AppAssure - VSS Troubleshooting Guide – Failed VSS Writers

We were having backup issues on a server running AppAssure. It would not complete snapshots and error. It would throw the error:

 "Timeout getting the VSS writers from [SERVERNAME]"

I restarted all the services. Even re-booted the server without success. Running the commands below got it going again. When I ran vssadmin some of the writers were showing errors. nothing worked until I ran the vShadow commands below. That ended up fixing it and now backups are working once again.

eboot your server).

1. Reboot your agent server. Servers that have not been rebooted in a while may cause VSS to malfunction. You should reboot your server regularly as a preventive and cleanup measure for your system.
2. Reset the writers to a stable state.
1. Open vssadmin from the command line (run cmd prompt as administrator). Run the following command:
1. vssadmin list writers
2. If any writer is noted as failed or has an error, or any writers’ states are not listed as stable, run the following:
1. For Replay4: C:\Program Files (x86)\AppAssure Software\Replay Agent\Utils64 > vshadow <The Drive Letter>
2. For AppAssure 5, open a command prompt from the following location: C:\programfiles\apprecovery\agent
1. Run vShadow <THE DRIVE LETTER>
3. List the writers again to check their stability: vssadmin list writers