How to locate and collect VSS/VIX log files from Guest OS

Challenge

Need to locate VSS and VIX log files for troubleshooting purposes.

Cause

While investigating an issue related to Application Aware Processing or Indexing additional logs must be gathered manually from the Guest OS for the VM that is failing to backup.

These logs are NOT automatically captured by the Support Wizard, they must be manually collected.

Solution

Note: If Application-Aware Image Processing was disabled during internal troubleshooting please enable Application-Aware Image Processing and run the job again to update the log files within the Guest OS.

Collecting logs from within Guest OS

The following actions are to be performed within the Guest OS of the VM that is being investigated. Please note that no Veeam Backup and Replication task should be running against the guest in question during this collection process. This will interfere with the accuracy of the information.

1. Navigate to the following directory:
   • Windows Server 2003: %allusersprofile%\Application Data\Veeam\Backup
   • Windows Server 2008 and up: %programdata%\Veeam\Backup 

2. Collect files matching the following Syntax:
   • VeeamGuestHelper_ddmmyyyy
   • VeeamVixProxy_ddmmyy
3. Open an elevated command prompt and run the following commands:

   vssadmin list writers > C:\vsswriters.txt
   vssadmin list providers > C:\vssproviders.txt
   vssadmin list shadows > C:\vssshadows.txt
   vssadmin list shadowstorage > C:\vssshadowstorage.txt

4. Hyper-V Cases: Export Windows Event Logs from Guest as shown here: http://www.veeam.com/kb1873.
5. Collect the logs from steps 2-4, bundle them in a compressed file, and submit them.

The logs can be submitted by:

• Email (smaller than 3MB)
• Customer Support Portal (support.veeam.com)
• SFTP (Provided by support engineer, remember to send email after upload). More details: https://www.veeam.com/kb1661

More Information

• VeeamVssSupport_ddmmyyyy