets installed and bingo, they suddenly stop.  As I manage dozens of SBS 2011 server for customers, I have seen this issue more than a few times and thus know that it may be hugely relevant to the problem.

sglee - have the backups ever worked to the 3Tb drives?  If they have, then the drive sector/block size may not be an issue for you.  If they have never worked because this is a new install, then you may well be having a two-fold problem of SharePoint breaking the backups and too big a drive for SBS 2011 to be able to use.

I have been using backup exec with 500gb seagate external usb. Since we cant backup 1.5tb total data, i just purchased a 3TB and decided to use windiws backup for the first time.

Okay - so backups have been fine until you tried to use the 3TB drive?

Have you put any Windows Updates on lately and rebooted the server?

If SharePoint SP1 has been installed, then please refer to my 1st comment.  It is worth checking anyway - just to rule it out.

This is first time to try windows backup regardless of the size of backup device.

Okay - so it could be both issues causing you problems.

If you can check the need for running PSCONFIG as per the link in my first comment that should hopefully tell if Sharepoint SP1 has been installed and thus the backups won't work until you have run the PSCONFIG command.

Thanks

Alan

Alan,
 
 I ran PSCONFIG successfully as seen in attached. Without restarting the SBS2011, I ran Windows backup, but failed again with NOT as many errors as before.

Error 1: The backup operation that started at '¿2012¿-¿07¿-¿10T02:55:26.660000000Z' has failed
because the Volume Shadow Copy Service operation to create a shadow copy of the volumes
being backed up failed with following error code '2155348129'
Error 2: Information Store (14200) Shadow copy instance 48 aborted.

Do I need to reboot the server?
PSCONFIG-LOG.txt

same disk?

Okay - so the PSCONFIG issue has been fixed, now if you can try a smaller than 3TB disk to backup to, then see if the problem remains.

Worth a server reboot too and then another try with the 3TB disk, just for kicks.

Also, please run the Sharepoint Products Configuration Wizard too - that needs to be completed after the PSCONFIG command.

You may lose OWA afterwards - if you do, run IIS Manager (not 6.0) and Stop the Sharepoint 80 Site and start the Default Web Site.

OK. I will try them this afternoon. Also I will hook up <3TB USB drive to see if it makes any difference.

@ pgm554
I was not at the site to try smaller USB drive yesterday, but today I will and keep you posted.

I am getting the same errors along with a bunch of Sharepoint foundation related errors) when I used Seagate 250GB External USB  Drive as a backup device.
------------------------------------
A Volume Shadow Copy Service operation failed. Unknown error (0x800423f3)
-------------------------------------
The backup operation that started at '¿2012¿-¿07¿-¿10T13:42:23.807000000Z' has failed because the Volume Shadow Copy Service operation to create a shadow copy of the volumes being backed up failed with following error code '2155348129'. Please review the event details for a solution, and then rerun the backup operation once the issue is resolved.
---------------------------------------
Source:        Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Foundation
The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Administration.SPSearchJobDefinition (ID 5bb8d493-5cf6-4403-a583-2ac32a32980b) threw an exception. More information is included below.
The device is not ready.
------------------------------------------
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Failed resolving account spsearch with status 1376. Check connection to domain controller and VssAccessControl registry key.

Operation:
   Initializing Writer
---------------------------------------------

Try running the SBS best practices analyzer and post results.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15556

I had to install Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer 2.0 before installing SBS best practices analyzer. It ran about 30 seconds and it said "Microsoft baseline configuration analyzer has determined that you are in compliance with this best practice".

I wonder if there is a conflict with BE and the VSS writers?

Can you stop the BE service and then try the backup?

I stopped all services beginning with "Backup Exec ..." and it still fails.

Did you run the Sharepoint Wizard?

How do i run sharepoint wizard and what will that do?

Click on Start> Type Sharepoint> Select the Wizard (as per my earlier comment), then run through the wizard which will configure Sharepoint, then refer back to my earlier comment.

When you say "run wizard", are  you referring to "Launch the Farm Configuration Wizard"?
BTW on the SharePoint2010 Central Administration screen, it says "...two critical issues "
When I open them, they are saying:

(1) Available drive space is less than five times the value of physical memory.
This is dangerous because it does not provide enough room for a full memory dump
with continued operation. It also could cause problems with the Virtual Memory swap file:  
( SBS2011 - C:\).  Total Size: 196GB / Free: 76.8GB / Paging File Size: 36GB

(2)
Databases exist on servers running SharePoint Foundation.
For optimal performance, databases should not share servers with other applications.

Should I be concerned about these?

Please see comment http:#a38169541

I wouldn't lose too much sleep about the errors, but I would suggest you have a read of the following page:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/briangre/archive/2011/12/01/quot-drives-are-running-out-of-free-space-quot-but-who-cares.aspx

Alan,

 What do you want me to try next?

Have you followed my suggestion in comment http:#a38169541 ?

Alan,
 
 I ran Sharepoint Product configuration and successfully configured it. It asked me to configure Sharepoint Farm (whatever it is). I stopped it in the middle after creating a separate administrative account because I was not sure what this would do.

 Anyway I started running the Windows backup, Hara! it is backing up on 250GB USB Drive.
 I am only backing up OS + Exchange, so should take a few hours.
 This evening I am going to re-assign 3TB drive as Windows Backup Device and will let you know if it works.

Thanks.

Excellent!  So PSCONFIG has fixed the backups to a smaller disk - fingers crossed the backup works to the 3TB disk too.

Will wait to hear about the 3TB backup as and when you attempt it.

Alan

Alan,
Well, I ran into another problem. I added the 3TB USB drive as a windows backup device and ran  the backup. It failed. I thought first it may be because it was 3TB drive issue, but upon further investigation, I notice there were some errors logged in Event Viewer and I realized that I can't even open Exchange Management Console.

I tried the suggestions on the linke: http://www.petenetlive.com/KB/Article/0000477.htm
This article suggested that somehow this sharepoint configuration screwed up things in Exchange Server/IIS. By killing some processes, I was supposed to start default website in IIS. But I could not start it on mine.

Did you read ALL of the comment I posted in http:#a38169541

I did mention that this might happen.

Yes you did. So I ran IIS Manager (not 6.0) and Stop the Sharepoint 80 Site and start the Default Web Site. All worked well there.

Then I ran the backup on the 3TB drive and failed with I/O Device Error again.
So just for the testing, I selected the 250GB drive as backup device, started the backup, and it is backing up the files without an error.

Okay - so you had 2 problems:

1. SharePoint needed PSCONFIG to be run after SharePoint SP1 was installed (as per my 1st comment) and
2. You have large unsupported USB hard disks with the wrong block size on them as pgm554 pointed out to you in their first comment.

So you just need some smaller drives (I use 2TB drives) or 3TB ones without the 4k block size and you are good to go.

thanks to Alan  and PGM554 for all your help.