Troubleshooting Linux virtual machine snapshot quiescing failures

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When you attempt to quiesce a Linux virtual machine's file system during a snapshot, you encounter these symptoms:

• The snapshot operation fails and is unable to quiesce the guest file system
• The guest operating system hangs during the the snapshot operation

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1

Resolution

Snapshot operation fails during quiescing

This is a known issue affecting:

• VMware ESXi 5.1 Patch 5 and earlier
• VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 2 and earlier

To resolve this issue, see Quiescing failure on Linux VM with disk.enableUUID set to true

The guest operating system hangs during a quiesced snapshot operation

This is a known issue affecting virtual machines running VMware Tools included prior to:

 

• VMware ESXi 5.1 Update 3
• VMware ESXi 5.5 Patch 3

To resolve this issue, upgrade to the latest build of ESXi and upgrade VMware Tools on the affected virtual machines. 

 

Note:

• Prior to Linux kernel version 2.6.29, the fsfreeze feature is not available in Linux to quiesce the guest file system.
• The fsfreeze option included prior to Linux kernel version 2.6.35-22, was not reliably usable. For more information, see Quiescing failure on Linux VM with disk.enableUUID set to true
• Prior to VMware ESXi 5.1, quiesced snapshots on Linux files systems were not supported.

Additional Information

Note: The VMware Tools version from ESXi 5.0 (latest version 8399 / ESX 5.0p11 / 8.6.15) makes a sync call when a quiesced snapshot is taken, so it does not fully quiesce the file system.