Tag Archives: VDI

SQL Server Backup Simulator v2 available now

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SQL Server Backup Simulator is used by CSS to troubleshoot SQLVDI related issues and to identify if the SQLVDI DLL is functioning correctly. Based on the feedback received from the use of the tool and the current troubleshooting needs, we decided to do v2 release for SQL Server Backup Simulator.

The new features for the v2 release are:

  1. Log backup – Now the tool can perform log backups. The tool performs COPY_ONLY backups so that your LSN chain is not broken.
  2. Compression support – Starting from v2, the tool will allow you to take backups with compression enabled for SQL Server 2008 and higher.

The compression option drop-down list has three-options:
a. With Compression: This option will allow you to perform a backup with compression enabled even if the server default is not to use compression for backups.
b. No Compression: This option will allow you to perform a backup with compression disabled even if the server default is to use compression for backups.
c. Server Default: This option uses the server default setting (configuration setting: backup compression default) to perform the backup.

image

Screenshot of the v2 UI

Log Restore option is not currently available in this release. The incorporation of this feature will be evaluated while planning for the next release.

A big thank you to Sakthi [Blog | Twitter] for his assistance on the v2 release.

The latest release can be downloaded here.

Previous posts for Backup Simulator:
SQL Server Backup Simulator v1.0
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverfaq/archive/2010/10/27/sql-server-backup-simulator.aspx
SQL Server Backup Simulator v1.2
https://troubleshootingsql.com/2011/01/17/sql-server-backup-simulator-cumulative-update/

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Troubleshooting that darn backup error

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Backup and restore operations even though they are supposed to be a no-brainer, it can leave you wanting to tear your hair out. Considering the different elements that influence the outcome of a successful backup operation like backup media, consistency of the backup, network issues (if backing up to a UNC path), consistency of the database being backed up etc.

I shall attempt to outline a set of troubleshooting steps specifically for non-native backup/restore related errors for SQL Server databases.

Any BACKUP command that completes successfully or with errors has associated messages logged in the SQL Server Errorlog.

A successful backup from the SQL Server Errorlog:

Database backed up. Database: adventureworks, creation date(time): 2010/05/28(03:00:18), pages dumped: 17291, first LSN: 67:7733:56, last LSN: 67:7761:1, number of dump devices: 1, device information: (FILE=1, TYPE=DISK: {‘F:\adventureworks.bak’}).

You will see that the backup completion message has the database name, the number of pages that were contained in the backup, the date the backup was created and the number of devices and their type (in this case files). So you can reconstruct the sequence of backups even if your backup information history is missing from the MSDB system tables and you just have your SQL Server Errorlogs to play with. If you want to get real fancy about this, then you could spin up a nifty little Powershell or VBScript to parse through the SQL Errorlogs and provide the backup sequence to you as well.

Now, let’s look at a failed backup message from the SQL Errorlog.

Error: 18204, Severity: 16, State: 1.
BackupDiskFile::CreateMedia: Backup device ‘R:\adventureworks.bak’ failed to create. Operating system error 3(The system cannot find the path specified.).
Error: 3041, Severity: 16, State: 1.
BACKUP failed to complete the command BACKUP DATABASE adventureworks.

You will notice above that the Operating System error code associated with the backup failure is reported in the error message. More often than not, the error message is self explanatory. If the error code doesn’t throw back an error text along with it, you can get the windows error code associated with the error code using net helpmsg <error number> from a command prompt window.

In the above case, there wasn’t any R: drive on my server. Now that I have finished stating the most obvious of troubleshooting methodologies for SQL native backups which was done to set the context for the next part of this post. The troubleshooting methodology for non-native backups.

Non-native SQL backups of databases use one of the following methods:

1. Use of APIs exposed through SQLVDI.dll to perform a VDI based backup
2. Use of VSS framework to perform a snapshot backup of the SQL Server database

Note: In this post, I shall not be addressing any storage level backup solutions that have options or features to handles SQL database backups.

This post is aimed at discussing the tackling of VSS/VDI related errors that you face while performing a database backup.

If a VDI backup fails, then you can try the following sequence of troubleshooting steps:

1. Attempt a backup to the same location using native SQL backup from a query window or SQLCMD. This might not always be possible as some of the backup tools do not allow any other backup application to connect to the backup share apart from the backup tool’s agents.
2. The next thing that you can do is to ensure that your SQLVDI.DLL is updated to the latest build. For this you can use the SQL Server Backup Simulator available on Code Gallery using the “Validate VDI Installation” option in the tool. This check in the tool will perform basic checks like current DLL version and additional checks based on root causes of common scenarios that CSS has seen in the past for VDI backup failures. Additional information on the usage of the tool is available here.
3. Perform a backup of the database using the tool for which the backup is failing (to the same destination if possible). The parameter tweaks at this point are not available in the current version like striped backups, changes to MAXTRANSFERSIZE/BUFFER COUNT etc. but if the backup from this tool is successful, then you know for a fact that the SQLVDI APIs are working as expected. Then it is either an additional piece of logic in the backup software that is failing or there is an external factors like network/backup media or there is a resource crunch on the SQL instance on which the database resides.

Common errors that you might see during a VDI backup operation failure:

Error message 1
BackupVirtualDeviceFile::ClearError: failure on backup device ‘VDI_ DeviceID ‘. Operating system error 995(The I/O operation has
been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request.).

Error message 2
Error: 18210, Severity: 16, State: 1.
BackupMedium::ReportIoError: write failure on backup device ‘VDI_ DeviceID ‘. Operating system error 995(The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request.)

Error message 3
Error: 18210, Severity: 16, State: 1. 
BackupVirtualDeviceFile::RequestDurableMedia: Flush failure on backup device ‘VDI_ DeviceID. Operating system error 995(The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request.)

The above errors are mostly due to outdated versions of SQLVDI.DLL on SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005 instances. The “Validate VDI Installation” option in the Backup Simulator should be able to identify any known issues with DLL version mismatch for you.

If you have an application that uses Volume Shadow Service to backup your SQL database and that backup fails, then you your troubleshooting steps would be a bit different. The tell-tale sign of a VSS Snapshot backup is in the I/O Frozen message being written into the SQL Errorlogs for the databases being backed up. In such a failure scenario, take a backup of the database using Windows Server Backup Admin (Windows Server 2008 and above) or NTBackup utility to perform a backup of the database files involved. If this backup is successful, it means that a snapshot backup is successfully completing for the database. Now depending on your backup application’s implementation logic, this might be a resource crunch or a backup storage media incompatibility or even a resource crunch.

Common errors associated with VSS backups:

Issue# 1
Error: 3041, Severity: 16, State: 1.
Backup      BACKUP failed to complete the command BACKUP DATABASE <database name>. Check the backup application log for detailed messages.
SubprocessMgr::EnqueueSubprocess: Limit on ‘Max worker threads’ reached.
This error message is raised when your backup application uses VSS to backup a large number of databases simultaneously. More information around this can be found in this post Volume Shadow barfs with 0x80040e14 code

Issue #2
While performing a Bare Metal backup you might run into issues if your SQL Server binaries are located on a different drive other than the C: drive. More information on the same is mentioned here: Location of SQL Binaries can flip out Bare Metal backups

Issue #3

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    VSS
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    6005
Description:
Sqllib error: Database %1 is stored on multiple volumes, only some of which are being shadowed.

The above error occurs when you backup only one of the volumes that contains SQL database data/log files which are spread over multiple volumes. This is explained in detailed in this post: Why is VSS complaining about SQL Data files

More information on how VSS/VDI work is present in the blog post by Sudarshan: INFORMATIONAL- SHEDDING LIGHT on VSS & VDI Backups in SQL Server

Previous posts related to Volume Shadow Backups
IO Frozen messages while taking NT Backup for SQL databases

Previous posts related to VDI backups
SQL VDI backup fails with 0×80770007

SQL Server Backup Simulator: Cumulative update

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The SQL Server Backup Simulator was launched on Microsoft Code Gallery to aid and assist in troubleshooting backup issues related to SQLVDI. Thank you to everyone who has evangelized the tool and provided feedback on the same.

The current release is marked as v1.2.

We released two minor updates for the tool to incorporate the following changes:

  1. SQL Backup Simulator does not report FileVersion instead it reports ProductVersion while reading the sqlvdi.dll information – There was an issue that we uncovered while validating the sqlvdi DLL version which was corrected in v1.1 and is now part of the v1.2 release.

  2. COPY_ONLY feature while simulating backup – The COPY_ONLY feature was added to ensure that the any full backups done for a database by the tool doesn’t break an existing backup chain for a database.

The latest executable can be downloaded from: https://github.com/Microsoft/tigertoolbox/releases/latest

Volume Shadow barfs with 0x80040e14 code

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I was replying on a MSDN forum thread recently and found that the a VSS backup was failing due to large number of database volumes residing on a particular volume.

I re-created the issue on my box by limiting the number of Max Worker Threads to 128 on my SQL Server 2008 instance. After making the change to the number of worker threads, I created 99 databases on the D: drive of my server using the following script:

set nocount on
declare @cntr int = 1,@sql varchar(8000)
while @cntr &amp;lt; 100
begin
set @sql = 'CREATE DATABASE [db'+cast(@cntr as varchar(5))+'] ON&amp;nbsp; PRIMARY

( NAME = N' 'db'+cast(@cntr as varchar(5))+''', FILENAME = N' 'D:\DBFiles\db'+cast(@cntr as varchar(5))+'.mdf' ')
LOG ON
( NAME = N' 'db'+cast(@cntr as varchar(5))+'_log' ', FILENAME = N' 'D:\DBFiles\db'+cast(@cntr as varchar(5))+'.ldf'')'

set @cntr = @cntr + 1
exec(@sql)
end

I then attempted to backup the DBFiles folder on the D: drive using Windows Server Backup and it failed.

image

After that I looked into the SQL Server Errorlog and found the following errors:

2010-12-06 03:39:15.280 Backup       Error: 3041, Severity: 16, State: 1.2010-12-06 03:39:15.280 Backup       BACKUP failed to complete the command BACKUP DATABASE db68. Check the backup application log for detailed messages.

2010-12-06 03:39:15.370 spid53       Error: 18210, Severity: 16, State: 1.2010-12-06 03:39:15.370 spid53       BackupVirtualDeviceFile::PrepareToFreeze:  failure on backup device ‘{DB840D1B-DD17-4D73-83F1-7390F676DEE4}1’. Operating system error 995(The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request.).

 

I had already documented earlier that the infamous 995 error message could be a problem with the sqlvdi.dll but in this case, it is not!

The next thing I did was to pick the errors from the Application Event logs and I found the following errors repeated multiple times:

Error    12/6/2010 3:39:15 AM    SQLVDI    1    None    SQLVDI: Loc=SignalAbort. Desc=Client initiates abort. ErrorCode=(0). Process=3920. Thread=11604. Client. Instance=SQL2008. VD=Global\{DB840D1B-DD17-4D73-83F1-7390F676DEE4}1_SQLVDIMemoryName_0.Error    12/6/2010 3:39:15 AM    SQLWRITER    24583    None    Sqllib error: OLEDB Error encountered calling ICommandText::Execute. hr = 0x80040e14. SQLSTATE: 42000, Native Error: 3013

Error state: 1, Severity: 16

Source: Microsoft SQL Server Native Client 10.0

Error message: BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.

SQLSTATE: 42000, Native Error: 3224

Error state: 1, Severity: 16

Source: Microsoft SQL Server Native Client 10.0

Error message: Cannot create worker thread.

If you look closely at the above error, then you will find that the following error message stands out like a sore thumb: “Cannot create worker thread”. After this issue occurs, you will find that the SQLWriter shows the following when you execute the command: “vssadmin list writers” from a command prompt window:

Writer name: ‘SqlServerWriter’   Writer Id: {a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a}

   Writer Instance Id: {9075f235-fdee-4445-851b-a69c54bd8b33}

State: [8] Failed

Last error: Non-retryable error

Ensure that you do not have any memory related errors in the SQL Server Errorlogs or any DBCC MEMORYSTATUS outputs printed in the Errorlog during the time of the backup failure. If there aren’t, then the above issue occurs due to the SQL instance hitting a worker thread limit.

The reason for this is explained by Rob Dorr (Principal SQL Server Escalation Engineer at Microsoft) in his blog post:

The controller and database worker come from the worker pool.  So if your max worker thread is configured for 255 the answer would be a max of 255 / 2 = 127 databases.    You probably won’t get to 127 with this configuration as you have system workers (lazy writer, checkpoint, log writer, and others) that already are using workers.

On my SQL instance, I have 120 database and I need about 240 worker threads to complete this operation. However, I have only 128 worker threads configured for my SQL instance. If you have Dedicated Administrator Connection enabled for the SQL instance, then you can this troubleshooting further and execute a select against the DMV sys.dm_os_schedulers (for SQL Server 2005 or above) and get an output of the following type:

status                 counts
———————- ——–

HIDDEN ONLINE          168

VISIBLE ONLINE         8

VISIBLE ONLINE (DAC)   1

Query used:

select status, count(*) as counts
from sys.dm_os_schedulers
group by status

As you will see that there are about 168 hidden online schedulers created for performing the Snapshot backups. But SQL instance in question doesn’t have sufficient work threads to facilitate this operation.

What can you do in such situations:

1. Increase the number of worker threads to account for the additional worker threads required for completing the VSS backups. This can be counter-productive as it can lead to non-Buffer Pool memory contention on 32-bit instances of SQL Server. The higher the number of max worker threads on your SQL Server instance, more the amount of non-BPool memory is consumed for the thread stack. This results in depletion of the available Buffer Pool memory.

2. Change the physical location of the SQL Server database files so that all the database files do not reside on the same volume.

3. Perform a VSS Backup with SQL Server VSS Writer service turned OFF. However, you cannot recover any SQL Server database files from such a Volume Shadow Backup.

4. Use SQL Native backups or other VDI backup tools (non-Snapshot) to perform SQL Server database backups.

Note: This also happens when you select any file on a drive which has a high number of SQL Server database files. This is because the SQL Server VSS Writer tries to enumerate the database files for the SQL Server instance that reside on the volume that has been selected for the Snapshot backup.

VDI application throwing back HEX – 0x080770007

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While taking a VDI backup of a SQL Server database, you get a VDI error with the following HEX code 0x080770007.

If you used simple.exe to perform the backup, then you would get the following error:

C:\TEMP>simple.exe B <SERVERNAME>\<INSTANCENAME> testdb
Connected to Server: <SERVERNAME>\<INSTANCENAME>
Backing up database: testdb
Performing a BACKUP using a virtual device.
VDS::Create fails: x80770007

If you lookup the 0x080770007 (VD_E_INSTANCE_NAME VD_ERROR) translates to failed to recognize the SQL Server instance name.

Then check if the following condition holds true:
There is no DEFAULT instance of SQL Server on the machine where you are trying to take a VDI backup and the SQL instance that you are connecting to perform a backup is a named instance. If above condition is true, then the issue is with CreateEx function of the interface IClientVirtualDeviceSet2. The CreateEx function is used to create the virtual device set and has the following syntax:

HRESULT IClientVirtualDeviceSet2::CreateEx (
LPCWSTR lpInstanceName,
LPCWSTR lpName,
VDConfig* pCfg);

The "lpInstanceName" parameter identifies the SQL Server instance to which the SQL command needs to be sent to. If the CreateEx method has NULL as the first parameter, then it would always connect to the Default instance. If the server doesn’t have a default SQL instance, then the first parameter needs to be provided with the instance name.
Eg. If you have a named instance on the server as "SERVER1\SQLINST1, then the first parameter for CreateEx should be "SQLINST1".

Another issue that can cause this error is when you use simple.exe to take a backup from an instance that is not installed on the box from which you are running simple.exe from. This can be true for other backup applications as well.

The reason for this is that simple.exe or any backup application using SQLVDI.DLL calls, you get the interface to the device set using the following piece of code. Eg: For simple.exe:

hr = CoCreateInstance (
        CLSID_MSSQL_ClientVirtualDeviceSet, 
        NULL,
        CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER,
        IID_IClientVirtualDeviceSet2,
        (void**)&vds);

CoCreateInstance is used when you want to create only one object on the local system. If you planning to take a backup from a remote instance and using code similar to the one used in simple.exe, then you need to use CoCreateInstanceEx since the interface set would reside on the remote computer.

Another issue is that when we call CreateEx to create the virtual device set, we can only pass in the instance name and not the computer name. So, the backup application’s code should be designed in a correct manner for this to work which means .

Most known vendor applications Legato, NetBackup, Tivoli, LiteSpeed, SQLSafe etc. take care of these considerations!

Links: Modified simple.exe application code