[Feature Request] Veeam consolidating snapshots it did not create

[Handynet]

In case ID# 03272154 we submitted a feature request for Veeam to implement something to check whether a snapshot was created by Veeam before attempting to consolidate it. The issue is that when Veeam consolidates a large snapshot that it didn't create, it can cause unexpected production outages. Has there been any progress on this request?

[PTide]

Hi,

Snapshots that are created for backup have specific naming ("VEEAM BACKUP TEMPORARY SNAPSHOT") and normally Veeam should not touch other snapshots. That is, the described behaviour looks like a bug. If that's the case, the support team will either sort it out, or push it to the development team for fixing. Please keep working with the support engineer on that.

Thanks!

[rjtaylor]

I haven't opened a case on this but I think I'm seeing a different side of this same issue. I get daily alerts from Veeam that it cannot consolidate snaps on my VMware Horizon master VMs. It's a good thing it fails because it would destroy my VDI environment but it's weird that it's even trying since they aren't "VEEAM BACKUP TEMPORARY SNAPSHOT" snapshots. The guts of the email alerts are below:

<VMNAME> on <VCENTER> needs snapshot consolidation, but all automatic snapshot consolidation attempts have failed.
Most likely reason is a virtual disk being locked by some external process. Please troubleshoot the locking issue, and initiate snapshot consolidation manually in vSphere Client.

[PTide]

Hi,

Sometimes snapshot hunter mistakes user's snapshots for orphaned snapshots, indeed. Please see this KB for possible workarounds,

Thanks!

[rjtaylor]

Thanks for the reference. I'm trying the "cloud.uuid" technique. I should know by tomorrow whether it worked.

[Handynet]

Hi,

Snapshots that are created for backup have specific naming ("VEEAM BACKUP TEMPORARY SNAPSHOT") and normally Veeam should not touch other snapshots. That is, the described behaviour looks like a bug. If that's the case, the support team will either sort it out, or push it to the development team for fixing. Please keep working with the support engineer on that.

Thanks!

Hello, PTide.


Can you let us know when this behavior was implemented, specifically? The referenced case goes all the way back to November 2018, and your current behavior sounds very similar to my proposed behavior. Excerpt from ticket:

Note added: Before creating a feature request, I would like to confirm what exactly you would like to achieve.

-As you have stated, "veeam had something to check to determine if it made the snapshot before attempting to consolidate it; ", creating another snapshot does not seem to be a workaround as snapshot consolidation is required sooner or later.
-Do you want an option to notify you that a snapshot consolidation is needed?

Does Veeam not create backups by leveraging vmware snapshots? I believe it does, unless you've set up something like a storage-level snapshot backup: https://www.veeam.com/blog/nimble-stora ... guide.html

As far as I know, you don't actually need to consolidate a snapshot to create another one and back things up via Veeam. The only reason snapshot consolidation is required is to avoid the possibility of that snapshot running you out of disk space.... correct?

What I am proposing is that snapshots are sometimes used for things other than Veeam backups (or in this case, left in place due to poor system administration downstream...), and therefore can be created by things other than Veeam, and thus should be handled separately, by an administrator.

Therefore, Veeam should only ever attempt to merge snapshots it created itself. Every snapshot that can't be correlated directly to being created by Veeam should just notify you, instead of having veeam attempt consolidation via the 'snapshot hunter' function.

One easy way I can think of to allow veeam to identify snapshots it created itself, is to have veeam name its backup snapshots accordingly... that way, snapshots that were left in place by Veeam by some mistake are easily identifiable, and it automatically attempts consolidation.

Conversely, if, hypothetically, a snapshot was left in place for months due to administrative oversight, and grew to 1TB in size... but was not named the way Veeam would have named it, if veeam had created it... veeam would avoid attempting to merge that snapshot.

[rjtaylor]

Hi PTide,

Please see this KB for possible workarounds,

Thanks for this suggestion. It worked for us and is keeping Snapshot Hunter from going after those particular snapshots that it doesn't own.