VSS snapshots on SMB3 share are "orphaned" and cannot be deleted

Question

Server 2012 R2 cluster. Storage for cluster is EMC VNXe 3200 (SMB3 shares, not ISCSI). Veeam used for backups.

There are VSS snapshots on the EMC that were created by Veeam, using the 'VNX2e VSS Provider'.

There are five of these snapshots, going back several months.

I've opened a case with Veeam and EMC. Neither have come up with an answer.

Daily backups continue to work, creating snapshots, using them, then destroying them as expected. When the backups run, the snapshots are exposed to "vssadmin" or "diskshadow" commands on the Hyper-V hosts.

These orphaned snapshots do not show in "vssadmin" or "diskshadow".

I'm hoping there is a command that can be run from the HyperV host that can access and delete the orphaned snaphots (shadows).

Here are commands run on one of the HyperV hosts. Results are similar on the other host.

C:\vssadmin list shadows
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool

No items found that satisfy the query.

=================================================================
C:>vssadmin list providers

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool

Provider name: 'Microsoft CSV Shadow Copy Helper Provider'
   Provider type: Software
   Provider Id: {26d02d81-6aac-4275-8504-b9c6edc5261d}
   Version: 1.0.0.1

Provider name: 'Microsoft CSV Shadow Copy Provider'
   Provider type: Software
   Provider Id: {400a2ff4-5eb1-44b0-8a05-1fcac0bcf9ff}
   Version: 1.0.0.1

Provider name: 'VNX2e VSS Provider'
   Provider type: Hardware
   Provider Id: {58c4151c-7bfa-4fb9-aca3-e8afcde763a9}
   Version: 6.2.9200.20557

Provider name: 'Microsoft File Share Shadow Copy provider'
   Provider type: Fileshare
   Provider Id: {89300202-3cec-4981-9171-19f59559e0f2}
   Version: 1.0.0.1

Provider name: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'
   Provider type: System
   Provider Id: {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}       Version: 1.0.0.7
   Version: 1.0.0.7

=================================================================
C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin delete shadows /all

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
No items found that satisfy the query.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 05 '17 at 14:25

This is resolved. See my comments above for the answer.

It did require an EMC support call, and even then took many sessions with the tech. Once he had the correct direction/commands, the problem was resolved using the commands below (with a different "oid" for each snapshot that needed to be manually deleted).

MluCli.exe destroysnap -srvc_cmd -oid 0x9000007e7 -system -fast

VSS snapshots on SMB3 share are "orphaned" and cannot be deleted

1 Answers1