This has occured on a new SBS 2008 deployment every night since it was deployed. The backups are succesful.

 Description: Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error VSS_E_WRITER_STATUS_NOT_AVAILABLE. An older active writer session state is being overwritten by a newer session. The most common cause is that the number of parallel backups has exceeded the maximum supported limit.  hr = 0x80042409. Operation:   PostSnapshot EventContext:   Maximum supported sessions: 64   Completed sessions: 8   Active sessions: 64   Aborted sessions: 0   Writer failed sessions: 0   New snaphot set: {3e78f4fc-9059-436b-ac30-3ad7d1bfe036}   Old snapshot set: {81cae8f9-887b-4ce2-bd2f-f49c0aff2bf4}   Old operation: 1014   Old state: 1   Old failure: 0   Execution Context: Writer   Writer Class Id: {c2f52614-5e53-4858-a589-38eeb25c6184}   Writer Name: SharePoint Services Writer   Writer Instance ID: {8bcda78b-ade1-4b49-8540-ffd8e27b38b3}

 

 

The error normally occurs when more than one application is accessing the Microsoft VSS Framework at the same time. The VSS framework can only handle one request at a time. You need to review the system and check to see if there are services other than ShadowProtect accessing the VSS Framework. The Windows built-in “System Restore”, which is often enabled by default, is one thing that will use VSS. You can either disable the application using VSS or simply schedule it so that it does not try to use VSS at the same time that ShadowProtect is performing a backup.

The shadow copy appears to be the only thing running at the time. Didn't they remove system restore from server 2008?

 

I'm very curious about this issue as well. We have a new SBS 2008 environment where the same thing is occurring. 

Me too... I'm getting this on about 6 SBS 2008 servers also.  So far seems to be ignorable, but we catch it on our server health checks.

I can also confirm this issue. I am experiencing it on both SBS 2008 and a Server 2008 Standard Edition. Both servers are 64 bit editions and patched up-to-date with SP2 and all updates including July.

 

My ShadowProtect schedule on both servers looks like this:

Weekly schedule

Full backup on Sunday at 11:30

Incrementals from Monday - Saturday, every 240 minutes from 03:30 - 00:00

First the incrementals were scheduled to run every 120 minutes and I deemed this to be the cause of the event. So I increased the time frame to 240 minutes but that didn't help. The event isn't logged until the backups have been running for about a week. A reboot temporary "fixes" it (the event isn't logged again until the backups have been running for about a week after the reboot).

 

I am now updating both servers to ShadowProtect 3.4 to see if that will help.

 

Regards,

Sebastian

Exact same problem here with multiple Server 2008 instances.

Has anyone had any luck with fixing this?

This is a known issue with the Microsoft VSS framework on Server/SBS 2008.

As there is a workaround in the latest version 3.4.0.3001 release of ShadowProtect. I would recommend downloading this and upgrading your installations.

I have a SBS 2008 system that is fully patched and has the above mentioned version of Shadow Protect. I am still getting these errors and it brings the server down. Any other suggestions?

 So far it looks like updating ShadowProtect to 3.4 fixed this issue on one SBS2008 and one Server 2008 Standard installation.

I have confirmed now that I have two SBS 2008 servers that are still having this problem.

 Both are fully patched and have been upgraded to SP 3.4.

 This problem is killing me. These servers become totally unresponsive at least once a week from this.

 

Have you taken a look at the following thread? http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/t/2078.aspx In particular: Description of Update Rollup 9 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970162 (Download) Update Rollup 9 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (KB970162) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=55320be2-c65c-48bb-bab8-6335aa7d008c&displaylang=en The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service crashes when you use a Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2007 server to perform a snapshot backup for an Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 server http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968621/ Also, is it possible you are running TrendMicro? Scooter

Thank you for the suggestions. I have installed Exchange Update Rollup 9 on both servers and neither are running TrendMicro.

 Sadly I have to correct my earlier statement: The issue has not been fixed on neither of the Server 2008 installations (SBS 2008 & Standard), it just took longer to show up this time.

How often are you both running incremental images?

 I'm fairly sure there is a note in the installation guide that on Server/SBS 2008 machines you should run incrementals no more frequently than every half an hour, because as soon as the system hits more than 64 snapshots in a 24 hour period then VSS clogs up again. This is snapshots in general, too, so if you have another program utilising VSS snapshots (shadow copies, another third party program) then this will add to your tally also.