You can run a quiesce compatibility check to determine if VMs are compatible with quiesced snapshots.

You can run a compatibility check on protection group to check if VMs in the group support quiescing. You can run this compatibility check for both standard and high-frequency snapshots.

Requirements for quiescing:
  • VM is powered on.
  • VMware Tools installed and running. VMware Tools requires Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) or protection groups cannot take quiesced snapshots. Windows VMs require VMware Tools version 10.x and above.
  • High-frequency snapshots only:
    • VMware ESXi must be 8.0U3b or higher to quiesce high-frequency snapshots.
    • Quiesing high-frequency snapshots is not supported on protected VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs.
  • Linux VMs only: Pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts installed on the VM. VMware Tools must be version 10.2 or above.

Procedure

  1. From the left navigation, select Protection groups.
  2. From the upper-right side of the Protection groups page, click Create protection group. Or, select an existing protection group and click the Edit group button.
  3. In the dialog box, enter a name for the protection group.
  4. Next, select a protected site and a vCenter. The dialog box also displays the cloud file system associated with the protected site, which is where snapshots replicate to.
  5. After you select a protected site and vCenter, the system checks the vCenter for software compatibility with high-frequency snapshots. If the protected site is compatible, the High-frequency option is selected.
  6. Next, select the Quiesce option.
  7. To check if the VMs on the protected site have VMware Tools installed to enabled quiesced snapshots, create any type of query (name pattern, tags, folders).
  8. Click Compatibility check.
    When the check finishes, there are three possible states for each VM:
    • Question mark icon. VMware Tools is not running. Quiescing not supported.
    • Warning icon. VMware Tools is out of date. Quiescing is not guaranteed.
    • Green light icon. VMware Tools is installed and running. Quiescing supported.
    For example, in this picture under the 'VM supports quiescing column', you see one VM that has an out of date version of VMware Tools (which means it might not be quiesced), one VM that is powered off, and one VM that does not have VMware Tools installed. The snapshot is still taken, but VMs will likely not be quiesced.
    Quiesce compatibility check with results showing 3 VMs that do not support quiescing.
    Note: The quiesce compatibility check does not check if Linux VMs have pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts installed, which is required for quiescing Linux VMs.
  9. If the check passes, you can proceed in creating the protection group. Click OK.