Windows Server 2003 R2 Backup with Hyper-V in DPM

Question

Hello,
I am trying to backup multiple Windows Server 2003 R2 VMs on Hyper-V (Windows Server 2012 R2) with DPM.
When I try to this I get the following errors:
On the Hyper-V Host:
Source: VSS ID:8229
A VSS writer has rejected an event with error 0x800423f4, The writer experienced a non-transient error.  If the backup process is retried,
the error is likely to reoccur.
. Changes that the writer made to the writer components while handling the event will not be available to the requester. Check the event log for related events from the application hosting the VSS writer.
Operation:
   PrepareForSnapshot Event
Context:
   Execution Context: Writer
   Writer Class Id: {66841cd4-6ded-4f4b-8f17-fd23f8ddc3de}
   Writer Name: Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer
   Writer Instance ID: {0b5be050-91e2-41a6-9207-414f1291f975}
   Command Line: C:\Windows\system32\vmms.exe
   Process ID: 5312
Source: Hyper-V-VMMS ID: 18014
Checkpoint operation for 'VMName' was cancelled. (Virtual machine ID D605FC49-D379-4C60-A730-485C8E9279DC)
Source: Hyper-V-VMMS ID: 18012
Checkpoint operation for 'VMName' failed. (Virtual machine ID D605FC49-D379-4C60-A730-485C8E9279DC)
Source: Hyper-V-VMMS ID: 10150
Could not create backup checkpoint for virtual machine 'VMName': Element not found. (0x80070490). (Virtual machine ID D605FC49-D379-4C60-A730-485C8E9279DC)
Source: Hyper-V-Worker ID: 3280
'VMName' could not initiate a checkpoint operation: Element not found. (0x80070490). (Virtual machine ID D605FC49-D379-4C60-A730-485C8E9279DC)
Source: Hyper-V-VMMS ID: 16010
The operation failed.
The Output of vssadmin list writers on the Hyper-V Host looks like this:
Writer name: 'Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer'
   Writer Id: {66841cd4-6ded-4f4b-8f17-fd23f8ddc3de}
   Writer Instance Id: {0b5be050-91e2-41a6-9207-414f1291f975}
   State: [8] Failed
   Last error: Non-retryable error
In the Windows Server 2003 R2 VM there are no errors in the eventlog.
Only the information, that VSS is started and stopped after a while.
When I do a Backup with ntbackup of in the VM everything runs fine.
When I create a checkpoint with Hyper-V everything runs fine, too.
The integration services are up to date and get-vmintegrationservice -vmname VMName shows everything is enabled and OK.
On the Hyper-V host there are 13 VMs. 3 of them are running Windows Server 2003 R2 and 2 of them are showing this error. It seems to be no general problem with Windows Server 2003 R2 then.
I tried the backup on a different Hyper-V host with no success.
How can I narrow down the cause of this error?
Thanks.
greets,
torsten

Answer 1

Thank you to everyone in this thread!
After digging through VSS and Hyper-V dead-ends, the solution above worked for me in a W2012 R2 environment.
I only had this problem trying to back up W2012 R2 Hyper-V VMs stored on a CSV, hosted on a W2012 R2 Host Cluster, backing up from a Host node.  I could back up from within the guests fine.  Both Windows Server Backup and DPM 2012 R2
gave VSS errors on the cluster hosts. 
In fact Windows Server Backup complains with 80780189 it won't back up an application with files on a CSV, which is a common cluster configuration.  This is an example of another caveat in a minefield of MS caveats buried in fine print which often negates
configurations touted by MS Marketing, things which sound great on a sell sheet, but in practice are impractical or just not production-ready because of these restrictions.
Disabled Backup in Integration Services, performed an offline back up from DPM 2012 R2 (which did briefly affect serving the workloads on the VM), which succeeded, and then re-enabled Backup in Integration Services.  DPM then continued to
sync successfully after that for a day.  However, this problem returned after a period of heavy DPM backup activity.  So I redistributed backups through various Protection Groups to spread the DPM load over a longer period and this seems to
have solved this problem.
In general I had lots of problems installing, configuring, and now operating DPM, so the experience has not been smooth, but most of the problems have now been solved.  I find you have to "baby" this product and not push it too hard,
otherwise things start breaking.
Thanks again everyone!
DPM Error ID 30111  0x800423F4
DPM-EM Event ID 3106