End of the month, end of the quarter. This week I found myself in one of those situations where I couldn’t let a problem go. Numerous teams have Azure Site Recovery set up for replicating servers from one region to another. Trouble is, many of these configs have replication warnings around VSS. There was one specific instance where I truly wanted to find the cause and solve the issue – to the point where I was thinking about it at night.
I’ve had interactions with VSS many times over the years, and troubleshooting this has been a known art for well over a decade (perhaps two at this point?). What always baffles me though is how stumped some people get around how to troubleshoot a problem. I’m thinking on how to write up a post about troubleshooting – that’ll come later.
So, I spent some #NightShift cycles this week digging deep into a couple servers. In one case, one of the built-in providers is just flat broken. The fix, though not tested, is probably to remove a role from the server and re-add. But, since it’s not my server, I didn’t pull that trigger. In another case, there was simply a rogue provider that showed up in the registry (but not with the vssadmin list providers command) that needed to be removed.
I’m taking some time off next week for family items – will probably use the downtime to do some reading. There’s one certification that I’d love to get, but I’m nervous to even attempt. We’ll see what I decide….