The guest VM does show VSS errors, but those have been happening all along, ever since I started using Windows backup on the H-V host. Event 12293 from source VSS:
"Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on the Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine details IVssSnapshotProvider::QueryVolumesSupportedForSnapshots(ProviderId,8388617,. ..) [hr = 0x8000ffff]." There's a total of 7 of these, all identical when the backup begins, and a single one when the backup completes. Eventid.net led me to this article <http://dascomputerconsultants.com/volumeshadowcopybroken.htm> that suggests that the volume ID should be changed. Any harm in just trying that? And the question that goes along with that, if we're talking about volumes (separate partitions) within the VM's .VHD, there are two, so do I need to change the volume ID of both? I haven't waited to see if the backup would complete or checked whether the backup is even continuing while the VM in saved state. Maybe I'll get another chance to observe this evening... Carl From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:asbz...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2011 4:24 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: VM spontaneously shuts down to "saved" state under Hyper-V R2 Does the backup complete if you don't restart the VM? I'm assuming you saw nothing of interest in the logs of the VM, either. ASB http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker Harnessing the Advantages of Technology for the SMB market. On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Carl Houseman <c.house...@gmail.com> wrote: I've got Hyper-V 2008 R2 fully security-patched running at home. I've done few if any non-security patches on this server, certainly none recently. It's running two VMs, both Windows 2003, a DC and an Exchange (2003) server. Every day @ 11 pm the Hyper-V server kicks off a Windows backup (wbadmin) of the system state, system partition, and partition with the VHDs. This happens while the VMs are running of course. The backup destination is an external USB drive that's generally spun down when idle. These backups have been working fine for about a year. The Hyper-V hardware itself was replaced about a month ago, the VHD's copied over to the new instance and new VM's created using them, and the backups have been working fine for a couple weeks, until this past week. So, on two occasions (not every occasion) in the past week, about the time the backup starts, the VM for the DC simply stops, and shows the state as "saved". I can start it up again and everything continues like nothing happened - the backup completes successfully. Looking through the Hyper-V server's event logs shows no errors, nor any other events different from a backup where the VM doesn't stop. Now that I think about it, about a week or so ago, I installed the latest version of the integration services into both VMs, and one of those enabled services is volume shadow backups. So it appears I have two choices of 'things to try'. Either attempt to revert to an older version of integration services, or apply all of the non-security updates I've been avoiding. What would you do? thanks, Carl ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin