Windows operating systems

Determining whether a virtual machine backup might fail

Check the status of the VSS writers in a guest virtual machine to determine whether a virtual machine backup with application protection might fail.

About this task

Use the vssadmin list writers command to display the status of the VSS writers. This command lists all the writers that are available on the guest virtual machine, including the status of the writers. If one or more of the VSS writers are not in a stable state, then the virtual machine backup with application protection will fail.

Procedure

From the Command Prompt window, issue the following command: 
vssadmin list writers
The following sample shows the command output:
Writer name: 'SqlServerWriter'
   Writer Id: {a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a}
   Writer Instance Id: {debc861a-7709-48b4-86a5-0a62457dc4a0}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error
The State field indicates the status of the VSS writer.