Error “Repository.CreateSnapshot()”

Summary

You may sometimes see this type of error in the job activity logs:

“Error is Repository.CreateSnapshot(): Upload of /<PVC-NAME> failed with <NUM> errors”

Details

This error is caused when PVCs are backed up using live methods “Read data from PVC” or “Read data from underlying host volume”. For details about these methods, see Backup methods. The live backup of PVCs reads the data from a PVC directly, without creating a CSI snapshot first (note that the “snapshot” mentioned in the error above is not about CSI snapshot). This can lead to problems if the underlying data is rapidly changing (such as file creations and deletions for example). In such cases, you will see the above error and the backup of the PVC would fail.

For this reason, it is always preferable to use CSI snapshot based backups (method “Read data from snapshot”). However, if live method needs to be used for some reason (say CSI snapshots are not supported), it is best to schedule backups when the application activity is low. Another option is to use app hooks to quiesce the application activity.