NSX Backups fail with "Either sftp server disk full or bad directory path..." error when the directory path exists and there is enough disk space

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

• NSX-T Backups are failing with "Either sftp server disk full or bad directory path or check if the directory path length is beyond 260 character limit on windows server" reported in the NSX Manager UI Backup and Restore page.
• NSX Manager /var/log/syslog reports messages like:
  • [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-manager" errorCode="MP29111" level="ERROR" reqId="########-####-####-####-#############" subcomp="manager" username="username"] ; BackupAsyncStatus [BackupStatus [status=URI_NOT_FOUND, statusDetail=Specified uri '/exampledir' not found., remoteUri=sftp://example.com:22/exampledir, errorCode=null, startTime=###########, endTime=############]; responseBody=null]
• The backup directory exists on the SFTP server
• Testing connectivity to the backup directory returns: "remote mkdir backup_dir_given_in_backup_config": No such file or directory
• To test SFTP responses to the configured backup directory: 
  • Connect through SFTP to the Windows sftp server :
  • sftp <backup_user>@<sftp_server_ip>
  • Then execute these commands:
  • mkdir <backup_dir_given_in_backup_config>
    • Returns "remote mkdir backup_dir_give_in_backup_config": No such file or directory

Cause

When NSX receives an error code of No such file or directory it fails backups and reports the URI_NOT_FOUND error in syslog.

Resolution

Use one of the tested SFTP servers found in VMware NSX Documentation - Configure Backups

Additional Information

For additional SFTP backup server test steps see the Resolution section of "Authentication failed", "bad directory" or "server disk full" error when preforming NSX backup to Windows SFTP server