e000959a - An attempt to take a snapshot of a virtual machine failed because it was unable to quiesce an application

Created: 28 Nov 2012 | 8 comments

mike915

When doing backups of VM servers I get the following error and some of my backups don't comlete.

This happens with both Full backups and Differentials. I am running Backup Exec 2012 fully patched. The VMWare environment is version 5.

Any thoughts or ideas are appreciated.

Discussion Filed Under:

Comments 8 Comments • Jump to latest comment

Donald Eady Symantec Employee

Have a look at the following doc

I hope this posting was helpful

lmosla Symantec Employee

Hi,

Do you have the remote agent installed on your server?

pkh Trusted Advisor

I hope that you are not using ESX 5.1 because it is not supported.

See whether you can take a manual snapshot of the machine.

mike915

@Imosla, I do not have the remote agent installed on any of the Virtual servers. I am using the VMWare agent on the media server to do the backups.

@pkh, We are running ESX 5.

lmosla Symantec Employee

Is GRT enabled for your backups? If it is make sure you install the Remote Agent on the guest machine (s).

mike915

No GRT is not enabled for our backups.

rendersr Partner Accredited

I think I've seen this error before. Are you using a snapshotting technology based on VSS? Is it taking a backup at the same time?

On one of the failed machines can you perform the following commands and give us the output?

vssadmin list writers

vssadmin list providers

villeah

I solved similar problem by stopping and disabling following services on guest machines

BackupExecVSSProvider
VMware Snapshot Provider

This of cource depends on which snapshot provider you are using.