Snapshots causing vm's to power off when backing up using Netapp Snapmanager

[ccatano2000]

hi all,

We had a production sql server power off unexpectedly right after getting a failed snapshot error.  the snapshot was taken by our NetApp storage device for its backup.  I understand that if the operating state of the memory is not preserved at the time of the snapshot revert,  it will power off.

We are using esx4i and know that NetApp and vmware fixed this issue in version 3.5 u4 .   Has anybody seen this or have any suggestions on what could be the root cause or a fix ?

Thanks for your time,

chris

[ccatano2000]

I found this in a previous post,  has anyone experienced this before with version esx 4i ?

I believe the issue was that during a create or delete snapshots operation,  the virtual machine was unexpectedly powered off with the symptoms :  The create or delete snapshot task fails,  and the virtual machine is powered off with error.

This issue occurs when one of the files required by the virtual machine has been opened by another application during a Create or Delete Snapshot operation while a Virtual machine is running, all the disk files are momentarily closed and reopened. During this window, the files could be opened by another Virtual machine, management process, or third-party utility. If that application creates and maintains a lock on the required disk files, the Virtual machine cannot reopen the file and resume running.

We will look through the ESX logs to verify this first and should look at the NETAPP snapmanager settings for this particular vm and ensure that it is set to quiesce the disk prior to snapshots since it is a Sql server and is very write intensive.