SFTP scheduled VAMI backup fails with timeout error intermittently "Timeout error with the remote server".

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

- Scheduled VAMI backup using SFTP portal fails with error: Timeout error with the remote server. Check or adjust the remote server configurations (eg., server timeouts, max connections per IP etc.). See logs for details.

- Manual SFTP VAMI backups are successful

- Scheduled backups fail with the above error intermittently

Environment

vCenter 8.x

Cause

In the vCenter logs /var/log/vmware/applmgmt/backup.log the following timeout error is observed:

stderr: b'curl: (28) Operation timed out after 300000 milliseconds with 0 bytes received\ncurl: (28) Operation timed out after 300000 milliseconds with 0 bytes received\n'


The timeout error above indicates at that time the SFTP server is experience a network overload or bottleneck due to conflicting scheduling operations.

Resolution

Change the Scheduled VAMI backup settings to initiate the VAMI backup at a different time