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stanj
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

MS Update Affecting VMware Tools?

I am seeing a strange occurrence with regard to vmware tools and MS Windows Updates.

For one VM, I have been running NAKIVO backup software without any issues. NAKIVO used VMware snapshots as the mechanism to backup up the VM by using QUIESCING.  After an MS Update occurred on  April 13, the backup process began failing with an error - An error occurred while taking a snapshot: msg.snapshot.error-QUIESCINGERROR.  I confirmed this by trying to take a snapshot and selecting the Quiesce option. 

Has anyone seen or heard of MS Updates affecting snapshots?

On the other VM, after a the same MS update occurred, I am seeing a message in vcenter events.,, cannot quiesce this virtual machine because VMware Tools is not currently available.

Has anyone seen or heard of MS Updates affecting VMware Tools ?

Thanks

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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

It sounds like the VMware Tools Service may not be running in the appropriate VM. Check your services to ensure VMware Tools is running and started to run automatically. Also, you may wish to upgrade/repair VMware Tools on the VM.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009-2016

Author of the books 'VMWare ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise: Planning Deployment Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2011 Pearson Education. 'VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment', Copyright 2009 Pearson Education.

Virtualization and Cloud Security Analyst: The Virtualization Practice, LLC -- vSphere Upgrade Saga -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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mvjohansen
Contributor
Contributor

Hi

We are seeing the exact same thing.

To temporarily solve it, you need to login into the server and restart the "VMware Tools" and "VMware Snapshot Provider" services. You will get an error when trying to restart the "VMware Tools" service. After the error you can just start the service again and everything will work fine until the next time the server reboots.

The problem seems to be the "VMware tools" service which stops responding when asked to quiesce the file system.

This happens on both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2 with the newest VMware Tools available

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jengl
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hey,

sounds like the same problem which we have (see: Sometimes VMware tool service is not running on Windows 2012 R2 guest VM on ESXi6.0), somebody knows which update is the cause of this mess?

Regards,

jengl

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kardio09
Contributor
Contributor

I've been experiencing the same thing for a couple of months now in 5.5.  I originally thought upgrading from tools 10240 to 10246 had resolved it, but I discovered after Windows OS patching that the issue returned.  I certainly hope they have this resolved well before the end of the year.  That's way too long to let a problem like this stick around.  I am experiencing this on pretty barebones Windows VMs, so I imagine many customers are being negatively impacted by this.  Backup software relies on this functionality working correctly.

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jengl
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

It seems the KB article is now available for this problem:

https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=21452...

It says ESXi 6.0 Patch 02 (ESXi600-201505001) but we have the same problem in 5.5 Update 2B.


Hopefully this will be fixed soon!

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kardio09
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for linking to that KB.  So it appears VMware has acknowledged the issue for 6.0 at least. We're on 5.5 Update 3b and experiencing this issue, so you're correct, 5.5 needs a fix too!

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jengl
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

10.0.9 is now out and it should fix the bug if the release notes are correct:

 

VMware Tools 10.0.9 Release Notes

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shane1973
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The KB article indicates that the problem relates to quiescing the OS immediately after a restart or after boot. Is that what you all experience?  I have several instances in my 'events' list for a SQL guest where it will finally successfully create the snapshot after several failed attempts.

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jengl
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I think thats a different issue, what we experienced was that after a snapshot backup the VMware Tools service crashed in Windows.

The new version of VMware Tools fixed this for us.

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vipclubber
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE LOOK AT MY POST INCLUDING SCREENSHOTS AND TELL ME IF I HAVE THE SAME ISSUE?

Windows VM WMware Tools Showing Status not running in Event logs...

Also, I am using ESXi 6.0U2 Custom HP image to pull VMware Tools on Win12R2.

Will I be affected if I use new non-custom VMware Tools. Will it overwrite drivers?

The latest VMware tools are 10.1.5 2017-02-23 will they resolve this issue?

https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VMTOOLS1015&productId=491

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jengl
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

vipclubber​: I dont think you are having this issue.

It is fixed in 10.0.9 and your issues seems different.

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rcmacleod
Contributor
Contributor

I think you are barking up the wrong tree.  VMware Tools uses VSS to quiesce the virtual machine before taking the snapshot.  Run "VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS" from the Windows CLI (DOS window) As Administrator.  If any of the VSS Writers are not in State 1 (Stable) then VSS will not be able to quiesce the VM and the backup will fail with that error.

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