vRealize Automation 8.8.2 and above appliance snapshot fails

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

Beginning with versions 8.8.2:

• Services within the appliance should not be stopped.
• Quiescing is required.

Symptoms:

Creation of snapshots for appliances fail when using Aria Lifecycle Manager 8.x (formally vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.x) for the following versions:

• VMware vRealize Automation 8.8.2 through 8.11.x
• VMware Aria Automation 8.12.x and above

Environment

VMware Aria Automation 8.12.x
VMware vRealize Automation 8.9.x
VMware vRealize Automation 8.10.x
VMware vRealize Automation 8.8.x
VMware vRealize Automation 8.11.x

Cause

Documentation for vRA 8.0 for Backing up a vRA 8.x appliance contained instructions for adding /usr/sbin/pre-freeze-script and /usr/sbin/post-thaw-script, which stop services before taking the snapshot.

If these scripts are uploaded or created on the appliance, for versions 8.8.2 and above, creating quiesced snapshots fail. This occurs due to the long time it takes for services to stop.

Resolution

Remove the Scripts

Prerequisites

• You have access to root user and password
• You have SSH or console access to each virtual appliance.

Procedure

1. SSH / PuTTy into each appliance in the cluster
2. Run the following command on each appliance:

   rm /usr/sbin/pre-freeze-script /usr/sbin/post-thaw-script