EventID 34113: too busy to quiesce to take the snapshot

[JaapB]

Hi,

We want to make VMDK backups of VMs hosted on a VMware ESXi 5.1 host but get the following error:

• unable to create a snapshot of the virtual machine. The virtual machine may be too busy to quiesce to take the snapshot

We use two backup servers in our environment which face this problem. One with Windows 2003 R2/BE2010 R3 and the other with Windows 2008 R2/BE2012. Both Windows and BE are fully patched.

The VMs don't have VMware tools or BE agent installed. With the VMware Vsphere Client it is possible to make a quiesce snapshots.

Any help will be appreciated.

JaapB

[JaapB]

This ESXi 5.0 host has a free version van ESXi 5.0. The vStorage API is a licensed feature and is not listed as a licensed feature on this host.

[JaapB]

Interesting thread but editing those registry entries did not help. It only takes longer before the job fails with the same error.

[JaapB]

We installed a fresh installation of ESXi 5.1 on a host and left it in evalution mode. After that we copied a VM to that host and were able to make a successful VMDK backup of that VM.

To compleet the test we entered the free license key which caused almost all features (including the vStorage API) to be disabled. After that we preformed the same backup again and this time the backup fails again with eventid 34113.

We compared both hosts (ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.1), but they have the same features installed. On both hosts the vStorage API is not in the list of available features.

[Kunal_Mudliyar1]

To compleet the test we entered the free license key which caused almost all features (including the vStorage API) to be disabled. After that we preformed the same backup again and this time the backup fails again with eventid 34113.

This is an expected behavior as evaluation key will include the eval of vstorage api as well

We compared both hosts (ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.1), but they have the same features installed. On both hosts the vStorage API is not in the list of available features.

Its quite strange that the VM backups are working on 5.0 host without the Vstorage api

[MusSeth]

04863552

Hello JaapB,

as you have mentioned above that you are trying to backup two virtual machines which are linux, may be this VMwae article might help, please run a non GRT backup and check if that backup completes successfully or  not.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=102117...

[JaapB]

Hi,

We did read the article but according to the documentation the VASD feature is not supported on the free edition of ESXi 5.1. Making a non-GRT VMDK backup from a Linux guest therefore also fails with the same error.

We just don't understand why it is possible to make a VMDK backup from a guest hosted on our free edition ESXi 5.0 hosts which does not list VASD as an installed feature.

[Kunal_Mudliyar1 · Accepted solution]

This api is an api using which backup exec or any backup application will talk to Vmware to backup the VMDK right from the datastore without needing a temp staging location, like the previous VCB api

We need this for the backups to work.

Please review

Backup Exec 2012 Software Compatibility List (SCL)

 http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH175581

"All free versions of ESXi (4i and 5) require a minimum license from VMware in order to be protected by Backup Exec. This is due to the lack of vStorage API forData Protection support in the free unlicensed versions of ESXi and is a current limitation of VMware."

Edit : Page no 34

[JaapB]

Not the answer we hoped for but at least we now know why we get this error.

Everybody thanks for their help.