DL Appliance Rapid Appliance Self Recovery Error: Winbackup partition 75gb There is not enough free space on the backup storage location (4040818)

The DL Appliance's Rapid Appliance Self Recovery is displaying the following UI error: 

The backup completed with the following failure:

Windows Backup encountered an error when writing data to the backup target. Detailed error: The operation ended before completion. The log of this failure can be viewed at: C:\Windows\Logs\WindowsServerBackup\Backup_Error-14-07-2017_05-00-03.log

Log file: 

Backup of volume C: has failed. Windows Backup encountered an error when writing data to the backup target.

The reported error occurs when Windows Backup Storage Target with a size of around 75GB is smaller than the C:\ and Recovery Partition (RASR) volume sizes combined.

The DL 4000 or DL 4300 was originally shipped with a 75 GB WinBackups virtual disk (VD).

On a standard DL installation, the C drive has ~40 GB of space used.  The recovery partition has ~12 GB used.   That means that by default the Windows backup will be ~50 GB in size.  On a standard factory image that means you can keep multiple Windows backups in the WinBackup VD.

As the C: drive is filled with data you will eventually have more space used on C:\ than can fit in the 75 GB WinBackup VD.

There is a limited number of options. 

To free up some space on the C:\ disk:

1. Check the Gibraltar logs and delete them.
2. Check the SRM logs and delete them - C:\Program Files\Dell\PowerVault\Appliances\DL\SRMWebService\logs or C:\Program Files\Dell\PowerVault\Appliances\DL\SRMProvider\logs.
3. Decrease the Page File size by disabling automatic memory dumps.
4. Remove other user files from the system (downloads, documents, etc).

If the used space on disk C:\ is still larger than the 75GB, these are the following options:

1. Manually configure windows backup to point to a network share, local USB disk, or iSCSI disk that have could be added to the system.
   1. Open wbadmin (Computer management -> Storage -> Windows Server Backup -> Local backup)
   2. Manually configure the backup policy and point to a different storage location.
2. Stop using Windows Backup
   1. To clear the red appliance tab and restore it to yellow, open the Windows backup management console and delete all events from it.

If a DL appliance was bought and configured prior to the release of RUU 3.0.587, then, unfortunately, there is no "fixing" the 75gb Windows Backup partition where the appliance tab is displaying red because of this failure. You may perform the workaround listed above or you'd have to wipe the disks and reconfigure to 'fix' it.

The 75 GB windows partition has only just been fixed in all factory shipped DLs starting from 6/28/2017. You may need to contact your account rep to find out what options you may have regarding a trade in on a DL.

For existing DLs, the OS on the appliances can not be upgraded or that would be an EULA violation, same goes for any hardware components that did not come factory installed.