How to check that a failed replication is caused by VSS issues

Cause

A failed replication on Windows may be caused by a range of preceding internal issues affecting the source machine. A properly functioning Volume Shadow Copy Service is one of the main prerequisites for a successful replication.

Solution

Access the affected machine and navigate to disk properties. The Shadow Copies tab allows the user to directly initiate snapshot creation for a selected disk.

If any VSS-related flaws exist in the system, pressing the Create Now button will return an error message saying that shadow copy creation has failed for volume <Volume_ID>

Also, check the limit on the Setting page for each disk:

Please consider the following steps if you wish to resolve this:

1. Reboot the machine.

2. Check services.msc. Make sure that the Volume Shadow Copy service (VSS service) and Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider services are not disabled.

3. Verify that there is enough free space on the volume to create a shadow copy. According to Microsoft's official recommendations, at least 20% of free space is required.

4. Run disk defragmentation for the affected volumes.

5. Execute the chkdsk command with the name of the disk. No extra arguments are required.

6. Do this at your own discretion: To remove all unreferenced or redundant shadow copies from the system, execute the following command in the administrator command prompt to remove the shadow copies: vssadmin delete shadows /all

If these actions did not help, please note that VSS Framework was developed by Microsoft and as such Hystax is limited in troubleshooting these issues, please contact Microsoft Support for further assistance.

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