Taking Quiesced Snapshot of Windows Server 2019 VM Fails

Product version: 9.3

Last modified: 10 March 2020

Problem

Taking a quiesced snapshot of Windows Server 2019 VM fails with the following error:

Backup of the "X" VM has failed

Source host could not create quiesced (application-aware) snapshot of this VM.

Background

This problem happens when Windows cannot identify the recovery volume included in the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) SnapshotSet during the VSS process. The reasons are the following:

• Windows 2019 VM is EFI-boot and has the recovery volume.

• The system disk is GPT disk.

For more information, refer to this VMware article.

Solution

To solve this problem, use BIOS boot and utilize the MBR disk layout or fall back to the filesystem-consistent snapshot. The issue is expected to be fixed by Microsoft in the future with the Windows Server 2019 release.