This article applies to:
Product edition: Phoenix
Problem description
App aware backup completes successfully with “Failed to check writer services” error.
Cause
This error occurs if we are not able to list the writers from the credentials that are assigned to this virtual machine from the credential store.
Traceback
Please download the Job Logs.
Extract the logs and go to Phoenix<YYYYMMDD>_<timestamp>.log file to see the below traceback in the logs.
[2019-10-31 15:48:09,879] [ERROR] Error while checking writer services, err_code : 40001 err_msg : sql_sriter_status True and vss_writer_status False [2019-10-31 15:48:09,889] [WARNING] Error occurred while taking SQL snapshot 4295032853 Got error while taking SQL snapshot. Failed to check writer services. error code : 4001 error msg : sql_writer_status True and vss_writer_status False: Application aware backup would have just VM backup and would complete with Successful with error
Resolution
Propagate the necessary administrative privileges required to run command to list VSS writers. The command is
vssadmin list writers.
Verification
Once the changes are done, login to the virtual machine with the same set of credential which is assigned to this virtual machine from the credential store.
Open the command prompt and run the command
vssadmin list writers.
You should be able to see a list of VSS writers on the virtual machine and should not receive an error stating: You do not have the necessary permissions to run this command. Run this utility from a command window with administrative privileges.
Once step 3 is verified please trigger a backup job for this VM and it should be completed successfully.