Windows quiesced snapshot is not supported on Windows VM with CBRC enabled.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• You may see errors such as below  when backing up the VMDK  for VSS(quiesced snapshot on windows) with CBRC enabled:

Failed to open VMDK file with hot add transport mode

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• CBRC enabled Windows VM 

Cause

• Windows VM with CBRC and Windows quiesced snapshot interoperability is not supported
• During Windows quiesced snapshot creation, the writable snapshot disks are hot added to VM without CBRC enabled. 
  This causes CBRC CID mismatch.
• These snapshot disks are then immediately opened in read-only mode.  
• With read-only mode, digest re-initializes to fix the CID mismatch gets skipped causing snapshot revert and VDDK hot add transport mode failing

Resolution

• CBRC and Windows quiesced snapshot interoperability is not supported.
• Starting VCF 9.0 Quiesced snapshot support is explicitly disabled on CBRC-enabled Windows VM