SqlServerWriter - Causing backup job to fail

[SpectrumCare]

Hi All,

VEEAM Support Case ID: 01718748

We recently extended our MailArchiving machines HDD capacity in VMWare. This drive is not a dynamic drive in Windows. This immediately stopped the backup of this machine.

Everytime we run a backup, we get this error:

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Unable to release guest. Error: Unfreeze error: [Backup job failed. Cannot create a shadow copy of the volumes containing writer's data. A VSS critical writer has failed. Writer name: [SqlServerWriter]. Class ID: [{a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a}]. Instance ID: [{b3cd4468-241d-4ecb-915f-f83b73fbf023}]. Writer's state: [VSS_WS_FAILED_AT_PREPARE_SNAPSHOT]. Error code: [0x800423f4].]
Error: Unfreeze error: [Backup job failed. Cannot create a shadow copy of the volumes containing writer's data. A VSS critical writer has failed. Writer name: [SqlServerWriter]. Class ID: [{a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a}]. Instance ID: [{b3cd4468-241d-4ecb-915f-f83b73fbf023}]. Writer's state: [VSS_WS_FAILED_AT_PREPARE_SNAPSHOT]. Error code: [0x800423f4].]

After creating the support ticket, we realised that there were no providers when we issued:

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vssadmin list providers

I changed the start up type from Manual to Automatic for Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider and made no difference.

I retried our dailybackup and received the following error:

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Failed to prepare guest for hot backup. Error: VSSControl: Failed to prepare guest for freeze, wait timeout 900 sec
Error: VSSControl: Failed to prepare guest for freeze, wait timeout 900 sec

At this point, I changed back the start up type from Automatic back to Manual.

I then found this page: http://bit.ly/1Xbhxkw which suggested copying the providers list from the registry and applying it on the server.

After doing this, I was able to get the desired output:

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vssadmin list providers

output:

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vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Provider name: 'Microsoft iSCSI Target VSS Hardware Provider'
   Provider type: Hardware
   Provider Id: {2f900f90-00e9-440e-873a-96ca5eb079e5}
   Version: 3.3.16567

Provider name: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'
   Provider type: System
   Provider Id: {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}
   Version: 1.0.0.7

We restarted the affected machine as instructed and ran the following commands through a batch file:

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net stop vss 
regsvr32 ole32.dll /s 
regsvr32 vss_ps.dll /s 
Vssvc /Register 
regsvr32 /i swprv.dll /s 
regsvr32 /i eventcls.dll /s 
regsvr32 es.dll /s 
regsvr32 stdprov.dll /s 
regsvr32 vssui.dll /s 
regsvr32 msxml.dll /s 
regsvr32 msxml3.dll /s 
regsvr32 msxml4.dll /s 
net start vss
 

We retried the backup from our backup console and receive the error which we got initially:

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Unable to release guest. Error: Unfreeze error: [Backup job failed. Cannot create a shadow copy of the volumes containing writer's data. A VSS critical writer has failed. Writer name: [SqlServerWriter]. Class ID: [{a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a}]. Instance ID: [{b3cd4468-241d-4ecb-915f-f83b73fbf023}]. Writer's state: [VSS_WS_FAILED_AT_PREPARE_SNAPSHOT]. Error code: [0x800423f4].]
Error: Unfreeze error: [Backup job failed. Cannot create a shadow copy of the volumes containing writer's data. A VSS critical writer has failed. Writer name: [SqlServerWriter]. Class ID: [{a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a}]. Instance ID: [{b3cd4468-241d-4ecb-915f-f83b73fbf023}]. Writer's state: [VSS_WS_FAILED_AT_PREPARE_SNAPSHOT]. Error code: [0x800423f4].]

After Googling for VSS SWLServerWriter specifically, we found this KB article: https://www.veeam.com/kb1944

We issued the following SQL query on the affected machine:

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SELECT 1 FROM SYS.AVAILABILITY_REPLICAS AS AR INNER JOIN SYS.DATABASES AS D ON DB_ID(N'xxxx') = D.DATABASE_ID AND AR.REPLICA_ID = D.REPLICA_ID INNER JOIN SYS.DM_HADR_AVAILABILITY_REPLICA_STATES ST ON AR.REPLICA_ID = ST.REPLICA_ID AND ST.ROLE = 2

output:
Invalid object name 'SYS.AVAILABILITY_REPLICAS'.

However, the KB deals with SQL Server 2012 while we are running SQL 2008.

Some clarifications on whats on the machines:

Affected VM - GFI
OS: Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
Disks:

• C:\ - 40GB -OS drive
  D:\ 550GB - DATA drive
  E:\ 40GB - LOGS drive
  F:\ 100GB - Index drive

SQL: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (SP1) - 10.50.2500.0 (X64) Jun 17 2011 00:54:03 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.1 <X64> (Build 7601: Service Pack 1) (Hypervisor)

So has anyone experienced a similar error after expanding a disk?

Prior to expanding the disk size, the backups used to work.

This server is part of a 30 server daily replication and full backup. All jobs complete without errors except this server.

Any help and suggestions will be helpful.

Cheers.

[SpectrumCare]

Forgot to mention, we are using V B& R version 8.

Cheers.

[SpectrumCare]

Hi All,

We have succeeded with this error. Turns out we had 2.8125mb chunks of database that SQL had created when it ran out of space. This created inconsistencies within SQL.

So whenever we ran VEEAM, it would break since the SQLServerWriter was in a broken (read: inconsistent) state.

We remedied the issue by deleting all the 2.8125mb files and retried the backup.

It's currently running, which it didn't do before.

[trialuservista]

mind to share on detail how to identify and clean the chunk database?
I am facing the same issues.