Open the Event Viewer snap-in on the affected machine, under the 'Application' tab, check for any Volume Shadow Copy error at the time of the backup.
- Check on the VSS writers, open an Administrative command prompt and enter the following commands -
>vssadmin list writers
This should output a list of writers and their status, they should all be reported as stable.
- If there is writer listed at unstable, please re-register the Volume Shadow Copy Service by following the instructions below:
- Download the 'RegisterVSS2010.zip' file by Clicking Here
- Extract the zip file to ${Install-Home}bin
- Execute the extracted script file
- Reboot the machine
Also, try cleaning up the VSS snapshots on the affected server:
- Open an administrative command prompt and enter the following commands -
> vssadmin delete shadows /all
This will clean up any dead VSS snapshots, some defect system may accumulate hundreds of VSS snapshots that persist in the system and cause Windows to become un-responsive.
- On some systems, the command 'vssadmin delete shadows' may not be available. For these cases, open an administrative command prompt and enter the following commands -
> vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=300MB
- If there is no VSS writer error shown, but the system is not creating a new VSS snapshot, you may have to actually increase the max shadow storage size on your system:
Open an administrative command prompt and enter the following commands -
> vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=10GB
Next, to confirm if the SharePoint Foundation 2010 Service Pack 1 update process was incomplete, please perform the following steps:
- Confirm if the SPSearch4 VSS Writer is giving error.
A vssadmin list writers command will list the following vss writer as having failed:
Writer name: 'SPSearch4 VSS Writer'
Writer Id: {35500004-0201-0000-0000-000000000000}
Writer Instance Id: {ffdde2b3-5175-466b-87f7-3973278c7fbe}
State: [8] Failed
Last error: Inconsistent shadow copy
- Confirm if the following event can be found in the Event Viewer:
Event Type: Error
Event ID: 70
Description:
The mount operation for the gatherer application GUID has failed because the schema version of the search administration database is less than the minimum backwards compatibility schema version supported for this gatherer application. The database might not have been upgraded.
- Administrator can also run the following commands to determine if you need to complete the update process with PSCONFIG:
- Launch an administrative SharePoint 2010 management shell and enter the following commands -
>(get-spserver $env:computername).NeedsUpgrade
If the result of this command is True, please complete the update process with PSCONFIG.
For instruction, please refer to the Official SBS Blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2011/05/24/you-must-manually-run-psconfig-after-installing-sharepoint-2010-patches.aspx
If the problem persists, try adding the following Pre and Post backup command to the job to stop the SQL Server VSS Writer service and then perform a full MS Exchange server backup manually via the Pro user interface.
Open the MS Exchange backup set preferences and go to "Command Line Tool"
Pre Backup:
Name: Stop SQL Writer
Working Directory: C:
Command: sc stop SQLWriter
Post Backup:
Name: Start SQL Writer
Working Directory: C:
Command: sc start SQLWriter
