Share via

Hyper-V: An error occurred while attempting to checkpoint the selected virtual machine(s)

Calum Morrison 21 Reputation points
2023-03-03T10:57:11.42+00:00

One of my VMs has recently developed issues when taking a checkpoint or backing up (via Veeam which uses checkpoints as part of the backup I believe).

If I manually run a checkpoint it gets to 9%, lingers, gets to 19% then fails with the error:

An error occurred while attempting to checkpoint the selected virtual machine(s)

Checkpoint operation failed

'VMname' could not initiate a checkpoint operation

Nothing untoward appears in Event Viewer / Hyper-V-VMMS other than an ID 18012 Error then a couple of informational alerts regarding the background merge of the failed checkpoint.

Weirdly, if I click on the VM's settings / Integration services and uncheck Backup (volume shadow copy), hit Apply then recheck it and hit OK, it'll take a snapshot quite happily. Something later seems to knock it out of whack again and checkpoints, Veeam replicas and backups fail.

I've rebooted the VM (backups are OK when it's off) but not the host yet. The only odd thing about this VM is it has a load of .vmgs files (4097kb each) in its Snapshots folder, each with a correspondingly named empty folder. e.g

DD4E1F41-B2E0-4007-8089-18C7A91967CB.vmgs

and Snaphots\DD4E1F41-B2E0-4007-8089-18C7A91967CB\

These seem to relate to times and dates of recent checkpoints/replication events.

I'm stumped. Any ideas?

Hyper-V
Hyper-V
A Windows technology providing a hypervisor-based virtualization solution enabling customers to consolidate workloads onto a single server.
2,636 questions
0 comments

2 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Limitless Technology 44,121 Reputation points
    2023-03-06T10:12:41.81+00:00

    Hello

    Thank you for your question and reaching out. I can understand you are having query\issues related to Hyper-V Snapshot.

    1. Please check Event Logs from -> Applications and services logs --> Microsoft --> windows --> Hyper-V VMMS, Admin, Operational, etc., also there are many other Hyper-V logs.
    2. Try to Move or Migrate this VM to different Hyper-V Host.
    3. Please try to Remove this VM from Veeam Backup and Add it again.

    --If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept as answer--

    1 person found this answer helpful.
  2. Calum Morrison 21 Reputation points
    2023-03-07T09:56:13.29+00:00

    I finally found a solution: an SQL log file was full and causing it to fail the snapshot. Not sure why, but trimming it down and changing its growth settings have solved it so far.

    Acronis VSS Doctor turned out to be really useful for narrowing things down, and the real info was in the Application log on the failing VM rather than the System log on the host.