Why does a virtual machine freeze during a VMware snapshot
Applies to
- E-Series
- VMware ESXi
- Veeam
Answer
This is expected behavior, operating system (OS) requires a consistent snapshot for a successful recovery to achieve this two separate operations must occur. Active RAM state must be captured and the disk IO must be quiesced
Explanation:
- In testing we have observed virtual machine (VM) suspend or ping request timed out from snaphot create, deletion and consolidation
- Factors that influence this behavior and length of unresponsiveness
- If Snapshot includes VM active memory
- Host based SSD caching
- Storage processor cache utilization
- Multipath IO and load balancing (MPIO)
- Array workload profile (sequential / random) and utilization at time of snapshot
- ESXi hardware and resource utilization at time of snapshot
- Virtual machine utilization and resource shares
- VMFS Datastore resource shares
Additional Information
Recommendations :
- Ensure environment meets best practices
- VMware Configuration Guide for E-Series SANtricity iSCSI Integration with ESXi 6.xand 7.x Solution Design
- E-Series and EF-Series Reference Architecture and Storage Best Practices with Veeam Backup & Replication
- Perform iSCSI-specific tasks
- Configuring the switches - iSCSI, VMware
- Performance Degradation with Data Assurance enabled Volumes and iSCSI
- Profiling and sizing the system performance
- VMware Resources
- Veeam Resources