After changing to TSM for the VMWare backups, we've started experiencing an odd issue with our Snapshot backups.
We take system drive snapshots as a backup solution for the machine states.
All the other drives are independent drives, with their data backed up through other means.
Our problem is isolated to SQL Servers.
For these servers, we use TSM For SQL as a backup solution.
So the drives that contain the databases don't need to be backed up on a VM level.
Since our change from HP DP to TSM for VE the snapshots have started failing on SQL Servers.
The SQLServer VSS Writer is throwing an inconsistent state error.
However, neither the SQL binaries, nor the SQL Server data or log files are included in the backup.
The only things that are included in this snapshot that relate to SQL Server are the few dll's that have to remain on the C: drive.
Probably related is the fact that the dll for the SQLServer VSS Writer is one of those dll's, located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\80\COM.
We're working around the problem by adding a config file as documented here.
But as the problem does not span all SQL Servers, and we don't know the cause for the problem yet, we're still looking for a better solution.
How can we find out what the VSS writer is failing on?
