AWS backup status as Completed but with warning VSS or SSM

Question

Hi Everyone,
Hope you're well and safe. I have question in regards the AWS Backup task shown as Completed but with Warning  as "Windows VSS Backup attempt failed because either Instance or SSM Agent has invalid state or insufficient privileges." Can someone please advise on how to fix the warning? Thanks

Answer

This error can arise if the proper IAM policies and roles are not set on the Ec2 instance where VSS backups needs to be taken. You need to attach the below policy while creating a role for VSS in IAM.
 ----------------------
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "ec2:CreateTags",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:ec2:*::snapshot/*",
                "arn:aws:ec2:*::image/*"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "ec2:DescribeInstances",
                "ec2:CreateSnapshot",
                "ec2:CreateImage",
                "ec2:DescribeImages"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}
----------------------
To create IAM role refer to article ->
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_roles_create.html

To Attach an instance profile to an existing instance refer to article ->
https://docs.amazonaws.cn/en_us/systems-manager/latest/userguide/setup-launch-managed-instance.html
 
Once the role is created and instance profile is attached to the EC2 instance then the above error should not be encountered.

This error can also happen if 'tag:GetResources', 'ec2:CreateTags', 'ssm:DescribePatchBaselines', 'ec2messages:SendReply’ , ‘ds:CreateComputer', 'ec2:DescribeImagescloudwatch:PutMetricData', 'ds:DescribeDirectories’,’ssm:DescribeEffectivePatchesForPatchBaseline', 'ssm:GetPatchBaseline' are missing from the IAM policy.

For more details on the same refer to article ->
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/application-consistent-snapshots-getting-started.html#run-command-vss-role

Answer

FYI, the formatting of the JSON on the page is bad. It should be..

```
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "ec2:CreateTags",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:ec2:*::snapshot/*",
                "arn:aws:ec2:*::image/*"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "ec2:DescribeInstances",
                "ec2:CreateSnapshot",
                "ec2:CreateImage",
                "ec2:DescribeImages"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}
```

AWS backup status as Completed but with warning VSS or SSM

}

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