Backup RHEL 6 VM w/ shared disk

[dukbtr]

I've been backing up Windows VMs with success for a long time.  Now I need to backup up the RHEL servers with NetBackup VM backups, instead of backing an rsync dump location for our servers. 

I ran a test backup on a RHEL 6 server.  The server has shared disk with another server, <server name>01/02.  I ran a test on 02 and it failed with:

• 23: Error opening the snapshot disks using given transport mode
• Unable to consolidate virtual machine disks, status: 36 (SYM_VMC_TASK_REACHED_ERROR_STATE). Error Details: [Unable to access file since it is locked] 

It was enough that the machined powered off because the disk was locked.  The admins tried powering off the 01 server and then power them both up, but it didn't work and they ended up calling VMware.

The VM admin said that you can't take a snapshot of shared disk.

Is there a way to back the VMs up?  Has anyone encountered this?

I'm wondering if I can only backup the OS portion and exclude the data disk. Then I'd have to backup the data using an on host client. 

Also, should I be using SYMquience for the backup also? 

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[RLeon · Accepted solution]

I replied to a similar query on another thread:
https://vox.veritas.com/t5/NetBackup/VADP-and-RDM-Backup-on-same-host/m-p/846685#M232880

Hope that answers your query too.

As for the SYMCquiesce utility for Linux, NetBackup 8.1 just dropped support for it.
If you're not yet running 8.1, then I guess you can still use it.
You may also try not using it and see if the VM backups still give you a consistent backup of the filesystem. (Make sure VMware Tools or Open VM Tools is installed and up-to-date). If it does, then you don't need SYMCquiesce. Besides, it's EOL anyway.

[dukbtr]

THANK YOU!