Hyper-V backups keeps failing 0x800423F4

A few days ago I bumped into an interesting error where the backup of some virtual machines that where managed via System Center Virtual Machine Manager or SCVMM kept failing and never could create a Recovery Point. The backup job ended with the same error code that was ID 30111 or 0x800423F4.

As always when it comes to troubleshooting DPM (I should write a blogpost regarding this…) is to verify the dependent technology that DPM “integrates” with when it comes to deliver the backup or restore job for the protected Data Sources.

Since all VSS’s was reporting Healthy I moved on the trouble shooting to VMM itself. When DPM makes a backup of a virtual machine it verifies the internal VSS’s present in the virtual OS before it makes a snapshot of the virtual machine.

In this case in VMM I right clicked the server in production that I couldn’t get a backup of and choose properties. In the properties for the virtual machine I choose the “Hardware Configuration” and under “Advanced” in the scroll list I choose the “Integration Services”.

I unchecked the “Backup (volume snapshot)” and saved the configuration to the VM. When that job was done I re-enabled the “Backup (volume snapshot)” again.

After I initialized the “Integration Service” for Backup I was able to get the backups up and running again.

Never underestimate the power of re-initializing an “Integration Service”.