Networker 8.2.1.4

Vcenter 5.5

DataDomain backup target

Hello all.

Relative EMC DPS newb here running into another issue. On a few VM's, I get a failure that has the following job details.

Extracted 9 lines, suppressed 532 lines.

See file "E:\Program Files\EMC NetWorker\nsr\logs\policy\VM_PROD\257222-PDC00DNSA802W-2015-8-27-17-13-46" for complete logs.

Extracted Lines:

2015-08-27 22:13:07 avvcbimage Error <16006>: vSphere Task failed: 'Unable to access file  since it is locked'.

2015-08-27 22:13:07 avvcbimage Error <14635>: VM Disk Consolidation for '[DS-EMC1261_15AE] PDC00DNSA802W/PDC00DNSA802W.vmx' task creation encountered a problem

2015-08-27 22:13:07 avvcbimage Warning <0000>: VM needs consolidation failed

2015-08-27 22:13:09 avvcbimage Warning <18652>: Too many extra snapshot files (3) were found on this Windows VMs datastore. This can cause a problem for the backup or restore.

2015-08-27 22:13:09 avvcbimage FATAL <0000>: [IMG0002] The datastore information from VMX '[DS-EMC1261_15AE] PDC00DNSA802W/PDC00DNSA802W.vmx' will not permit a restore or backup.

2015-08-27 22:13:09 avvcbimage Error <0000>: [IMG0009] createSnapshot: snapshot creation  or pre/post snapshot script failed

2015-08-27 22:13:09 avvcbimage Error <0000>: [IMG0009] createSnapshot: snapshot creation/pre-script/post-script failed

2015-08-27 22:13:09 avnwcomm Warning <0000>: Plug-in returned non-zero exit code (206). Aborting NetWorker connection.

2015-08-27 22:13:20 VM_PROD-1440712803418 Warning <0000>: Workorder "VM_PROD-1440712803418" non-zero exit status 'code 3: No such process'

I am still transitioning over from Netbackup, where I never saw a vm backup failure due to an existing snapshot in place. When i look in the snapshot manager in vcenter, there are no snapshots to remove or consolidate, but within the vm's datastore, I do see some that our VM engineer does not want to, and will not let me, remove. I do not know what affect that will have. Plus, there are just going to be times when we need a snapshot to remain for a while, for maintenace or whatnot.

Is there anything I can do to force it to back these up, or to not look for a snapshot of these? There are perhaps 8 or 10 of the 1000 or so vm's that have this issue. Of course, I could load the Networker agent onto these few vm's and back them up like physical servers, but id prefer not to do that. Not trying to be lazy...just looking for better options.

Thanks all.

Todd