We had a backup fail this week with an error stating something to the lines of Exchange Writer is in a failed state.
After some digging around I found that the Microsoft Exchange Replica Writer was in a failed state. To check the writers do the following:
- Open the command prompt on the Exchange server where the backup is failing. (In my case the server with the passive copies)
- In the command prompt type: vssadmin list writers and hit enter.
- You will now see a list of all the writers with their current state.
The picture below shows the writer in the failed state.
To resolve this issue I had to restart the Exchange Replication Service
I then re-ran vssadmin list writers in the command prompt and it showed its state as stable and the backups went through.
Exchange Times 