“There is not enough disk space to create the volume shadow copy on the storage location. Make sure that, for all volumes to be backed up, the minimum required disk space for shadow copy creation is available. This applies to both the backup storage destination and the volumes included in the backup.

Minimum Requirement: For volumes less than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 50 megabytes of free space. For volumes more than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 320 megabytes of free space.

Recommended: At least 1 gigabyte of free disk space on each volume if volume size is more than 1 gigabyte.

Detailed error: Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data.”

This doesn’t really explain the issue, as setting up a schedule with Windows Server Backup in 2012 involves the utility checking available storage before creating the backup task, and a manual check showed there was ample storage on the destination volume, with the source volume having 86% free space.

Delving into the Event Viewer for more detailed error message, I get this:

“The backup operation that started at ‘‎2016‎-‎12‎-‎09T06:00:14.502000000Z’ has failed because the Volume Shadow Copy Service operation to create a shadow copy of the volumes being backed up failed with following error code ‘0x80780119’. Please review the event details for a solution, and then rerun the backup operation once the issue is resolved.”

The internet has a lot of theories and solutions, with the most common workaround being disabling security to perform a backup. This can be incorporated into a batch file and triggered by task scheduler, but its fiddly and leaves the system open while backups take place, lucky I discovered a simpler and more secure solution.

It seems the error is being generated due to Volume Shadow Copy service (VSS) being assigned a drive volume that does not have enough free space, on a default install of Server 2012, that volume is the System Reserved partition.

To complicate matters, the Disk Management utility does not report the amount of free space.

To find out, open a PowerShell window and enter Get-Volumes to see the below:

Here the Recovery partition only has 30MB of free space, below the required amount specified in the original error message.

To fix, go to the drive properties in My PC, and choose the Shadow Copy tab, then in the Select Volume box, choose a volume that has enough free space, in this example the C drive.

Once applied, the backup will complete:

But doing the same with Windows Server 2012 is much more difficult, since Microsoft decided to remove the ability to run a program on a low battery event from its power management settings. To make things worse I discovered that a bug in Server 2008 and later meant that issuing a Shutdown command from the native power settings would not perform a clean shut down, instead killing the power in a few seconds. This is not good news for RAID arrays and data integrity.

Time for a new solution, and since Microsoft are of no use, help would need to come from a 3^rd party. After research and testing answer came from Shutter, a small program that runs as a trigger and event type program for a variety of different scenarios, with battery discharging status being one. Luckily two instances of the program could be run, one to shut down the remote servers and another for the host machine. Importantly the program can also be run as a Windows service, but more on this in the walk through.  here is how it is done:

Download the portable version of Shutter from den4b.com.

In the Windows directory, create a new folder, here it will be named ups.

In that folder create another 2 folders, one will handle the local server shutdown and the other for remote servers.

Copy the contents of the downloaded Shutter zip to both of the folders.

Before opening the program for the first time, create a .bat that will issue commands to shut down servers. Open Notepad and enter the following text:

shutdown /s /f /t 10 /c “Battery Backup Low”

This is for shutting down the host server. To save, select the folder to be used for host shutdown, in the file type menu select All files, and create a file name with it ending in .bat

Do the same for remote server shutdown using this script, and save to the remote folder:

shutdown /s /f /m \\SERVER /t 10 /c “Battery Backup Low”

Replace SERVER with the name or IP address of the other server running on the UPS.

Now go to the local shutdown folder and open Shutter.

In the events box, add battery and choose a trigger percentage and add. In the action box, choose run a program, and locate the .bat file you created for shutting down the host server.

Important: Go to the settings window and copy the following options:

Save settings and the program can now be closed. Repeat these steps to shut down the remote server, it’s essential to set the battery percentage trigger higher for remote server as they will not get the signal if the host server has already shut down, I recommend at least 5% higher as a safety net especially if the UPS battery drains quickly.

As a power outage is an unpredictable event, Shutter needs to be running at all times on the host server, therefore it needs to be ran as a system service. Microsoft did release a tool that could allow any program to run as a service, however it is very basic and will not restart a program if it happened to crash. Lucky a superior utility by the name of NSSM is available that takes this into account, it also has a more user friendly interface to set up services.

Download the latest release of NSSM and place in the main folder created previously, as it needs to be run alongside the Shutter instances.

From a Command Prompt, navigate to the folder holding the program, by using cd, then a space and the full path to the folder, e.g: cd C:\Windows\ups

Type nssm install and enter, and the new service setup screen will appear.

Choose the Shutter program to run, and create a name to the process, additional details can be made in the Description tab.

Move to the login tab and select Log on as, then use an account capable of administrator access and password details.

Click create service and its installed, repeat the process for the other shutter program, giving it a different service name.

By default, these newly created services will start when Windows starts, but need to be started manually when first installed. To start them, the simple option is to restart the machine, but much better would be to press the Windows key & R, then type services.msc and click Run. Scroll down the list to the created services, right click on each and choose start.

Testing

It’s worth testing to see if it works rather than just hoping it does. And to save the wait for the batteries to discharge its worth raising the trigger values on Shutter to shut down the machines earlier, this also gives the benefit more charge left if the shutdown does not work.

Before opening Shutter to change values, the services need to be stopped. Open services.msc like before and chose stop against the service.

Make the changes in the action box, its recommended to choose somewhere between 70 and 90 percent. Close the programs and start the services back up. Then testing is as simple as unplugging the UPS from the wall, for security the host machine can be left logged on to monitor the remaining battery percentage so you know when the trigger points are happening.

The post before that however had more gravitas, with my server being offline for close to a month all due to a one second power cut made me feel vulnerable to another downtime incident over something I couldn’t control. It was time to look into a Uninterruptable Power Supply to protect my server from power cuts that could knock my RAID out of sync.

My purchasing requirements were as cheap as possible,  but had to be an online system, meaning that the UPS would notify the server when it was running on batteries and shut down the system down before the juice ran out. An offline system would be less inexpensive, but a long term power outage would just postpone the problem, plus since I don’t intend to supply backup to the network hub, I would be powerless (on both levels) to do anything about it.

I settled on the APC CS350, a lead-acid unit with serial and USB connectivity. Making thing simple I connected the UPS to the server via USB and Windows 2003 found it without extra drivers, making it as familiar to use as a laptop with its battery management.

After allowing the battery to charge, testing is easy, switch off the mains and see how it does. Even from this modest unit my HP Microserver in idle gets 50 minutes of extra life before the battery runs out. I set Windows to shut down at 25% charge, more than enough to shutdown, given that during a power outage the router would be down so the server would be unable to communicate with anything, data preservation is the main game.

The UPS cost £46, my preferred WD Caviar Green 1TB drive costs £48, if another power cut occurs then my it would of paid for itself, another cut and its paid for itself. Yes?