The backup on one of my ConfigMgr / SCCM 2007 Site Server’s is failing. If I look in “smsbkup.log” it shows:

ERROR: SQL Backup task failed. Error message

STATMSG: ID=5052 SEV=W LEV=M SOURCE=”SMS Server” COMP=”SMS_SITE_BACKUP” SYS=<server_name> SITE=<site_code> PID=44124 TID=13868 GMTDATE=Mon Apr 01 22:00:47.387 2013 ISTR0=\\<server_name> ISTR1=”SMS_<site_code>” ISTR2=”” ISTR3=”” ISTR4=”” ISTR5=”” ISTR6=”” ISTR7=”” ISTR8=”” ISTR9=”” NUMATTRS=0

Error: Sql Server could not prepare for the Backup.

Aborting the backup process.

Error: CreateSnapshotSet failed…

My Site Server backup is failing and if I look in the “smsbkup.log” I see the following:

Starting to clean and prepare the backup location
Deleting <drive>:\<backup_location>, FAILED, Win32 Error =145
Failed to delete the contents of the backup folder. Error Code = 0x0
Error: Deleting the existing files in the backup location failed…

I have run “vssadmin list writers” from a Command Prompt on my ConfigMgr / SCCM 2007 Site Server but I don’t see the ‘SMS Writer’ listed. Why don’t I see the ‘SMS Writer’ listed when I run vssadmin?

I am trying to backup my Site Server but it’s failing with an “Error: Sql Server could not prepare for the Backup.”

If I look in the “smsbkup.log” I see the following:

Sleeping for 5 seconds...

Error: Sql Server could not prepare for the Backup.

Aborting the backup process.

Error: CreateSnapshotSet failed...

STATMSG: ID=5047 SEV=E LEV=M SOURCE="SMS Server" COMP="SMS_SITE_BACKUP" SYS=<site_server_name>
SITE=<site_code> PID=662812 TID=661036 GMTDATE=Mon Apr 19 09:10:12.150 2013 ISTR0="" 
ISTR1="" ISTR2="" ISTR3="" ISTR4="" ISTR5="" ISTR6="" ISTR7="" ISTR8="" ISTR9="" NUMATTRS=0

SMS site backup failed. Please see previous errors.

SMS site backup service is stopping.

I’ve tried restating the VSS services, running vssadmin list writers and a whole bunch of other stuff but nothing works.

My backup on my site Server is failing and when I look in the smsbkup.log I see the following:

Error: SMS Writer not found.
STATMSG: ID=5045 SEV=E LEV=M SOURCE="SMS Server" COMP="SMS_SITE_BACKUP" SYS=<server_name> SITE=<site_code> PID=35852 TID=36520 GMTDATE=Wed Mar 13 23:05:13.216 2013 ISTR0="" ISTR1="" ISTR2="" ISTR3="" ISTR4="" ISTR5="" ISTR6="" ISTR7="" ISTR8="" ISTR9="" NUMATTRS=0
Starting to clean and prepare the backup location.
Cleanup and/or preparation done.
Starting to create the snapshot set.
Info: Starting Asynchronous PrepareForBackup...
Info: Asynchronous PrepareForBackup finished...
Info: Starting Asynchronous DoSnapshotSet...
Asynchronous QueryStatus failed or did not finish properly. Error code = 0x80,042,301
Error: CreateSnapshotSet failed...
STATMSG: ID=5047 SEV=E LEV=M SOURCE="SMS Server" COMP="SMS_SITE_BACKUP" SYS=<server_name> SITE=<site_code> PID=35852 TID=36520 GMTDATE=Wed Mar 13 23:01:13.373 2013 ISTR0="" ISTR1="" ISTR2="" ISTR3="" ISTR4="" ISTR5="" ISTR6="" ISTR7="" ISTR8="" ISTR9="" NUMATTRS=0
SMS site backup failed. Please see previous errors.
SMS site backup service is stopping.
STATMSG: ID=502 SEV=I LEV=M SOURCE="SMS Server" COMP="SMS_SITE_BACKUP" SYS=<server_name> SITE=<site_code> PID=35852 TID=36520 GMTDATE=Wed Mar 13 23:00:44.467 2013 ISTR0="SMS site backup" ISTR1="" ISTR2="" ISTR3="" ISTR4="" ISTR5="" ISTR6="" ISTR7="" ISTR8="" ISTR9="" NUMATTRS=0
SMS site backup service stopped.
STATMSG: ID=501 SEV=I LEV=M SOURCE="SMS Server" COMP="SMS_SITE_BACKUP" SYS=<server_name> SITE=<site_code> PID=35852 TID=36520 GMTDATE=Wed Mar 13 23:00:46.467 2013 ISTR0="SMS site backup" ISTR1="" ISTR2="" ISTR3="" ISTR4="" ISTR5="" ISTR6="" ISTR7="" ISTR8="" ISTR9="" NUMATTRS=0

ANSWER:

1. First verify that the “SMS_SITE_VSS_WRITER” service is present and started.
2. Next verify that the “SQL Server VSS Writer” service is present and started (if your Site Database is hosted on a separate server this service will be running there).
3. Check the Event Logs for any errors relating to the above two services.
4. Next verify that the VSS writers are present and functioning by running the “vssadmin” command from a Command Prompt with the “list writers” option – for example:

C:\>vssadmin list writers

vssadmin 1.1 – Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool

(C) Copyright 2001 Microsoft Corp.

Writer name: ‘System Writer’
Writer Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
Writer Instance Id: {bf9a3a39-6b35-42b1-bf32-7bdc37d03cf1}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: ‘WMI Writer’
Writer Id: {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0}
Writer Instance Id: {fe69179a-ff63-4ed3-948d-5883bca1842e}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: ‘SMS Writer’
Writer Id: {03ba67dd-dc6d-4729-a038-251f7018463b}
Writer Instance Id: {9300fa8d-32e7-409c-a775-3926da440be0}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: ‘MSDEWriter’
Writer Id: {f8544ac1-0611-4fa5-b04b-f7ee00b03277}
Writer Instance Id: {c8c9f640-7d1a-4f99-83d9-0b3ab67be548}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: ‘COM+ REGDB Writer’
Writer Id: {542da469-d3e1-473c-9f4f-7847f01fc64f}
Writer Instance Id: {90a208fa-9440-4a82-8249-e5b120f2affc}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: ‘Registry Writer’
Writer Id: {afbab4a2-367d-4d15-a586-71dbb18f8485}
Writer Instance Id: {ad1dfde5-2c0c-49d0-91ca-379b5dc448d4}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: ‘BITS Writer’
Writer Id: {4969d978-be47-48b0-b100-f328f07ac1e0}
Writer Instance Id: {77cfd1b1-854f-4c3a-865a-da0aa27ea1b8}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: ‘Event Log Writer’
Writer Id: {eee8c692-67ed-4250-8d86-390603070d00}
Writer Instance Id: {3bc26671-43c2-4d86-b015-b13f5ad2d0f8}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: ‘IIS Metabase Writer’
Writer Id: {59b1f0cf-90ef-465f-9609-6ca8b2938366}
Writer Instance Id: {635959fe-a401-4b82-8766-439cfe3a6a4f}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: ‘SqlServerWriter’
Writer Id: {a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a}
Writer Instance Id: {d0ea545d-9260-4ec5-ad18-3b2458caf540}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

The “SMS Writer” is used to backup just Site data whereas it’s actually the “SqlServerWriter” that performs the backup of the Site Database.

Now if ConfigMgr and your Site Server Database are installed on the same server you will see all both of these (and others) as listed above.

However, if your Site Database is installed on a remote SQL Server you won’t see the “SqlServerWriter” on your Site Server so you’ll need to repeat the VSS command on your SQL Server.

5. Verify that both the “SMS Writer” and “SqlServerWriter” are present, their “State” is “Stable” and “Last error:” shows “No error“.

If you then open the “smswriter.log” you should see lines similar to the following written at the time you ran the vssadmin command:

OnIdentify event triggerred.
SMS Writer 03/04/13 16:23:27 – starting to build the metadata.
Successfully included <drive>:\<installation_directory>\INBOXES into to the metadata.
Successfully included <drive>:\<installation_directory>\LOGS into to the metadata.
Successfully included <drive>:\<installation_directory>\DATA into to the metadata.
Successfully included <drive>:\<installation_directory>\SRVACCT into to the metadata.
Successfully included \\<server_name> \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\NAL – <drive>:\<installation_directory>\BackupTemp\SMSbkSiteRegNAL.dat into the metadata.
Successfully included \\<server_name>\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\SMS – <drive>:\<installation_directory>\BackupTemp\SMSbkSiteRegSMS.dat into the metadata.

Above these entries you’ll see various entries if you stopped the “SMS_SMS_VSS_WRITER” service such as:

SMS Writer service stopped.
STATMSG: ID=501 SEV=I LEV=M SOURCE=”SMS Server” COMP=”SMS_SITE_VSS_WRITER” SYS=<server_name> SITE=<site_code> PID=39984 TID=41964 GMTDATE=Thu Mar 14 18:30:13.686 2013 ISTR0=”SMS Writer” ISTR1=”” ISTR2=”” ISTR3=”” ISTR4=”” ISTR5=”” ISTR6=”” ISTR7=”” ISTR8=”” ISTR9=”” NUMATTRS=0
SMS Writer service is stopping.
STATMSG: ID=502 SEV=I LEV=M SOURCE=”SMS Server” COMP=”SMS_SITE_VSS_WRITER” SYS=<server_name> SITE=<site_code> PID=39984 TID=40720 GMTDATE=Thu Mar 14 18:30:13.702 2013 ISTR0=”SMS Writer” ISTR1=”” ISTR2=”” ISTR3=”” ISTR4=”” ISTR5=”” ISTR6=”” ISTR7=”” ISTR8=”” ISTR9=”” NUMATTRS=0

And then the following when you started it:

Initializing the status message reporting system…
The path to the “Status Manager” inbox is “<drive>:\<installation_directory>\inboxes\statmgr.box\statmsgs”.
SMS_STATUS_MANAGER is not running as part of this process, the SMS_EXECUTIVE to SMS_STATUS_MANAGER in-memory status message queue will not be used.
Registered this process as a source of “SMS Server” events.
Registered this process as a source of “SMS Client” events.
Registered this process as a source of “SMS Provider” events.
Status message reporting system initialized successfully.
Locale set to OS value (English_United States.1252).
SMS Writer service 4.0 started.
STATMSG: ID=500 SEV=I LEV=M SOURCE=”SMS Server” COMP=”SMS_SITE_VSS_WRITER” SYS=<server_name> SITE=<site_code> PID=41172 TID=34144 GMTDATE=Thu Mar 14 18:32:18.393 2013 ISTR0=”SMS Writer” ISTR1=”” ISTR2=”” ISTR3=”” ISTR4=”” ISTR5=”” ISTR6=”” ISTR7=”” ISTR8=”” ISTR9=”” NUMATTRS=0

On the problem server the last successful backup (according to the log) was a week ago and I can’t explain why if the backup task was configured there was no activity in the log to even indicate a problem or at least to show attempts at backing up the server.

Looking in the “smswriter.log” it also showed a backup hadn’t been run, the last couple of lines for the last successful backup read (from the previous week) stated:

Service SMS_EXECUTIVE on site system \\<server_name> successfully stopped.
STATMSG: ID=6805 SEV=I LEV=M SOURCE=”SMS Server” COMP=”” SYS=<server_name> SITE=<site_code> PID=2920 TID=11064 GMTDATE=Thu Feb 28 23:00:48.770 2013 ISTR0=”SMS_EXECUTIVE” ISTR1=”\\<server_name>” ISTR2=”” ISTR3=”” ISTR4=”” ISTR5=”” ISTR6=”” ISTR7=”” ISTR8=”” ISTR9=”” NUMATTRS=0

But no entries were logged after that.  However, after running the vssadmin command, the “smswriter.log” had updated with the lines detailed above.

On the SQL server (as the Site Database was running on a remote SQL server), the “smssqlbkup.log” showed a successful backup hadn’t been run for a week, the last couple of lines from the last successful backup were:

Successfully created the backup metadata file – <drive>:\<backup_directory>\<site_code>Backup\SiteDBServer\\SQLBackupDocument.xml
~Info: Starting asynchronous BackupComplete…
~Info: Asynchronous BackupComplete finished.
After BackupComplete SQL Writer status = STABLE.
Updating the status to [backup completed].
03/03/13 00:10:00 – sql backup completed
Then every 30 mins since then the following:
No message received in the last 30 minutes…
No message received in the last 30 minutes…

Checking the backup the following morning, the logs all indicated a successful back:

smsbkup.log:

Backup task completed successfully with zero errors but there could be some warnings, AFTERBACKUP.BAT will be started if available in its predefined location

smswriter.log:

Waiting for SQL snapshot to complete…
Service SMS_SITE_COMPONENT_MANAGER on site system \\<site_server> successfully started.

(There isn’t a line that states something like “SQL snapshot completed successfully…”).

smssqlbkup.log (on the SQL Server in this case):

We received a message…
Message received = Start
Starting Sql backup…
03/03/13 00:00:22 – starting sql backup.
Sql Writer service is running.
Starting VSS initialization…
Starting Asynchronous GatherWriterMetadata
Number of writers that responded: 9.
Reading SQL Writer metadata…
Number of FileIncludes: 0.
Number of FileExcludes: 0.
Number of Components: 11.
Component – SMS_<site_code>.
FileGroupFile = <drive>:\<path_to_site_database>\\SMS_<site_code>.mdf [Recursive: no]
Volume <database_drive>:\ (that contains the file) is marked as a candidate for snapshot.
FileGroupFile = <transaction_log_drive>:\<path_to_transaction_log>\\SMS_<site_code>_log.ldf [Recursive: no]
Volume <transaction_log_drive>\ (that contains the file) is marked as a candidate for snapshot.
After GatherWriterMetadata SQL Writer status = STABLE.
Starting Prepare for backup.
Added volume containing <db_drive>:\to the snapshot set.
Added volume containing <transaction_log_drive>:\to the snapshot set
Info: Starting Asynchronous PrepareForBackup…
Info: Asynchronous PrepareForBackup finished.
After PrepareForBackup SQL Writer status = STABLE.
Updating the status to [prepare for backup done].
Waiting for the Event Notification…
We received a message…
Message received = DoSnapshot
Starting to create the snapshot…
Starting to clean and prepare the backup location.
Cleanup and/or preparation done.
Info: Starting DoSnapshotSet…
Info: Asynchronous DoSnapshotSet finished.
After DoSnapshotSet SQL Writer status = WAITING_FOR_BACKUP_COMPLETION.
Updating the status to [snapshot done].
Starting the backup complete phase.
Backup Succeeded  for Component – SMS_<site_code>.
Successfully created the backup metadata file – <drive>:\<backup_path>\<site_code>Backup\SiteDBServer\\SQLBackupDocument.xml
Info: Starting asynchronous BackupComplete…
Info: Asynchronous BackupComplete finished.
After BackupComplete SQL Writer status = STABLE.
Updating the status to [backup completed].
03/03/13 00:10:07 – sql backup completed.
Waiting for the Event Notification…

I can only surmise that someone the writer got “lost” in the system and running vssadmin reinitialized everythin

I am trying to backup my Site Server using the built in maintenance task but when I check the “smsbkup.log” I see the following lines:

Info: Asynchronous BackupComplete finished.
 After BackupComplete SMS Writer status = WAITING_FOR_FREEZE.
 Error: VSS_E_WRITERERROR_RETRYABLE. Error Code = 0x800423f3
 04/16/13 00:24:30 - backup completed.
 Backup task completed successfully with zero errors but there could be some warnings, 
 AFTERBACKUP.BAT will be started if available in its predefined location

I have tried running “vssadmin list writers” from a Command Prompt to see if this clears the problems but although it lists the “SMS Writer” it shows the “Last error:” as “Retryable error”:

C:\>vssadmin list writers
 vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
 (C) Copyright 2001 Microsoft Corp.
 Writer name: 'SMS Writer'
 Writer Id: {03ba67dd-dc6d-4729-a038-251f7018463b}
 Writer Instance Id: {74ed4f3d-268c-4a60-b0b3-efbb97c088fc}
 State: [2] Waiting for freeze
 Last error: Retryable error