Hello,

I have just installed GhettoVCB on the following configuration:

2 hosts : ESX V4

10 VMs

Datastore type : iSCSI

Backup Datastore type : local

Tests done with a Window VM

The following command:

./ghettoVCB.sh -f vm_to_backup.lis -d debug  -g /ghettoVCB/ghettoVCB.conf

give the following result :

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: ============================== ghettoVCB LOG START ==============================

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- debug: Succesfully acquired lock directory - /tmp/ghettoVCB.lock

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- debug: HOST BUILD: VMware ESX 4.0.0 build-261974

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- debug: HOSTNAME: server10.intra.suntec.fr

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - USING GLOBAL GHETTOVCB CONFIGURATION FILE = /ghettoVCB/ghettoVCB.conf

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_VOLUME = /mnt/usb/backup

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT = 5

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2010-08-19_11-22-42

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = thin

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - ADAPTER_FORMAT = buslogic

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = 0

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF = 0

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN = 3

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_DOWN_TIMEOUT = 5

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - SNAPSHOT_TIMEOUT = 15

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - LOG_LEVEL = debug

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = stdout

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = 0

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = 0

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - VMDK_FILES_TO_BACKUP = all

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_LOG = 1

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_SERVER = server.gsuntec.int

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_SERVER_PORT = 25

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_FROM = bck_vmware@server.fr

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_TO = test@server.fr

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info:

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: Snapshot found for server19 Linux - E-Business - Test Env., backup will not take place

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: ###### Final status: ERROR: All VMs failed! ######

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- debug: Succesfully removed lock directory - /tmp/ghettoVCB.lock

2010-08-19 11:22:42 -- info: ============================== ghettoVCB LOG END ================================

2010-08-19 11:22:45 -- info: ERROR: Failed to email log output to server.gsuntec.int:25 to test@serever.fr

with :

./ghettoVCB.sh -f vm_to_backup.lis -d dryrun  -g /ghettoVCB/ghettoVCB.conf

result:

# ./ghettoVCB.sh -f vm_to_backup.lis -d dryrun  -g /ghettoVCB/ghettoVCB.conf

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: ============================== ghettoVCB LOG START ==============================

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - USING GLOBAL GHETTOVCB CONFIGURATION FILE = /ghettoVCB/ghettoVCB.conf

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_VOLUME = /mnt/usb/backup

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT = 5

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2010-08-19_11-24-52

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = thin

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - ADAPTER_FORMAT = buslogic

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = 0

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF = 0

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN = 3

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_DOWN_TIMEOUT = 5

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - SNAPSHOT_TIMEOUT = 15

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - LOG_LEVEL = dryrun

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = stdout

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = 0

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = 0

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - VMDK_FILES_TO_BACKUP = all

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_LOG = 1

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_SERVER = server.gsuntec.int

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_SERVER_PORT = 25

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_FROM = bck_vmware@server.fr

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_TO = test@server.fr

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- info:

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- dryrun: ###############################################

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- dryrun: Virtual Machine: server19 Linux - E-Business - Test Env.

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- dryrun: VM_ID: 64

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- dryrun: VMX_PATH: /vmfs/volumes/MSAVol01/server19 - E-Business - Test En_1/server18 - E-Business - Test En.vmx

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- dryrun: VMX_DIR: /vmfs/volumes/MSAVol01/server19 - E-Business - Test En_1

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- dryrun: VMX_CONF: server18 - E-Business - Test En_1/server19 - E-Business - Test En.vmx

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- dryrun: VMFS_VOLUME: MSAVol01

2010-08-19 11:24:52 -- dryrun: VMDK(s):

2010-08-19 11:24:53 -- dryrun:  server19 - E-Business - Test En-000001.vmdk

2010-08-19 11:24:53 -- dryrun: ###############################################

2010-08-19 11:24:53 -- info: ###### Final status: OK, only a dryrun. ######

2010-08-19 11:24:53 -- info: ============================== ghettoVCB LOG END ================================

2010-08-19 11:24:56 -- info: ERROR: Failed to email log output to server.gsuntec.int:25 to test@server.fr

How to get more information about the error and why it does not work?

Thanks for your help

Thanks

Didier

hi

i've done some reading on this, but there seems to be little definitive, hence my question.

1.  To have a SQL consistent backup, my understanding is that a standard vmware snapshot will do this as it kicks of a SQL level backup before the snapshot and then quiesces the file system before taking the actual backup.

2.  The issue is that SQL itself isn't told to clear down it's logs, so it doesn't know it's been backed up.

are 1 & 2 correct?

if they are, surely there must be a way of scripting the clearing down of the sql transaction logs too?  I've found 2 products that cost between $2000 and $8000 that claim to do it. but can't believe that level of investments is actually necessary?!

is there a way of scripting this?

Hi all,

I am using vicfgbackup & Set-VMHostFirm...... to backup the configuration, it is working fine but when i restore I do not see the same state as of backup time, some of the network configurations are not working and i have to set them again, the values are there but it does not work as expected.

what is the best way to backup and restore esxi ?

Thanks.

Hello,

We have been using VMDR to backup our live and test VM's.  An old test server got accidentally deleted and I have tried to restore the server from VMDR but I get the error "The following virtual machines or virtual  disks have invalid datastores"

Does the original server have to exist for the restore, if so I guess this is just for restoring corrupt/missing files (as it states Data Recovery), how do I get round deleted VM's which can happen of course.  It would be nice just to schedule clones of servers and put them into another datastore, can't see this anywhere as an option in vCentre etc.

Thanks

We are running Esxi server and it contains 4 VM machines. This server needs to be rebuilt. How can I take the image or backup of these VM's and restore it back once it gets re-built

I currently have serveral virtual machines that are being backed up with Netbackup agents inside of them. My second layer of recovery is using the Equal logic SAN snapshots to recover the virtual machine. Is there an easy way to create an image based backup of the virtual machines using Netbackup? I would like to have the virtual machine images avaible on tape in case of a failure on the SAN. If there is a better image based backup solution availble? Please let me know.

Hallo liebe Gemeinde,

ich wollte mal anfragen ob jemand von euch Exagrid Bakup Systeme verwendet? Wenn ja wie zufrieden seit ihr damt?

Sind auf der Suche nach einer schnellen und Kosteneffizenten Lösung für die Datensicherung.

Gruß

Jan

We have two VMs which are vApps, therefore our ESX backup vendor does not support them...

Can VDR 1.2 back them up?? Does VDR 1.2 choke on "extended characters"??

Both are small VMs so I don't anticipate quite as many problems as other people have had with VDR.

Thank you, Tom

We have ESXi 4.1 with shared storage provided by an NetApp SAN. I have created a shared datastore on the SAN which I intended to use for backup storage via VDR.

There does not appear to be an option to add a shared datastore as a destination, the only option I get is to add a network share.

Is this correct ?

Cheers

Chris

Hi,

I have two ESXi 4.1 U1 and a Huawei S2600 storage and the physical write and device command lantency is high (see attached files)

The storage is connected directly to the servers through iSCSI with Jumbo Frames and Round Robin. I'm using a Raid 5 with four SAS 15k disks and the VM's are in a LUN in this Raid

I have 19 VM's distributed between the two hosts and 4 of them is using 2 vCPU's

Any ideas of where is the problem?

Thanks

I’m looking for some input from the community on a particular question on VDR 2.0.

So far I’m pleased with the overall product and performance, but I need to iron out a few more details before I can present this product to my management team.

2.0 supports vCenter servers running in linked mode now. Does that mean that you’ll double the amount of appliances? 10 on the parent VC server and 10 on the linked VC?

Are there other backup solutions that are SAN based in nature that are any good? Our focus is to do SAN based backups for our virtual infrastructure.

Current TEST configuration:

3 APPLIANCES

4 CPU 4 GB of RAM

Two destination stores each 600GBM (RAW LUN) – The plan is to push this out to 1 TB RAW LUN which is more than enough space.

39 hosts \ 728 VM’s

We’ll create a custom script (using rsync) to copy the destination stores offsite hence the reason for the RAW LUN configuration.

Appreciate the feedback

I am looking for input on developing a comprehensive enterprise backup strategy for my virtual environment.  I have found the pros and cons of the technologies to be quite an enormous task to evaluate so I would like some input from users\admins in making my decisions before testing and deploying.

I purchased the Symnatec NetBackup7 solution with 2 16TB NB5000 appliances.  One appliance will reside in production and the other in DR.  Also the production media server will have a fiber connected tape library for offsite data retention requirements.  All licensed features include agents for hosts and quest machines and agents for SQL, etc.

Environment:

10 ESXi4.1 hosts

+100 VMs with approx 25 utilizing FT

VCenter 4.1 Ent Plus

EqualLogic PS6000 iSCSI SANs (production and DR)

Utilizing the any/all of the following:

NetBackup PureDisk deduplication

EqualLogic Snapshot Manager\VMWare Edition

VStorage API

BLIB

CBT

MS-VSS

SAN datastore replication

I will utilize snapshots and full, incremental\differential policies, etc to make the backup times the most efficient.  Besides making it easy to recover data I am interested in the fastest recovery of the machines and rollback protection from change management implementations as well.

Any suggestions to assist in planning my strategy are appreciated, lessons learned and possible configuration road blocks others experienced will be helpful.

Hi

I have VDR setup in my ESXi Environment so as I can backup my 48 Virtual machines. I choose all the disks on the VM's that I need backed up and go through the rest of the job config settings and then save the job. When the backup completes it has skipped about 7 or 8 of the VM's for no reason.  When I Iook in the job setup the disks/VMs that I thought I had selected for backup are not selected. I edit the job and choose the disks again and I am sure to make sure they are selected (tick in the box beside them) I complete and save the job setup. I then run  the job, however it skips the same VMs again even though I am 100% sure that I have choosen them for backup. There is nothing in the log as to why it has skipped the VM's.

Has anybody experienced this type fo behaviour with VDR 2.0. If so can you please share how you fixed/resolved/worked around the issue.

Thanks a lot.

Hello VMWare Community. I am having a bit of a problem with vDR & vSnapshots working after installing Backup Exec 2010 R3 with latest and greatest patches and I'm hoping you might be able to help identify the issue and hopefully resolve it.

Current Environment:

VMWare 5 Essentials Kit Plus

2 Hosts (Dell R710's)

3 Virtual Machines running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with latest updates from Microsoft and added to the domain. Very early builds of these VM's.

Host1 : VM1 : No Roles Added.

Host1 : VM2 : vCenter Server

Host1 : vApp VMWare Data Recovery 2.0

Host2 : VM3 : Added WSUS / IIS Roles

Host2 : VM4 : Added Remote Desktop Services / IIS

About 2 weeks ago I installed the (Dell) PCIx SAS 6Gb External HBA controller connected to a powervault 124T Tape Library on VM3 and enabled it for passthrough. I installed Backup Exec 2010 R3 and then ran live update and patched backup exec. I pushed out the remote agents to VM1 VM4 and created a backup job and it worked great. Then I tried playing around with vDR and it would work for all VM's except VM3. The error in vDR logs was "Failed to create snapshot for VM3, error -3941". So I google with the best of them and dig in to the vmware logs, but nothing is becoming apparent to me and I had no idea if the snopshot worked before the install or not, or if Backup Exec 2010 R3 broke it.

So last week I rebuild VM1, VM3 and VM4. The first thing I do is verify that vDR works on all VM's and it does without issue. Yesterday I add PCIx SAS6 device to VM3 and install Backup Exec again. After patching, I try a vDR job for VM3 only and it fails with the same error as before. So I've confirmed Backup Exec (or perhaps the PCIx SAS Controller?) breaks the vDR / Snapshot capability in VMware. So I google thinking I will get a better answer this time by linking VMware Snapshot / vDR to Backup Exec. Unfortunately that just doesn't seem to be the case, as I've found new information but it appears to be irrelevent to diagnosing the problem.

So let's get the usual KB's out of the way. Here is what I've referenced, read and tried to use to resolve the issue:

VMWare KB: 1028924

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1028924

VMWare KB: 1009558

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1009558

Symantec KB: 129724

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH129724

Symantec KB: 66073

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH66073

So here is what I've tried in this order, reboots were done between changes.

Checked to see if BeVSSProvider services were installed. They were not.

Uninstalled VMware VSS Provider from VMWare Tools. Same error.

Manually Installed BeVSSProvider. Same error.

Uninstalled BeVSSProvider. Same error.

Installed VMware VSS Provider. Same error.

MSconfig boot with all the Microsoft Services hidden, disabled all Backup Exec services, left VMware services alone. Same error.

Complete Uninstall of Backup Exec. Same error.

Complete Uninstall of VMWare Tools, reboot, reinstall of VMware Tools. Same error.

Powered Down VM3, removed SAS 6Gb HBA device from VM3, powered on and it is working.

Ok well so I guess we've narrowed down the cause I think. I'm going to post this as I'm not sure what the solution is and a quick google didn't turn up anything compelling to a resolution. Besides this information may be useful and helpful to others who experience the same problem.

The part numbers for the SAS Controller:

Manufacturer Part Number : 7RJDT

Dell Part Number : 342-0910

If you any advice, I'd much appreciate it.

Thanks!

Hello.

I am taking ESXi 5 backups with GhettoVCB and it works ok for Linux and Win 2003 but I'm having issues with Win 2008. This may be more of a Windows question but I figure many of you here also takes backups of Win 2008 Servers and it probably works ok for you...
For these the backup and restore scripts works ok but when I'm starting it I always get to Windows restore screen and can try to run StartRep.exe, BCDedit.exe, Bootrec /RebuildBcd etc. I have googled and tried many ways to get it to start properly but it always fails.

I have tried more than one Win 2008 VM and they all fail to start after a restore like this. Has anyone had something similar and know what the problem may be and what to try?

I have crate Backup Job in vSphere Data Protection

1 VM ... Server 2008 R2 ... 1 thin virtual Disk 40GB ... the Backup Job fails with Error message ->

E10055:failed to attach disk

Anybody same Problem or Idea ?

Hiya,

Did anyone succeed in backing up Windows Server 2012 VM's with VDP?

When running the job, all VMs fail to be backed up.

I see VDP is creating snapshots and removing them, but the process still fails.

Below is the event generated for each VM that VDP tried to backup.

"Execution error: E10055:Failed to attach disk.."

Once I have an update myself, I will update the topic.

Cheers!

René

I was wondering if anyone could tell me a little more about VMWare tools quiescence. I'm talking about how vmware tools will automatically run the scripts;

/usr/sbin/pre-freeze-script
/usr/sbin/post-thaw-script

Does anyone know how these are run and by whom? i.e. does vmware tools create a console session and run as the user we installed vmware tools with i.e. root?

Thanks

As you might know, VBR7 was launched late this August and since then many hundreds of customers were posting numerous bug reports on Veeam's forums. I, myself, happen to be their customer and I decided to track the most critical bugs before I migrate my clients to a new version. So, this is my list, please, add what you think are other critical bugs, that I didn't mention.

http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17224 - Critical issue and poor handling by support: it is a known issue in the old version of this software and you can see that posts in this thread date back to 2009. One might've expected that they'll deal with this issue in the new version, but, unfortunately, it is still present. Very dissapointing.

As for Veeam tech support, one thing I noticed is that they were flooded so badly with bug reports this August-September that the only answer one could've gotten from them was: "Please, go read about this in the Knowledge Base on our website". I've seen tons of replies like this on their support forums. Not very helpful, obviously, if you have a pressing issue and need a solution right away.

http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17872 - Complaints on BS called "WAN accelerator": they've added a new useless gizmo that became a problem in itself causing new complaints. Why add new buggy useless feature?

http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17887 - Poor Performance on File verification and againg support send the customer back to User Guide. Yeah, right

http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17597 - Random errors are usual thing for a new complex software, but with VBR7 one just gets too many which is frustrating. You get the error, go to their tech support forum and there they say to review the docs again. OOOOOOOOOOk!

http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17898 - Dropped support for still quite popular W2K3 x64 (this can be expanded to a problem with upgrade at Customer's site, who wants to backup to tape, etc)

These are the most critical bugs and issues, as I see it.

If you noticed other critical issues, please, comment, add you feedback here or in my blog:

http://vbscs.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/veeam-backup-replication-7-total-disaster/

I have some Windows 2008 R2 guests that are mostly used for running statistical data jobs and utilities such as printing, SFTP and application sharing. There are 2 that run SQL, but no Exchange, Sharepoint, etc. Also some Linux web servers mostly running Apache, but one MySQL server. I'm backing up the VMs strictly for disaster recovery (data backups are separate) using VM Explorer. My understanding is that the SQL server snapshots need to be quiesced to preserve database consistency. If I don't care what is in memory or capturing the state of a SAS/Stata job, the other servers don't need to be quiesced, correct? Is there another advantage to quiescing that I should be aware of?

Thanks.