VSS Snapshots Not Removed from Hyper-V Hosts After Completion of a Backup Job

If shadow storage is not cleared after backups complete, you can delete older shadows and set limits on the maximum size available for shadow storage.

Symptoms

VSS snapshots can sometimes accumulate on shadow storage of a volume for Hyper-V hosts.

Causes

By default, Microsoft retains VSS snapshots indefinitely.

##_DOC_OEM_INSTALL_SCREEN_PRODUCT_NAME_## backups normally clean up snapshots after sucessful backups, but snapshots can be left behind after failed backups or if other applications create snapshots.

Resolution

You can automatically purge shadow storage by using the following commands:

• vssadmin resize shadowstorage to limit the size of shadow storage space.
• vssadmin delete shadows to delete older snapshots.

You can also remove snapshots or limit shadow storage space by editing the shadow copy settings in the disk properties.