Tuesday, 10 March 2009

StorageCraft ShadowProtect and SBS 2008 Lock Ups?

It seems that there may be a problem running ShadowProtect version 3.3 on SBS 2008.

We have not loaded SP up on any of our client production SBS 2008 systems at this time as it is untested for us.

Given our experience so far with the built-in SBS 2008 backup, we were comfortable with its recovery abilities at this time.

There is no conclusive evidence that the problem is with ShadowProtect or within the Win2K8 OS foundation of SBS 2008 as of yet (see page two of the forum).

However, there is a lock-up problem when the ShadowProtect starts up its backup process.

FYI: We have 100% of our SBS 2003 production environments, both SBS and Win2K3 servers, covered by ShadowProtect and it has been virtually flawless in its abilities to facilitate system recoveries.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac!

Windows Live Writer

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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous10 March, 2009 16:33

    Snip from post in the forum thread you referred to:

    There is a bug in Exchange 2007 on Server 2008 such that whenever the VSS framework is used to create a snapshot, the store.exe process will occasionally hang. This can be reproduced with a clean OS/Exchange install (no StorageCraft software installed) using the vshadow.exe command-line tool (which is a tool that can be used to test the creation of snapshots using VSS - vshadow.exe is included in Microsoft's VSS SDK).

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  2. Philip Elder Cluster MVP10 March, 2009 16:44

    A,

    MS KB955429: A VSS backup application causes the Information Store service to crash repeatedly on an Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1-based server.

    Exchange RollUp 5 for Exchange 2007 SP1 resolves that issue and we have already reached RU 6. RU 5 has been around for a while.

    Thanks for the comment,

    Philip

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous15 May, 2009 11:17

    So it should be clear this is not the same problem as the Exchange 2007 on Server 2008 locking up the store.exe but a seperate shadow protect or VSS timing issue.

    I really wish they would bring light to resolve this. It seems quite hard pushing out new technology that has problems like this.

    This is exactly why everyone I know is not moving to SBS 2008 right now and they are sticking with SBS 2003 litterally for this specific reason. As managed services and continuity virtualization become introduced into the market the last thing you want is for it to cause problems with your server. You are trying to create continuity not problems by using this new technology.

    I am gassed by the slow follow up with Storage Craft.

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  4. Philip Elder Cluster MVP15 May, 2009 11:51

    A,

    We are not using SP on SBS 2008 at all. We are using the built-in backup since it does a fantastic job of spot or full server recoveries.

    I have seen a number of VSS related issues mentioned around various aspects of Win2K8, Exchange, and third party products so far. Though, we have not experienced any problems with SBS 2008 and VSS yet.

    Thanks for the feedback,

    Philip

    Philip

    ReplyDelete
  5. Richard Blanco Jr.04 September, 2009 12:57

    This seems to have been resolved for us with clients that have been updated to Exchange 2007 Update Rollup 9. According to some posts in the Storagecraft forums, the issue is tied to a VSS problem and Exchange and that Microsoft finally has attended to the issue.

    ReplyDelete

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