Domain Controller VM Backup Quiesce Issues

[sb_gortiz]

I am trying to backup a DC that is a virtual machine using BE 2010 R3. I keep getting the following error when trying to do a backup of the VM: "Final error: 0xe000959b - An attempt to take a snapshot of a virtual machine failed because it was unable to quiesce a file system." I am guessing that this is related to the high transactions rate of a DC? What are the recommended steps to make a backup of a DC using BE 2010 R3 so that I can get this to work? Thanks for all your help.

[AmolB]

Refer to below links

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH129724

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH136415

[sb_gortiz]

So I tried taking a snapshot of my DC from vSphere by unchecking the virtual memory option and checking the quiesce option but it also failed. I opened up a command window in my DC and typed in vssadmin list writers and it seems that the 'NTDS' writers is reporting a non-retryable error. I disabled the writer by creating a text file in “C:\programdata\vmware\vmware tools” called vmbackup.conf with 1 line: “NTDS” without the quotes. This allowed to take a quiesce snapshot but it defeats the purpose since the ntds writer is not enabled and the backup might not be application consistent. Has anybody ran into this problem before with VMs?       

[sb_gortiz · Accepted solution]

It seems like this issue is related to the VMware VSS Provider. This was fixed in 4.1 U1 and the following is in the release notes:

Backup

• Cannot take quiesced snapshots of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine running vCenter Server 4.1
  When creating a snapshot of a Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine that has vCenter Server 4.1 installed, the snapshot operation might fail to complete. This issue occurs on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machines when the ADAM database is installed. The issue is resolved in this release.

If anyone is on an older version and is experiencing this problem, I fixed it by installing the symantec VSS provider.