System State backup errors with R12 SP1 4

[KRS56]

With Arcserve R12 SP1 agent, some Windows 2003 servers will get a error for the System State backup.
AE0436 - Failed to create system state snapshot

The error seems to be intermittent.
Listing the VSS writers shows the System Writer and the IIS Metabase Writer with an error state of 7.
I did not have these problems with Version 11.5 SP3.
So I am not sure if the new version 12 agent is causing the writers to go into an error state.

 

[davidmichel]

boy really not sure but...
set Job Engine in debug
ck Event Viewer System and App logs for clues

 

[danr19]

KRS56,

Same happens to me! Only in one server of six from time to time. I haven't found any further information at CA's portal yet.

I really appreciate some help!

Regards,

danr19

 

[richw1234]

Hi, same problem with a 2003 server, it reported this error during backup. It appears to be the system writer which has got itself in a pickle. Logon onto the remote server and in the command prompt type;

vssadmin list writers

take a look and see if the system writer is listed, if not then stop and restart the Cryptographic Service - try another backup of the server and hopefully it will work.

 

[danr19]

Hi,

I asked CA for assistance and sent them logs.
According to CA Support, it was a Microsoft issue with VSS Writers.
There are a couple of Microsoft links to work around:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940032/

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc734401.aspx

After reading them, I decided it would be better to run Windows Update on the server.
After that, backup hasn't failed.

Anyway richw1234, I will take your tip into account.

 

[KRS56]

I have reviewed the Microsoft documents in the past. From troubleshooting this issue, we have found that there are various reasons for the VSS Snap to abort. Some have been, disk from the SAN that were allocated to the server then removed but the allocation to the OS was not fully cleaned, SQL writer will have issues (not sure why), even had to adjust the security on a Windows 2008 server for VSS to have rights to a directory.
It seems that if the VSS Snap has a problem with any of the writers the process aborts even for the SystemState.
We can get around it by rebooting the server, register the VSS DLL's and the server will quite down than come back.
Luckily out of 200+ servers only a handfull have intermittent problems.
I would just make sure the latest patches are applied to VSS and possibly the Storport driver.