I have a 2008R2 SP1 server being backed up (C:, E:, system state) to disk on a remote client, using Windows Server Backup via a scheduled WBAdmin task. Usually the backup runs fine, but every now and then (and getting more frequent) the backup never finishes -- it stalls just after starting the system state backup (which is the last part of the backup).

The log of the WBAdmin output shows
  Starting to back up the system state [5/17/2012 4:36 AM]...
  Found (0) files.
  Found (0) files.
  [repeated 2000+ times]
and ends with "^C", with no errors or warnings shown.

Normally the system state backup takes under 15 minutes to run. When it stalls the Task Scheduler terminates it 6+ hours after it starts, so it's not a matter of insufficient time.

When it stalls wbengine.exe is left running, and I terminate it in Task Manager. This is all that's required to recover, and the backup will then run fine for weeks (or more recently, days).

There are no errors or warnings in the any of the event logs during the backup time.

"vssadmin list writers" shows "No error" for all writers, though some show the state as "[5] Waiting for completion"

This used to happen once a month and I ignored it. Recently it's happened 3 times in 2 weeks.

The [win]\Logs\WindowsServerBackup folder contains a Wbadmin.0.etl log file, but when I open it in Event Viewer it only goes back an hour or two, so it's clearly limited to a size too small.

How can I troubleshoot this issue?

Thanks!

Hi,

Please do the following actions:

1. Restart the server and check the condition again. Does this action resolve the issue? If no, go to the next step...

2. Run vssadmin list writers command and report back the result (please do not modify the output when pasting them here).

3. Run vssadmin list providers and report back the result (please do not modify the output when pasting them here).

4. Run diskpart and then in the diskpart> prompt, run list volume and report back the result (please do not modify the output when pasting them here).

Beside the Jeff's suggestions, please do the required backup operation in Windows Server Backup UI, instead of running wbadmin command in Schedule Task feature and report back the result.

Please feel free to let us know if you have any question or co

Thanks for your reply, Jeff. To answer your questions:

1. I guess I wasn't clear, but this is an intermittent issue that resolves itself, so there's no need to restart the server. What I'm looking for is help to determine the root cause so I can avoid this happening in the future.

2. vssadmin list writers:

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

Writer name: 'Task Scheduler Writer'
   Writer Id: {d61d61c8-d73a-4eee-8cdd-f6f9786b7124}
   Writer Instance Id: {1bddd48e-5052-49db-9b07-b96f96727e6b}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'VSS Metadata Store Writer'
   Writer Id: {75dfb225-e2e4-4d39-9ac9-ffaff65ddf06}
   Writer Instance Id: {088e7a7d-09a8-4cc6-a609-ad90e75ddc93}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Performance Counters Writer'
   Writer Id: {0bada1de-01a9-4625-8278-69e735f39dd2}
   Writer Instance Id: {f0086dda-9efc-47c5-8eb6-a944c3d09381}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'System Writer'
   Writer Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
   Writer Instance Id: {04912c5a-2c30-43c1-950f-862a7ad3bdbd}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'WDS VSS Writer'
   Writer Id: {82cb5521-68db-4626-83a4-7fc6f88853e9}
   Writer Instance Id: {077edf59-b8e1-44a8-87d9-39a3433c129f}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'WINS Jet Writer'
   Writer Id: {f08c1483-8407-4a26-8c26-6c267a629741}
   Writer Instance Id: {db1f397f-bd29-4d79-a340-1d0b59aec4ba}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'ASR Writer'
   Writer Id: {be000cbe-11fe-4426-9c58-531aa6355fc4}
   Writer Instance Id: {0d4541c7-861c-40b4-882a-0308ca8171da}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Shadow Copy Optimization Writer'
   Writer Id: {4dc3bdd4-ab48-4d07-adb0-3bee2926fd7f}
   Writer Instance Id: {abfbfa20-7903-4c45-bfdc-fb21679274f5}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Registry Writer'
   Writer Id: {afbab4a2-367d-4d15-a586-71dbb18f8485}
   Writer Instance Id: {082853ec-2459-4e39-a319-249ce6d740ad}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'WMI Writer'
   Writer Id: {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0}
   Writer Instance Id: {9e1e1e94-26a9-448b-942a-244f56149530}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Dhcp Jet Writer'
   Writer Id: {be9ac81e-3619-421f-920f-4c6fea9e93ad}
   Writer Instance Id: {e2c06d0a-dcae-4c13-8faf-a060beae815a}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'COM+ REGDB Writer'
   Writer Id: {542da469-d3e1-473c-9f4f-7847f01fc64f}
   Writer Instance Id: {d8d62323-3752-4edc-ba9e-f1efd25fc543}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'BITS Writer'
   Writer Id: {4969d978-be47-48b0-b100-f328f07ac1e0}
   Writer Instance Id: {663d3e93-56c9-4728-ac7a-b19a0e8781e5}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'DFS Replication service writer'
   Writer Id: {2707761b-2324-473d-88eb-eb007a359533}
   Writer Instance Id: {9a7cc5e7-6b1e-43ee-96da-025b8fe1ad00}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'FRS Writer'
   Writer Id: {d76f5a28-3092-4589-ba48-2958fb88ce29}
   Writer Instance Id: {2b78f91f-d072-403b-aa2f-47a6e4bea5cb}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'NTDS'
   Writer Id: {b2014c9e-8711-4c5c-a5a9-3cf384484757}
   Writer Instance Id: {6606e50b-3a8b-4d5d-a000-779f5a1f0865}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

3. vssadmin list providers:

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

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

4. diskpart list volume:

DISKPART> list volume

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     D                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
  Volume 1         System Rese  NTFS   Partition    100 MB  Healthy    System
  Volume 2     C                NTFS   Partition     39 GB  Healthy    Boot
  Volume 3     E                NTFS   Partition    299 GB  Healthy
  Volume 4     F                NTFS   Partition    224 GB  Healthy

Thanks,

John

Thanks for your reply, R.Alikhani. But, again, it seems I wasn't clear. This is an intermittent issue that resolves itself, so the next backup will run fine whether via the scheduled task or the GUI. What I'm looking for is help to determine the root cause so I can avoid this intermittent issue from recurring in the future.

Thanks, John

Hi,

Is there any third-party backup software on your server?

According to your description, there are some errors in the output, such as,

Writer name: 'NTDS'

State: [5] Waiting for completion

If you dont want to reboot the server, you may try to re-register VSS Writers, based on experience, if conditions permits, you might as well reboot the server and then check the server in future.

How to Re-register Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) Components on Windows 2008/Windows 2003

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH70486

As the issue is appear randomly, the best solution is to enable vss tracing right before any backup operation. Then if the problem occurred, you can use the created log file to analyze the operation. Use the following Knowledge base article to find how you can enable vss tracing in Windows Server 2008 R2:

How to: VSS Tracing

-OR-

How to enable the Volume Shadow Copy service's debug tracing features in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2008

Please feel free to let us know if you have any question or co

Thanks for your reply Jeff.

There's no other backup software on the server.

I did mention that some VSS writers showed a status of "[5] Waiting for completion" but it's not clear what this means, or how to avoid it.

Again, the problem resolved itself without rebooting the server. Given that this is an intermittent problem I don't see how re-registering the VSS components would resolve it. If VSS is improperly registered I'd expect the backup to always fail.

Thanks, John

Thanks, R.Alikhani. The first link is broken, and the second doesn't seem to apply to 2008 R2, but I did find the Core Team How-To on VSS Tracing, and this points me in what should be a useful direction. We'll see what tracing turns up.

Thanks, John

Just to follow-up on this issue:

• The problem didn't occur again for a couple weeks.
• When it did happen again, I enabled VSS tracing
• But then it didn't occur again.
• We then ran into other WSB issues
• In the end we switched to another non-MS backup solution. We'll see if it does any better...

Hi John.

Could you please share step by step enabling vss trace.

I'm using windows 2008 r2 enterprise 64bit

/Tonny

Googling "Core Team How-To on VSS Tracing" should bring you to:
  http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2012/04/29/how-to-vss-tracing.aspx