Full HyperV Backup - Symantec Backup Exec (any version)

Question

I'm sure this will be a favourite topic, but I was wondering if anyone could shed any light on this situation.
We have a customer which has Server 2008 R2 with a .vhd which is 1.46TB in size, and a fixed disk.  They have only 150GB spare on the drive which seemed like enough.  We have had an occasional full HyperV backup to tape, but almost every other
day it fails with the following in Backup Exec (now 2014):
"V-79-40960-38521 - Snapshot Technology: Initialization failure on: "VRTSRV::\\HG-2008-STD\Hyper-V?Virtual?Machine\HG-2011-SBS". Snapshot technology used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).
A virtual machine snapshot could not be created.  Use the Event Viewer on the Hyper-V host to identify the cause.  If the virtual machine is not properly configured, it may be necessary to use the Event Viewer in the virtual machine to identify the
cause."
In the Event log of the Virtual Machine itself, there is only one VSS error, of which I'm told I can safely ignore, but resolved anyway:
"Error: NetLocalGroupGetMemebers(spfarm), 0x80070560, The specified local group does not exist."
I also have the following error on the physical host each time I run the backup:
"Failed to create the backup of virtual machine 'HG-2011-SBS'. (Virtual machine ID A5185ADC-F34B-4898-927C-784EBC23EA1B)"
Symantec say it's the VSS writers (apart from one support technician who admitted their product was a joke) but then Microsoft say it's Symantecs issue.  I'm inclined to believe Microsoft in this case, but I'm getting nowhere and our customer isn't
getting a reliable backup of their whole vhd.
Is this due to only having slightly less than 10% free space on the physical host or just Backup Exec being its usual self?  Does HyperV REQUIRE that you have a certain percentage of space free on the physical machine to process?

Answer 1

For further troubleshooting: what happens when Windows Server Backup is configured for the VM backup and ran?
Lenora Moss Technical Support Engineer, SMB Partner Support, Symantec Corporation www.symantec.com
Surprise surprise, it works just fine :-)
Ok, I have resolved it (kind of)
I was having ESE errors when the backup tries to run and fails immediately after. This points to Exchange VSS errors so leads you down the wrong path.  After hours of following false leads, I finally found that Sharepoint can bibizarrely create these errors
after installing SP1 and not running.  I ran the following command:
PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures
...which resolved most of these errors, but I still got ESE Information Store Shadow Copy instance aborted errors.  At this point, I'm still thinking it's a corrupt Exchange store and/or logs, as suggested by Microsoft.
Long story short, after much digging, I came across an article suggesting to check into SQL writer service permissions having to be local administrator, and not local system account, I decided to disable this service as BE is installed on a Domain Controller
so doesn't have a local admin account to use as suggested in some articles.  All of a sudden, I was in business!!  ESE VSS events were logging successfully and I'm now performing a full image backup finally.
Although this seems like a Microsoft issue, the fact that Veeam backed up fine, along with Windows Server Backup, does still point to BE.  I still don't consider this a resolution because had the customer actually used SQL on this Server (they just use
SBSMonitoring and BE instances) there wouldn't be a backup of SQL available that can utilize GRT, but would have to perform maintenance plans and have those added to the backup routine for DR.
Hope this helps anyone else having these issues.  I would also advise moving the logs manually within Exchange to another drive if you have already used the SBS wizard to move the actual database, as it doesn't move the logs this way.  I've seen other
backup Software fail for this very reason but not give any hint as to what the issue was.