Issue with Veeam? Back up is on its way

09.07.2014

lewis

In Tips & Advice

On some occasions when you need to forcibly stop a Veeam backup from running, clicking stop just isn't enough. You might find that the status of the job remains as "stopping".

If this happens and you need to forcibly cancel the job, the steps outlined below should get the job done. Before you do this please make sure no other important jobs are running, as this process will end them as well.

Once you have done that, you can try the following steps, which are simple to carry out:

1. Close the Veeam console
2. Open the Task Manager and locate the Veeam.backup.manager process
3. Remove snapshots from the Hypervisor and/or VMS.

Veeam, like most backup systems, uses VSS or snapshots to take a backup of a virtual server. It's a good idea to keep a close eye on snapshots so that they don't get out of hand and fill your hard disk. I have put together a list of useful commands for managing VSS snapshots below.

To generate a list of the available snapshots use one of the following commands:

Pre Windows Server 2008

Vssadmin list shadows

Windows Server 2008 onwards

Diskshadow 
List shadows all

To delete specific snapshots use the specific ID returned by the list shadows all command and use one of the following commands:

Pre Windows Server 2008

Vssadmin delete id [insert ID]

Windows Server 2008 onwards

Diskshadow
Delete shadows id [insert ID]

To delete all snapshots

Pre Windows Server 2008

Vssadmin delete shadows all

Windows Server 2008 onwards

Diskshadow
Delete shadows all