Veeam & Process Explorer Compatibility Problem

[mkaec]

Support case number: 00963739

I am a new Veeam customer. It has been working well with some of our Windows Servers and not so well with others.

The problematic servers often fail to back up with the error:
"Error: Cannot register management service. Service name: [VeeamVssSupport]. Cannot create service. Machine: [x.x.x.x]. The specified service has been marked for deletion. Code:1072
Cannot create service.
Win32 error:The specified service has been marked for deletion.
Code: 1072."

Based on http://www.veeam.com/kb1929, I'm pretty sure what is causing this. We run Process Explorer on our servers. We've found it to be very helpful. When an admin logs in to a server, one of the first things he does is glance at the Process Explorer icons in the tray. We've caught memory leaks and runaway process threads we weren't even looking for because we had Process Explorer running.

From what I can tell, the normal process of Veeam is to to install the VeeamVssSupport service on the VM when the backup starts. Then delete it when the backup is complete. For some reason, when Process Explorer is running, the delete can fail causing the service to get stuck in a pending state and the only recovery option at this point is to restart the VM.

I don't want to stop using Process Explorer and I don't want to have to reboot our servers every day.

Part of me thinks that Veeam is implemented like this in order to maintain the claim that it is "agentless". For me, agent would be better because I wouldn't be having this problem.

So, my ask is for a registry key be added in which I can use to turn off the "install, remove" semantics for some or all VMs (unless there is an update available). Everything would work fine if the VeeamVssSupport service were installed once and just left in place.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Marc,

Thanks for your feedback and feature request on the registry key, however I would wait for results of our support team research first. It should be easy to reproduce this behavior if process explorer is the reason for this. BTW, just to make sure I read your post correctly - do you see this behavior on all VMs where process explorer is installed?

Thanks!

[mkaec]

Vitaly,

Thanks for responding. I actually posted here at the suggestion of support. So, I think they probably have completed their research.

Right now my VM sample size is only 4 VMs as we are still in transition. Two are running Windows Server 2012 R2 and have not exhibited the problem. Another is acting as a dedicated redirector. So, no one is ever logged in there. The final one is a remote desktop server running Windows Server 2008 R2. The problem occurs very frequently with that system. We will eventually bring online a farm of remote desktop servers. So, right now the problem is affecting one system, but I expect it will be an issue with most of the Server 2008 R2 systems we start protecting with Veeam.

[PTide]

Hi,

Is it an option for you to use pre- and post-job scripts to make Proccess Explorer stop right before doing a backup and, once backup is finished, start it again? If you are ok with that please give it a try.
If everything goes well please let us know.

Thank you!

[mkaec]

PTide,

I don't think that's a realistic option. Process Explorer runs at the user-level and multiple users could have it running. If this involved a service, that would be an excellent solution, but I think it would be very complex to try to do it for user-level processes.

[Vitaliy S.]

The problem occurs very frequently with that system. We will eventually bring online a farm of remote desktop servers. So, right now the problem is affecting one system, but I expect it will be an issue with most of the Server 2008 R2 systems we start protecting with Veeam.

I have seen cases when this issue was observed in other VMs and were related to some environmental specific settings. Anyway, thanks for your research and feature request.

[mkaec]

I ran a test last week keeping Process Explorer running, but making sure that it is running elevated. Backups ran fine. The VeeamVssSupport service did not get stuck in a pending deletion state. I wonder if that is why the problem is not occurring on our other servers. (Maybe it's not 2012 R2 vs 2008 R2 at all.) The servers having problems are remote desktop servers. Those are the only servers we don't disable UAC on. That means Process Explorer runs elevated by default on all the other servers. I may be able to craft a decent work-around now.

I still have the same concerns as I did when I read KB1929. It states that just having MMC or Task Manager open can cause the same symptoms. It just doesn't seem like the best design decision to repeatedly install and remove the same service over and over when these types of problems can occur.