In this scenario, the backup task fails, and you may receive the following error message that states the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) failed because of a time-out: FAILED_AT_FREEZE (0x800423f2 - VSS_E_WRITERERROR_TIMEOUT) Cause.

When you run a non-component VSS backup (for example, by using Azure Site Recovery (ASR) Agent) against volumes of servers hosting SQL Server 2016 instances, the backup jobs may report failure with the following events logged in the Application Event log.

This error occurs because a backup or restore session state in the VSS writer is not cleaned up correctly. The VSS writer infrastructure creates session-state objects for each backup and restore session in which a VSS writer participates.

A VSS writer has rejected an event with error 0x800423f4, The writer experienced a non-transient error. If the backup process is retried, the error is likely to reoccur. Changes that the writer made to the writer components while handling the event will not be available to the requester.

When a Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)-based backup is performed, each of the subscribed VSS writers is queried for a list of components. The problem that's described in the "Symptoms" section occurs when that list generates a metadata file that's larger than the size limitation. Common causes:

Fixes an issue in which event ID 24581 is logged when some VSS backup operations are running at the same time in SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, or SQL Server 2014. This issue occurs when the auto-recovery option is enabled.

Symptoms. Consider the following scenario: You're using a cluster that's running Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2. You perform a backup or run the vssadmin list writers command on one of the cluster nodes. Note For more information about this command, see vssadmin list writers.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) Cause. This problem occurs because VSS automatically exits when the service is idle for three minutes. VSS enters an idle state when the VSS hardware provider cleans up the non-persistent snapshots.

Fixes an issue in which the trigger of a shadow copy task is not set as expected in the task scheduler on a cluster that is running Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2012. This issue occurs when the shadow copy storage is set on another share disk.

This issue occurs when the restore uses the ResyncLuns Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) API. Cause. This issue occurs because the VSS ResyncLuns operation is rejected by the VSS software provider. Resolution. To fix this issue, we've released a hotfix for Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2. Hotfix information.