Issue taking VM snapshot using TDP for VMWare for vmdk size greater than 2TB

Hello Team,

We have an environment where we have TSM server(6.3.4) based on AIX 6.1 OS. We have a proxy server which is based on Windows 2008 R2 Standard. We have installed TSM for BA Client 7.1 and TDP for Virtual Environments 7.1 on the Proxy server. From this proxy server we initiate LAN-Free backups for approximately 300+ VMs which are Windows and Linux based.

Some of the VMs are in size of 2-4 TB whereas some are mere 150GB. We have 5 proxy nodes that we have created on the TSM server through which we trigger snapshot backups. We have backup policies for Daily,Weekly,Monthly,Quaterly and Yearly.

Right now we have a VM which is approximately 4TB in size out of which one of the vmdk is 4TB. We see a serious concern in taking a snapshot backup of this VM, as there is a limitation on TSM on the vmdk size not to exceed 2TB in TDP for VMWare 7.1. This VM hosts millions of files for which file level backup could be a bottleneck. The client has limitations to utilize spanned disks as it affects their performance hence they have to stick to the single 4TB disks. There is another VM is currently hosts a 2TB disk and is expected to grow soon. Hence continuing snapshot backups will not be possible thus causing a major escalation as there won't be any backups.

We would like to showcase this issue and get it resolved on priority and this will impact our backups. We did raise a PMR with IBM 36395,019,866 where in we were told that "The 2TB size is a hard coded limitation" in TSM. Link for reference "http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/topic/com.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc/".

Please let us know if you can do something to fix this issue at the earliest as this will be a serious concern to take backup of these critical VMs.