Consolidate Helper -0 snapshot issues

[gfellerj12]

Hello,

I am on esx5 using local datastores with plenty of space.  I am using Veeam Backup to back up my VM's.  Occasionally I will see a "Consolidate Helper -0" snapshot left behind on the VM.  It seems if I create a new snapshot and then delete all it will go away..  Veeam claims this is a VMware thing.  Any common knowledge of what could be causing this?  Thanks for any insight.

[admin]

This issue occurs because the consolidation attempt is made prior to the backup proxy lease being cleaned up.

The series of events should match:

1. Backup starts
2. Snapshot created for backup
3. Lease established
4. Failure of SAN mode, then fallback to NBD mode
5. Backup finishes
6. Consolidation attempt (fails)
7. Lease released

Note: The backup proxy must be a separate physical machine to trigger the issue; virtual machine based proxies cannot access SAN mode backups.

This is a known issue affecting the Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK) 5.0 / 5.1.

After the lease is released, normal consolidation is possible.

To work around this issue, configure the backup software to attempt NBD directly instead of attempting SAN-based backup first, or ensure the correct block devices are present on the backup proxy server prior to attempting a SAN-based backup.

Note: Auto mode attempts SAN-based backup first then falls back to NBD if that fails. This situation will also trigger the issue

VMware is planning to address the orphaned lease in a future release of the VDDK.

[prashanthbgoud]

any backup software would backup VMDK of VMs, so it creates Snapshot first, then locks the vmdk file, backups the data then deletes snapshots.

after backup, backup process might get terminated on veeam or ESXi might not respond to the backup due to its high resource utilization.

if you see the VM files on the data store then you would find more then expected vmdk files to be. this vmdk files will be locked by veeam try disk consolidation.

If you are using veeam virtual appliance, then go to veeam virtual appliance 'edit settings' and check how many hard disk are given. remove all the disks attached and try consolidating the snapshots.

[lvaibhavt]

Hi Aakash,

Can you please help me understand point numbers 3 / 4 / 7. Is there a document that I can go through.

thanks

[nielse]

Did the job fail/ended with a warning or error?

[gfellerj12]

I have switched all the proxies to network mode only (NBD) so we will see if that helps.

Thanks

[coolgod]

Hi Aakash,

Am using ESXi 4.1, is it only because of "consolidation attempt is made prior to the backup proxy lease being cleaned up" that a VM

is left running on the Helper Snapshot ??

Please advise. thanks.