Why is my Veeam Backup & Replication shutting down my Exchange Server when backup job runs?
We have 14 virtual servers running on two hosts using VMware ESXi 5.0 which have been running without issues for nearly a year now. Unfortunately we had one server fail a few weeks ago which required restoring six virtual servers.
Since the restore everything is running fine except for the 2010 Exchange Server Backup. For some odd ball reason the server is being turned off during the Veeam backup job. I have tried creating new jobs, but nothing has resolved this issue. I'm not having this issue with any other server and have never experienced this issue in the past.
Every morning I have had to manually power the Exchange Server back on which is obviously unacceptable. I can't find anything on the internet about this which seems odd to me.
Since the restore everything is running fine except for the 2010 Exchange Server Backup. For some odd ball reason the server is being turned off during the Veeam backup job. I have tried creating new jobs, but nothing has resolved this issue. I'm not having this issue with any other server and have never experienced this issue in the past.
Every morning I have had to manually power the Exchange Server back on which is obviously unacceptable. I can't find anything on the internet about this which seems odd to me.
noxcho
Check if vmware tools have been installed on this vm.
ASKER
Just verified and yes it was installed. I uninstalled and reinstalled just a moment ago but I can't say I'm confident that was the issue.
Usually the VSS requestor is accessed through vmware tools and if they are not installed or disabled this could prevent online backup. Have you checked if the backup shuts it down now?
ASKER
The backup is definitely shutting it down, that much I'm positive of. If I disable the backup the server is fine, if I enable the backup it will shutdown. I just uninstalled and reinstalled earlier, will see what happens this evening. I can't do much during business hours unfortunately so will follow up with you tomorrow.
Thanks Noxcho
Thanks Noxcho
Ok, keep me updated. Meanwhile you can look in events of this server if there was any sequence of events which let the server shut down.
whats the vss status on your exchange server?
from an elevated command prompt, please run
vssadmin list providers and
vssadmin list writers
also check what time your backups start and if there are any corresponding events in the event log file
this may sound funny, but chnage the backup time on when you are available to see what happens. log onto exchange server and run the backup, see what happens, a graceful shutdown or a bsod? and shutdown/
from an elevated command prompt, please run
vssadmin list providers and
vssadmin list writers
also check what time your backups start and if there are any corresponding events in the event log file
this may sound funny, but chnage the backup time on when you are available to see what happens. log onto exchange server and run the backup, see what happens, a graceful shutdown or a bsod? and shutdown/
ASKER
Hello Everyone - Last night I changed the backup to 9am and watched as suggested. The backup started just fine and the server stayed online. I monitored for the next few hours while it ran and the Exchange Server stayed online until the very end and which point it was turned off. Now I'm not positive how it's being shutdown but I know it's not a graceful shutdown because when I manually power on the server it says it was not shutdown correctly, and asks if I want to start windows normally. It powers on without issues, etc.
This caused me to dig around more and I noticed in VSphere that my Exchange Server Summary says "Virtual Machine Disks Consolidation is needed"
So I proceeded to go through the steps to do this and the server shutdown and process stopped after getting through 3%... Now at this point it's Midnight so I powered the server back on and made sure everything was operating correctly. I will need to look into this further but I'm starting to think this is the issue. Any thoughts or recommendations on this is welcomed as I've never had to deal with this issue. I found a few articles on it and the process seemed pretty straight forward assuming it worked correctly.
This caused me to dig around more and I noticed in VSphere that my Exchange Server Summary says "Virtual Machine Disks Consolidation is needed"
So I proceeded to go through the steps to do this and the server shutdown and process stopped after getting through 3%... Now at this point it's Midnight so I powered the server back on and made sure everything was operating correctly. I will need to look into this further but I'm starting to think this is the issue. Any thoughts or recommendations on this is welcomed as I've never had to deal with this issue. I found a few articles on it and the process seemed pretty straight forward assuming it worked correctly.
Here is something interesting: https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28382556/vm-disk-consolidation-is-needed.html
And an excellent article: http://up2v.nl/2014/06/12/what-are-the-dangers-of-snapshots-and-how-to-avoid/
And an excellent article: http://up2v.nl/2014/06/12/what-are-the-dangers-of-snapshots-and-how-to-avoid/
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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ASKER
This solution worked but definitely isn't ideal and not what I was hoping for in the long run. Ultimately I needed to solve it and this did the trick.