vCenter Server Appliance unresponsive due to orphaned temporary backup snapshots e.g "VEEAM BACKUP TEMPORARY SNAPSHOT"

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

The vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is unresponsive, and the UI and management interfaces remain inaccessible. The appliance remains unresponsive after a reboot, takes an excessive amount of time to boot, and core services (including vpxd) fail to start or crash. Review of the snapshot manager reveals multiple nested "VEEAM BACKUP TEMPORARY SNAPSHOT" entries created on the same day.

Environment

vCenter Server Appliance 7.x & 8.x

Cause

The VCSA management plane becomes unresponsive due to disk locks and storage I/O stun caused by the accumulation of multiple orphaned third-party backup temporary snapshots.

Resolution

 

1. Engage the third-party backup vendor (e.g., Veeam Support) to investigate the backup job logs and determine why the temporary snapshots were initiated via API but never removed.

2. Engage the backup administrative team to restore the VCSA from a known good backup taken prior to the creation of the temporary snapshots.

3. If a functional backup is unavailable or the restore operation fails, perform a fresh redeployment of the VCSA.

 

Additional Information

Third-party backup suites leverage VMware APIs to request temporary snapshots during data protection operations. If the backup software fails to issue the subsequent API call to remove the snapshot, these delta disks become orphaned and stack up. For Veeam-specific insights, please consult vendor documentation https://www.veeam.com/kb1790