Symptoms

1. You do a backup of a Windows Server system;
2. The backup operation log displays the following warning:

   Failed to get VSS metadata for backup

Cause

Acronis VSS provider Service is disabled.

Solution

Please set the Start Option of the Service Acronis VSS Provider to manual.

1. Go to Start-Run -> services.msc -> click right on the Service Acronis VSS Provider -> Properties and change the Start Option to manual.

(!) Once you set the Acronis VSS provider to manual start, redo the full backup to make it consistent.

Symptoms

1. You do a backup of a Windows Server 2008 R2 system;
2. The backup operation log displays the following warning:

   Failed to get VSS metadata for backup

Cause

Installation of Acronis VSS provider fails on Windows Server 2008 R2.

Solution

Please use the native Microsoft VSS provider instead of the Acronis one. Please see Acronis Backup & Recovery 11: Using Microsoft VSS instead of Acronis VSS.

(!) Once you enable the native Microsoft VSS provider, redo the full backup to make it consistent.

Symptoms

1. You do a backup of a Windows Small Business Server 2011 system;
2. The backup operation log displays the following warning:

   Failed to get VSS metadata for backup

Cause

This is a VSS provider issue introduced in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 SP1.

Solution

To fix the the issue please install a patch as described in Microsoft TechNet Blog: Potential issues after installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 SP1.

Symptoms

1. You do a backup of an EFI system partition with default backup options;
2. The backup operation log displays the following warning:

   Failed to get VSS metadata for backup

Cause

The default backup options have the option Use Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) enabled:

This is a known Microsoft limitation with EFI. See MSDN Article: Using VSS Automated System Recovery for Disaster Recovery:

"On computers that use the Extended Firmware Interface (EFI), the EFI System Partition (ESP) is always hidden and cannot be included in a volume shadow copy."

Solution

You can safely ignore this warning on an EFI system. This warning will be removed in the next officially released build of the product.

Symptoms

1. You do a backup with default options of a system that has EISA service partition;
2. The backup operation log displays the following warning:

   Failed to get VSS metadata for backup

Cause

The default backup options have the option Use Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) enabled:

This is a known Microsoft limitation with the hidden EISA service partition. See MSDN Article: Using VSS Automated System Recovery for Disaster Recovery:

Solution

You can safely ignore this warning on a system with EISA service partition. This warning will be removed in the next officially released build of the product.