Following on from the Exchange 2010 issues I’ve been having, my last hurdle has been backups. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why the daily backups of my Exchange installations were failing. So I followed a couple of YouTube videos and made minor changes. This still didn’t work, so after a day of not thinking about it, and clearing my mind I finally found this solution, which worked a treat:
Using Windows Server Backup on Database Availability Group Members
If a server hosting the data being backed up is a member of a database availability group (DAG) and hosts both active and passive database copies, you must disable the Microsoft Exchange Replication service VSS writer. If the Microsoft Exchange Replication service VSS writer is enabled, the backup operation will fail.
To disable the Microsoft Exchange Replication service VSS writer, perform the following steps:
Log on to the server by using an account that has local administrator access, and then start Registry Editor (regedit).
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\v14\Replay\Parameters.
Add a new DWORD value named EnableVSSWriter, and set its value to 0.
Exit Registry Editor and then restart the Microsoft Exchange Replication service.
This solution is found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd876851.aspx