When you use the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to take a snapshot shadow copy of a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 storage group or of an Exchange 2003 store, you experience the following symptoms:
- The backup operation fails. In this scenario, the following events are logged in the Application log:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSExchangeIS
Event Category: Exchange VSS Writer
Event ID: 9611
Date: date
Time: time
User: N/A
Computer: SERVER
Description:
Error code 0xfffff69d when freezing the Storage groups.
Event Type: Error
Event Source: ESE
Event Category: ShadowCopy
Event ID: 2002
Date: date
Time: time
User: N/A
Computer: SERVER
Description:
Information Store (5992) Shadow copy instance number encountered error -2403 on
freeze.
Note In these events, "0xffff69d " and "-2403" refer to a Jet_errOSSnapShotNotAllowed event. This event means that VSS cannot do the following while backup is in progress or while recovery is in progress:- VSS cannot take a snapshot shadow copy of a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 storage group.
- VSS cannot take a snapshot shadow copy of an Exchange 2003 store.
- You use the Windows Backup program (NTBackup) as a test backup program to perform an online backup of the Exchange 2003 storage group. However, the backup operation fails. Additionally, the following error information is logged in the backup report:
Backup started on date at time.
The 'Microsoft Information Store' returned 'Backup is already active. ' from a call
to 'HrESEBackupSetup()' additional data '-'The 'Microsoft Information Store'
returned 'Functions called in an invalid sequence. '
from a call to
'HrESEBackupClose()' additional data '-'
Note By default, the backup report is named Backup
xx.log. This file is located in the following folder:
%Userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\Data
This problem occurs if the Exchange transaction log files are manually moved or are manually deleted from the transaction log folder when a storage group is running. The VSS process tries to delete each unnecessary log file after a full online backup. If the VSS process cannot find one of the log files, the backup fails and the "backup in progress" flag is not reset.
To resolve this problem, follow these steps:
- On the affected Exchange server, stop the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service. Alternatively, dismount all the stores that are in the affected storage group.
- Run the eseutil/mh
command against each database in the affected storage group. Do this to make sure that each database is in a Clean Shutdown state.
For more information about how to do this, visit the following Microsoft Web site:Note Do not continue this procedure until each database is in a Clean Shutdown state.
- Move all the transaction log files and all the system files from the transaction log folder to a backup location.
- Restart the Exchange server.
Note This problem may cause the backup process to become locked. When you restart the computer, all active backup processes are exited. - Perform a full online backup.
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.
This problem does not occur in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.