Snapshot Operation Exceeded The Time Limit For Holding Off I/O In The Frozen Virtual Machine

Snapshot Operation Exceeded The Time Limit For Holding Off I/O In The Frozen Virtual Machine

KB ID: 69
Cause:
During VMware backup, encountering the "Snapshot Operation Exceeded The Time Limit For Holding Off I/O In The Frozen Virtual Machine" issue is typically attributed to two main factors:
1. High I/O in the Virtual Machine: When the quiescing operation struggles to flush all data to disk due to high I/O within the virtual machine while additional I/O is being generated.
2. Insufficient Free Space: Trying to create a quiesced snapshot on a virtual machine that has zero available free space.
Solution:
To address this issue, it is recommended to control the amount of ongoing I/O in the virtual machine. This can be achieved by implementing pre-freeze or post-freeze scripts to quiesce application I/O. For detailed guidance on resolving this problem, please refer to the VMware knowledge base article provided below: