SnapCenter SnapMirror or SnapVault update fails with 'Another transfer is already in progress' after 11 minutes

Applies to

SnapCenter Server 4.1 and higher

Issue

A backup with SnapCenter ends in a Warning, showing that the SnapMirror or SnapVault update request ended with the following message:

ErrorCode (-1), ErrorMessage (Snapmirror update failed with SDError (102) - SnapMirror update operation failed.
    Failed to update the SnapMirror relationship.
     Another transfer is in progress.

Cause

The backup that created the snapshot on the volume ran while a previous backup was still updating the SnapMirror or SnapVault relationship.
With default settings in SnapCenter's SMCore, after eight update attempts in eight seconds, it runs sub-job which will attempt to run the update nine more times with one minute pause in between each. If the update could not be started by then, the SnapMirror or SnapVault update part of the backup job fails.

Solution

1. Locate the SMCoreServiceHost.exe.config file, which resides in %ProgramFiles%\NetApp\SMCore
   Note: for Windows Host related backups, this needs to change on those Windows Hosts, not on the SnapCenter Server.
2. Open the config file in a text editor, and go to the end of the file, just above </AppSettings>
3. Insert the following two lines:
       <add key="SnapmirrorRetry" value="12"      /><! number of times to check, default is 9 >
    <add key="SnapmirrorTimeout" value="600000"/><! number of milliseconds to wait between checks, default is 60000 >
4. Make sure no operations from SnapCenter are running on the Windows host/SnapCenter Server (check the Monitor in the SnapCenter GUI)
5. Restart the 'SnapCenter SMCore' service on the that host

Additional Information

For the older VMware Plug-in (up to 4.1.1) and the Linux Plug-ins, the SnapVault or SnapMirror update runs in SMCore  on the SnapCenter Server.
For the main Windows Plug-ins, the SnapVault or SnapMirror update runs in SMCore  on the Host itself.

Note: The settings that need to be added into SMCore, cannot be changed from Powershell using Set-SmConfigSettings.