The VM Direct engine cannot complete the backup of this virtual machine because a vCenter API operation did not complete successfully. ABV0016

PowerProtect Data Manager (PPDM) is used to protect the vSphere environment with the Transparent Snapshot Data Mover (TSDM) solution. If you want to learn more about TDSM and PowerProtect please have a look on my PowerProtect blog post:

Dell PowerProtect – Data Manager & DDVE – the best Data Protection Solution for the vSphere Universe?

A few VM Asset backups were failing with Error Code ABV0016 when they had completed successfully in the past, more details on this:

Unable to create LWD snapshot.  vCenter task 'task-498338' failed:  VimFault: 'dp.vpx.fault.DpsFault.summary': Unexpected PeResult

The cause The affected VM has an orphaned vSphere SDM snapshot task. This task cannot be canceled by the PPDM TSDM backup workflow.

A possible resolution for this cause is to disable the Snapshot Data Mover (SDM) feature and enabled on the affected VM to delete the orphaned vSphere SDM snapshot task. The PPDM vmconfig command line utility can be used to change the SDM feature setting for the affected VM.

Log in to the PPDM Appliance using a Secure Shell (SSH) with the admin user:

ssh admin@my-ppdm-name

Change to the root user:

sudo su 

Load the environment variables:

source /opt/emc/vproxy/unit/vproxy.env

Change to the vproxy bin directory:

cd /opt/emc/vproxy/bin/

Construct the vmconfig command by replacing the information in the brackets:

Check the VM status:

./vmconfig -v <vcenter-ip-fqdn> -u '<vcenter-user-name>' -p '<vcenter-user-pwd>' -l dns -k <VM DNS name> -c info

Disable SDM on the vCenter VM:

./vmconfig -v <vcenter-ip-fqdn> -u '<vcenter-user-name>' -p '<vcenter-user-pwd>' -l dns -k <VM DNS name> -c disable-sdm

Enable SDM on the vCenter VM:

./vmconfig -v <vcenter-ip-fqdn> -u '<vcenter-user-name>' -p '<vcenter-user-pwd>' -l dns -k <VM DNS name> -c enable-sdm

Run a PPDM TSDM backup to confirm the issue is resolved.

If the issue is still present, please contact the Dell Support: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us