Hi, I am running Exchange 2010 with diskshadow, and get the Exchange writer into a failed state. From the Event log, I see: Exchange VSS Writer (instance 731e47f2-6a5b-4b0c-a826-30e5b88e61a0) failed with error code 1297 when preparing for backup. And the binary file says: CVssIExchWriter:OnPrepareBackup:Failed allocating backup instance. All subsequent snapshots are failing until I reboot the machine. Thanks for the help.

Hi If you restart the server, for how long does the backup work and complete successfully? What backup solution are you using?Jonas Andersson MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007/2010 | MCITP: EMA 2007/2010 | MCSE/MCSA Blog: http://www.testlabs.se/blog

Jonas, Before this crash I restarted the server, and I was able to take around 150 snapshots before I ran into this issue. I am developing a backup solution that behaves much like diskshadow, that's why I was referring to diskshadow since it is more mainstream. Once I get the writer into state 7 with the error described at the beginning of the thread, the only way to take snapshots again is to restart the server or restart the Information Store Service. I am wondering it this could be related to load on the system. Any Ideas? Thanks Hector

Is you backup solution exchange aware? I don't think it is... but please confirm I would backup the exchange with either DPM or Windows Server Backup With these two you will have an exchange aware backup solution and after full backup it will commit and truncate the transaction logsJonas Andersson MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007/2010 | MCITP: EMA 2007/2010 | MCSE/MCSA Blog: http://www.testlabs.se/blog

Hi, As Jonas was mentioned, it’s highly recommended to use Windows NTBackup tool to run a complete Backup. Does the Event error message persist? If so, please let us know. Otherwise, I’m afraid that the issue can occur by your Backup solution and please contact the manufacturer for further assistance. Regards,Novak Wu-MSFT