Snapshot error status 156 using VCB

It is not documented, however the behavior you describe sounds like a similiar issue we are having where if you try to run multiple jobs against the same lun/datastore, only one will work and the other will fail with a status 156.  I have heard that you can only snap one VM on a given lun at a time, although Symantec has not said anything about this.

In our environment we have many VM's per datastore (lun) and when we run multiple backups were the clients are on the same lun, we run into the snapshot error issue.  If we run multiple jobs but have them on different luns, we have no issue.  The problem is the quiesce step in the flow chart, it cannot be done for two jobs simultaneously.  Our solution will be to create seperate policies for each of our datastores and run them simulatenously but have only one client per policy execute.  That way we can load the proxy, and avoid the snapshot 156 errors due to lun constraint.

I am in the process of testing a perl script I wrote that self discovers the datastores and the clients on them through the Virtual Center using the Perl API tool from VMWare.  Once the script discovers the datastores and clients, it injects them into the corresponding policies in Netbackup.   Think of it as autodiscovery for Netbackup and VM's.

Are the given VM's that fail all on the same lun of the CLARiiON?  Do you have VM's on other luns?  What happens if you take a client from each of the luns and stick it into a test policy and allow all of them to run?

Regards,

Benjamin Schmaus