Known issues

This section details the known issues in IBM Spectrum Accelerate Family Provider for Microsoft Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service 2.10.0, along with possible workarounds (if workarounds are available).

Ticket ID Description
VSSP-6698 Warning message about storage identifiers that are not supported on Windows Server 2008.

The following warning message is displayed for storage systems that support TPGS: The provider has reported a storage identifier that is not supported by VSS.

This warning message does not affect the normal operation of VSS and you can ignore it. For more information, refer to the relevant Microsoft Support website
VSSP-8889 Shadow set creation may fail on Windows Server 2008 R2 after LUN resynchronization.

Shadow sets creation may fail after performing LUN resynchronization on Windows Server 2008 R2. This is a known Microsoft VSS issue.

Until Microsoft releases a KB hotfix, you must restart the VSS service after each LUN resynchronization.
VSSP-17662 The VSS operation may fail during import on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

A timeout may occur in the VSS process during an import of a shadow set. As a result, one or more snapshots may be missing from the system after a rescan, even if they are mapped to the host by the XIV® system. The Microsoft hotfix 977096 resolves this issue:

This issue was fixed in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1.
VSSP-64302 An exception occurs when trying to repair a working VSS Provider installation via the Repair option of the installation wizard.
To resolve this issue:
  1. Go to Control Panel > Programs and Features > Add or Remove Programs.
  2. Select the IBM Spectrum Accelerate Family Provider entry and then click Uninstall or Remove. The uninstallation begins.
    Note: During the uninstallation, ignore any exception error message.
  3. After the uninstallation is complete, the IBM Spectrum Accelerate Family Provider entry continues to appear in the list of installed programs.
  4. Select the IBM Spectrum Accelerate Family Provider entry and then click Repair or Change > Repair
  5. Follow the Repair wizard until the repair is complete.
VSSP-84189 On VMware ESX servers, the VSS Provider does not rescan for Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) after unmapping Raw Device Mappings (RDMs).

Because the unmapping of RDMs is performed in single mode, manually re-scanning for the HBAs of every single unmapped RDM is a time consuming procedure during which the VSS service may be timed out.

To save time, wait for the VMware ESX server to automatically rescan for the HBAs instead of re-scanning manually.
VSSP-147364 The VSS Provider DLL is left registered after an installation failure.

When performing a rollback to an older version after an installation failure, the VSS Provider DLL may still be registered in DCOM.

To remove the DLL from DCOM:
  1. Click Start > Run and type dcomcnfg.exe in the command box.
  2. Go to Component Services > Computers > My Computer > DCOM Config
  3. On the right pane, click the Provider component, and then press Delete on the keyboard. A message box is displayed to confirm the deletion of the component.
  4. Click Yes.
VSSP-164293 On some occasions, when running Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 as a guest operating system on a VMware platform connected to XIV 11.0.0, importing a VSS hardware snapshot created on a RDM device results in a VSS enumeration issue.
To avoid this issue or to resolve it upon occurrence, perform the following procedure before importing VSS hardware snapshots:
  1. Open the command prompt window.
  2. Enter: net stop xProv
  3. Enter: net stop vss
  4. Retry the import operation.
VSSP-243718 The VSS Provider cannot be installed in a directory that is named with anything other than English characters.

Currently there is no workaround for this limitation.
VSSP-258222 The VSS Provider snapshot map parameter (MapSnapShot) in the Windows registry might get a wrong host name.

This occurs due to low-case characters that Windows Server might record in the DeviceIdentifierPage registry parameter, located at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\Scsi\Scsi Port 3\Scsi Bus 0\Target Id 0\Logical Unit Id 0\DeviceIdentifierPage

To resolve this issue, restart Windows.
VSSP-259229 The VSS Provider service (named "xProv") and the Microsoft VSS service must be restarted on the Windows Server host after the status of mirrored snapshots is changed from Disabled to Enabled.

In such a case, without a service restart, snapshots are not created on mirrored volumes.

Currently there is no workaround for this limitation.
VSSP-261047 The VSS provider cannot unmap a volume when the unmap_vol_set_default_idle_time setting on XIV 11.4.0 is not zero.
Workaround: Set unmap_vol_set_default_idle_time to zero (0) before deleting or masking a snapshot.
VSSP-261185

XIVVSS does not function well and cannot be uninstalled completely if installed in the same environment as SVCVSS. There is, however, a workaround to uninstall XIVVSS completely.

Workaround: To uninstall XIVVSS completely if it has been installed in the same environment as SVCVSS, complete the following steps:
  1. Uninstall SVCVSS.
  2. Reinstall XIVVSS.
  3. Under the install root path (the default root path is C:\Program Files\IBM\IBM XIV Provider for Microsoft Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service), change directories by entering the command cd Native.
  4. Run regsvr32 /u xProv.dll.
  5. Uninstall XIVVSS in the control panel.
  6. If the above steps do not work the first time, try them again.
VSSP-261200 SnapshotOfSnapshot function does not work with IBM FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R systems.