Hi All,
I'm currently experiencing problems with my Windows 2012 Server Backup (Windows 2012 Essentials). I backup my data to a dedicated Iscsi drive (on a Synology box) using the build-in Windows Server Backup tool. Everything was running fine with at one moment 20 backups available. After that the diskspace was nearing it's limit of 2.5 TB.
As described by Microsoft the windows backup tool should, when nearing it's limit, delete the oldest snapshot and as a result keep e.g. 20 backups but moving the oldest backup-day consequently.
My problem is that this did not happen. It instead deleted all the current copies and started over fresh! So only ONE copy available (clearing all the 20 stored backups!!). This is very unwanted and basically eliminates the entire use of the backup software!
When looking at the windows logfile I saw that a lot of vhdmp warnings were present with a message like:
Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort3, was issued.
Eventueally I also saw a eventID 33 followed by and error on eventID 33
The shadow copies of volume \\?\Volume{93896cfc-d904-11dd-8cb5-001ec9ef572e} were deleted because the shadow copy storage could not grow in time. Consider reducing the IO load on the system or choose a shadow copy storage volume that is not being shadow copiedIt seems that because the drive is somehow to slow to respond (maybe iscsi isn't getting enough IO throughput) and Windows thinks the snapshots are unavailable and deletes ALL the snapshows and starts over fresh.
Some People suggest to set a limit on the shadow copies. But others have reported this does not work. A thread about this exists but no answer from Microsoft until now :(. Relevant discussions here and here
Does anyone have an answer to mitigating these problems? It basically destroys my backup plan! Surely others will be doing the same things (backing up to a dedicated media with limited space ?)
Regards, Martin
