VMware agent backup fails with: "0Xe0009574 - Unable to create a snapshot of the virtual machine. The virtual machine may be too busy to quiesce to take the snapshot."

Article: 100004205
Last Published: 2015-02-20
Ratings: 0 0
Product(s): Backup Exec

Problem

VMware agent backup fails with error,  "0Xe0009574 - Unable to create a snapshot of the virtual machine. The virtual machine may be too busy to quiesce to take the snapshot."

Error Message

V-79-57344-38260 - Unable to create a snapshot of the virtual machine. The virtual machine may be too busy to quiesce to take the snapshot.

Cause

There are multiple possible causes of this error not limited to the following:

1. Fault Tolerant Guest Virtual Machines cannot currently be protected while in a Fault Tolerant configuration. This is due to the inability to snapshot a Fault Tolerant virtual machine and is a current limitation of VMware.

2. This error can occur because VMs were moved in vCenter to or from the "Discovered Virtual Machine" or other folder after the jobs were created, or if the machine name was changed.

3. Check for the following errors in the /var/log/vmware/hostd.log on the ESX host: 

  • Protocol error from VMX
  • Quiesced snapshot via backup agent failed vmodl.fault.SystemError
  • An error occurred while creating quiesced snapshot via backup agent an error occurred creating quiesced snapshot via backup agent.

4. The error may occur while backing up a Vmware guest machine if the guest virtual machine has existing snapshots.

5. The presence of the VMware Tools Filesystem Sync Driver will cause this error because it will try to flush I/O at the same time the Remote Agent is trying to quiesce the file system and writers. This causes the VMware Tools service to hang, causing the WMI writer to fail, and the VSS service to crash.

6. Free versions of ESXi lack the necessary vStorage API's required for backup and restore operations.

7. When ESX hosts are clustered and vMotion is in use, if the virtual machines are selected by the ESX clustered node then this error can be received when the virtual machine is moved to be another ESX host of the cluster. This is because the virtual machine is no longer available through the selection that was made at the time the job was created.

8. A virtual machine with insufficient or 0 free space will also generate this error.

9. Check to see if the ESX server is listed as "Not responding" in the VMware Infrastructure Client or if the virtual machines hosted on that server are listed as "Disconnected."

10. This error can occur because the Backup Exec System Account (BESA) does not have Administrator rights on ESX server.

11. The error is also seen when VSS is not stable and failing on the virtual machine


 

Solution

Solutions:

1. Back up the Fault Tolerant virtual machine as a physical server using the Backup Exec Remote Agent.

2. Edit the job selection list and remove the old machine name, reselect the VM's in their current location with their current name, or move the VMs back to original location:
     a. Open vCenter and select "Inventory > VM and Templates >  Discovered Virtual Machine (or other folder)
     b. Drag and drop the VMs to the original location

3. Update and / or restart VMware-Tools Service within the guest operating system and retry the backup operation.

4. Delete the snapshots for the guest machines on the ESX / Vsphere Host using the snapshot manager.

5. Uninstall VMware Tools and allow the system to reboot. Then reinstall VMware Tools without VSS by choosing to perform a Custom Install. If the system does not have the Backup Exec Remote Agent installed on it, installing the Remote Agent should remove the Sync Driver automatically.
 
6. A vSphere Standard license that includes the vStorage API feature is required and will need to be installed for Backup Exec to correctly protect the ESXi hosted guest systems.
 
 
7. Add the vCenter server name or IP address instead of the individual ESX host name so all of the virtual machines in the cluster will be viewable and the selection list will not need to be changed when an ESX host moves a virtual machine to a different host.
 
8. Make sure at least 20% of the disk space is free for snapshot purposes.

9. Run the following commands on the problem ESX server to restart the Management Agents on the host:

service mgmt-vmware restart
 
service vmware-vpxa restart 
 
10. Check that Backup Exec Service Account has Administrator rights on ESX server:
  1. Log into VSphere client with root account and highlight the ESX server in the question.
  2. Select Permissions.
  3. Verify that the account used for connecting / backing up virtual machines has the permissions listed in 000007044 or is in the Administrators group.

See Related Articles below for additional troubleshooting steps and information.

11. Check the Virtual machine for the VSS-related errors in Event Viewer. The possible erro can be:

Source:        Service Control Manager
Date:          <Date> <Time>
Event ID:      7034
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      <VM name>
Description:
The Volume Shadow Copy service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 1 time(s).

Ensure the server is updated with all critcal Microsoft Patches. There are some fixes for VSS related problems.

 

 

 

Applies To

All supported versions of VMware. More information is available at:

kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do

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