VSS Snapshot Failure

Exchange Verify VSS Snapshots

Exchange Verify VSS Snapshots fails with Reason=LongRunningSnapshot. This condition can happen when access to the volume is limited by an iSCSI initiator group, a large number of target subnets have been configured, and not all of those subnets are present on the host. Verify that the iSCSI initiator group has selected the correct target subnets present on the host.

Exchange verify snapshots which are mounted will follow the global digest policy, if any is set on the host. To ensure that the policy is followed, you might have to manually restart the VSS provider service on the host after setting the global digest policy.

NOTE: Restarting the VSS Provider service during a backup might cause the backup to fail.

Provider Veto – Array OS Support

VSS snapshots fail with VSS_E_PROVIDER_VETO error. An error is logged in application event log: EndPrepareSnapshots method: failed to find LUN s/n xxxx on connected arrays.

NOTE: Make sure that the version of HPE Storage Windows Toolkit is compatible with the version of OS on the array.

See Download the HPE Storage Toolkit for Windows.

Failed at Prepare Snapshot

VSS synchronized snapshots could fail with the error VSS_WS_FAILED_AT_PREPARE_SNAPSHOT. This error usually points to performance issues, specifically worker thread exhaustion on the SQL Server.

On the array, limit the number of databases in a Volume Collection. This may require:
  • Moving some of your databases to new Volumes and adding the new Volumes to new Volume Collections
  • Adjusting the schedules so that only one Volume Collection takes snapshots at time
NOTE: If a VSS snapshot takes more than 60 minutes to complete, a message is logged in the Windows event log.

See Multiple Databases and the SQL Server and the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 943471.