I’m running Server 2012 Essentials running in a Hyper-V machine under Windows Server 2008 R2.
The Hyper-V host does a daily Windows backup at 9pm. The backup is configured to capture Bare Metal Recovery, System State, System Reserved, and the C: drive. It does not back up the E: drive where the VHDs of the client machines are stored. (The guest machines do their own backups.)
During the Hyper-V host backup, the following message appears five times in the Application log of the Server 2012 guest.
Log Name: Application
Source: vmicvss
Date: 11/29/2012 9:00:05 PM
Event ID: 13
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: SVR2012E.mydomain.local
Description:
Windows cannot perform an online backup of this system because scoped snapshots are enabled. To resolve this, disable scoped snapshots by creating the following registry value on this computer:
PATH: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\
CurrentVersion\SystemRestore\
DWORD: ScopeSnapshots
Value: 0
Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on the computer.
The Solution
In the Server 2012 Hyper-V guest, add the registry value as specified in the error message.
The Explanation
I asked in a Microsoft Partner forum about what scoped snapshots are and what this error means. Their answer:
I’ve confirmed with product team, this is an expected behavior. Scope snapshot is a special volume snapshot for volsnap performance. Mainly used by Windows critical updates. Scope means the volsnap only creates Copy on Write (Shadow) volume for the files that are involved in the updates instead of all the files on the volume.
Scope snapshot prevents volume snap revert operations, thus it will cause Hyper-V host backup failure since Hyper-V needs to perform mount and revert VM vhd operations on Hyper-V host. It can cause the hyper-v host backup failed even you didn’t include the hyper-v guest. That is the reason that we blocked it inside of VM during the backup.
Windows 8 Too
I just installed Windows 8 Pro as a guest on the same Hyper-V server and started getting the same message. In this case, the Server 2012 Essentials machine is successfully backing up the Windows 8 machine. I assume that setting the registry value will fix it there too.
Thanks for the solution! This allowed DPM 2012 to back up our WS2012 vm’s using snapshots, but now on the Hyper-V host server I get NTFS corrupt volume warnings listing volume IDs that do not exist on the host system each time the vm is backed up.
What is the NTFS event number? Kinda rings a bell but I don’t see any NTFS errors on my 2008R2 host. Not using DPM though.
Re. volumes that don’t exist, I do get FilterManager errors on the guest: https://www.mcbsys.com/blog/2012/12/filtermanager-event-id-3-during-backups/.
NTFS event 55:
The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume \?Volume{615a20d1-b7b9-11e2-8eb5-da5dec83fe95}.
2 identical events within 2 seconds.
Huh. I do see NTFS 55 errors on my system back in November but the volume mapped back to an external drive. Chkdsk must have fixed it since there are no errors since then.
If you haven’t already, run mountvol from a command prompt to list volumes to check for that GUID.
Yes, mountvol doesn’t show that GUID on either the Hyper-V host nor on the VM. I wonder if it’s a temporary volume for the shadow copy DPM uses…
I guess you could try a mountvol during a backup and see if there are extra volumes. Wouldn’t hurt to run a chkdsk /r on the backup target, or wherever the backup’s shadow copies are stored. It’s possible that there really is disk corruption in an area of disk that is only used during the backup.
Oh, the other thing is that this is happening on both of our Hyper-V host servers only after I changed the registry on each of their 1 Windows Server 2012 hosted vm’s.
Robert did you ever solve this?
I’m getting the same problem on a Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V host after making the ScopedSnapshots change on all my 2012 VMs.
No, I think I’ll have to call Microsoft about it but it hasn’t been a priority for me to spend $279 on it.
Hi,
Thanks for the info. It solved my backup problem, but still have the error 55 on the host.
Any update on that?
Thanks.
@Alex: I’ve just been ignoring it. I am using Veeam for backup and I’ve restored the VMs many times without trouble.
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Hi, I don’t have this folder(SystemReestore) in Registry, how is that possible? I have Server 2012 standard.
Anyone with same issue?
Thanks
Filip, I have recently migrated to Essentials 2012 R2 and I don’t have this folder (key) either. Maybe it is not there by default. If you are getting the error shown above,I think you could just create the key as specified in the error message, then create the specific DWORD value under that key.
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