Hi all,
I back up several vm guest servers each night using Arcserve on a vcb proxy which runs a pre script to snapshot the guests and mount the raw files, ready to be backed up to tape. The backup method is full for all the guest servers, and most of them do back up without any problems - some nights no vcbmounter errors at all. Other nights, one or more vm guests will fail to back up with the error shown in the title. Below is an extract from the cavcb log file;
Error: Other error encountered: Snapshot creation failed: Operation timed out.
An error occurred, cleaning up...
0External command failed. See error above.
Exit Code: 1
VCB Mount/delete operation for this VM (sbojsyepo001.mydomain.com) has failed
Number of VM failed to mount/export, count is = 1
The guests that fail to backup have entries in their system logs for LGTO_Sync for a Flush Completed, then exactly 15 minutes later another event for Sync Stop done. Whilst the guest is fine the following morning, ping and disk space monitors show that the host went unresponsive during that 15 minute period, which ofr some servers such as those hsoting ftp sites, is not very good news for me !
I understand that the LGTO_Sync driver is used to quiesce the file system of the guest before the snapshot is created and have seen posts stating that this sync driver is not a good idea for thibngs like sql, but the hosts that I have this problem with are not database servers, and are generally doing very little at the time of backup.
I've have found lots of people have had similar problems but no-one has posted any obvious fixes. Unfortunately its in a production enviroment so I cant go changing settings on the fly, however this weekend I am going to try uninstalling\disabling the sync driver from vmtools for the hosts I am having problems with. However even if this works, its not really an answer to the problem.
I have tried several things so far, I've checked the paths to the luns are correct, increased ESX service console memory to 800gb, and tried re-installing vmtools, vmotioned to another host, but have had no joy, and am hoping someone can help me with some more suggestions to fix the problem.
Kindest regards
Craig