One option is to disable the SQL Writer system service, which VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) uses to create SQL Server database snapshots. If you’ve used the information above to determine that snapshot database backups are triggering this message, there are several possible solutions. You can also look for report entries with a Backup set field that is not set to “SQL Backup Master backup”. Starting at around the time when SQL Backup Master logged the “invalid backup chain detected” message, look for preceding report entries with the Is Snapshot field set to True. To start, select the Reporting tab in the main product window and select the Backup history report. SQL Backup Master makes it easy to see if another software tool is taking snapshot database backups.

A broken backup chain can then trigger other backup errors or interfere with future restore efforts. However, some third-party products will create snapshot backups (via Volume Shadow Copy Service) that will invalidate the backup chain. via SQL Server Management Studio, etc.) then creating a copy-only backup is a good option. If you need to occasionally take a backup outside of SQL Backup Master (i.e. If a third-party software tool is taking copy-only SQL Server backups, those will not interfere with the backup chain so SQL Backup Master won’t warn about them. Why is it a potential problem if another software tool is also taking SQL Server backups? Note that copy-only database backups are ignored during backup chain validation, as they don’t interfere with the SQL Server backup chain. Such messages can be logged as warnings (default) or errors, depending on backup job settings. If a possible conflict is detected, SQL Backup Master writes an “invalid backup chain detected” message to the log. Specifically, when a differential or transaction log backup is started, SQL Backup Master analyzes SQL Server’s backup history table and checks to see if the most recent backup was also created by SQL Backup Master. The goal of backup chain validation is to warn users when other third-party applications could potentially interfere with the SQL Server backup chain.

This article describes the goal and function of this feature. SQL Backup Master 6.3 includes a new feature called backup chain validation that is responsible for generating “invalid backup chain detected” messages.

Download sql backup master