Deleting the VSS snapshot partition cause system boot failure or snapshot creation failure.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

1. Prevent system boot failure from backup image
2. Prevent snapshot creation failure.

Symptoms:
Taking Virtual Machine Snapshot with “Quiesce guest file system” creates an unwanted partition (VSS snapshot partition, type: PARTITION_MSFT_SNAPSHOT_GUID) on each GPT disk inside the guest OS.

The snapshot partition creation takes a chunk (256KB) from the MSR. Deleting the snapshot partition will cause the snapshot partition to be created again and cause the MSR partition shrink again.

Environment

VMware vSphere 6.7.x

Cause

1. Windows can't reboot successfully after MSR partition shrinks to small size.
2. During snapshot creation, VDS error 0x800706be is reported.

2020-09-01T15:02:21.508Z| vcpu-1| I125: Guest: [ debug] [vmvss:vmvss] `anonymous-namespace'::VDSVolumeProcessor::process():98: failed call: ret = _cb(vol), result = 0x800706be
2020-09-01T15:02:21.508Z| vcpu-1| I125: Guest: [ debug] [vmvss:vmvss] VDSHelper::ForEachVDSPack():350: failed call: ret = packProcessor.process(pack), result = 0x800706be
2020-09-01T15:02:21.509Z| vcpu-1| I125: Guest: [ debug] [vmvss:vmvss] VDSHelper::ForEachVDSPack():364: return (0x800706be)
2020-09-01T15:02:21.509Z| vcpu-1| I125: Guest: [ debug] [vmvss:vmvss] VDSHelper::ForEachVolume():398: return (0x800706be)
 

3. There is error event log in Window "Application" Events.

Faulting application name: vds.exe, version: 10.0.14393.0, time stamp: 0x57899a04
Faulting module name: vdsbas.dll, version: 10.0.14393.0, time stamp: 0x57899a42
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000015e7d
Faulting process id: 0x44
Faulting application start time: 0x01d68acc22bc3971
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\System32\vds.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\vdsbas.dll
Report Id: 0923a049-c6f2-4dcf-aa14-012f6936d72c
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Resolution

1. Disable (remove) deleteShadowCopyPartition=true setting and ignore the VSS snapshot partition.
2. Do not use GPT disk(s)

This is a known issue, Microsoft confirms there is no workaround. If you do not like this extra 0 MB partition, please check with Microsoft.

Workaround:
No Workaround