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
VMWare KB: 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!