I'm using VDP 6.1 in ESXi 6 environment cluster to backup virtual machines and I noted the same Windows guest OS has different kind of backup:

Crash Consistent or application consistent backup

E.g. the same job for Windows 2008 sometimes gets Crash Consistent backup and it sometimes get application consistent backup?

So logs show for some day "application consistent backup and for other days "Crash Consistent backup"

What is the reason to get different types of backup for the same job? In this server there is no database.

thanks

Olá,

Atualizamos a versão do VDP para a 6.1, porem não é possível selecionar o novo appliance no drop-down do VDP para gerenciá-lo (aparece somente o nome da VM do appliance antigo);

Verificamos que existia um alerta de consistência no novo VDP, iniciando então o processo de verificação de integridade para verificar se este é o motivo da VM não estar na lista de appliances válidos no VDP, porem não obtivemos sucesso.

Acompanhamos a verificação pelo web client e também executando o comando "avmaint hfscheckstatus --ava" no ssh. O campo status estava como "completed" e o result deve estar como "OK";

Iniciamos o serviço de manutenção com o comando "dpnctl start maint". A partir deste momento, o alerta referente à integridade de checkpoints desapareceu, porem ainda não aparece o novo appliance no drop-down do VDP para gerenciá-lo.

---

Histórico de todo procedimento feito

-Inicialmente, foi perdido o vCenter, que estava na versão 5.5, instalado em servidor Windows;

-Foi criado um novo vCenter (VCSA), um novo datacenter e novo cluster, adicionando os mesmos hosts que estavam no vCenter anterior. Este novo vCenter, na versão 6.5;

-Após a criação do novo vCenter, verificamos que não existia compatibilidade entre o VDP 5.8 e o novo vCenter (plugin do VDP não aparecia no vCenter web client);

-Realizada tentativa de atualização do VDP 5.8 para 6.0.5 sem sucesso. Ocorreu problema por falta de espaço em um datastore. Abortamos a atualização;

-Com o problema de falta de espaço, tivemos que excluir o snapshot do VDP original;

-Para acelerar o processo, decidimos importar os discos de dados do VDP 5.8 em um novo appliance na versão 6.1 e recriar os jobs de backup. Procedimento finalizado com sucesso;

-A partir da importação e configuração do novo appliance e dos discos do appliance antigo, o plugin do VDP voltou a aparecer no web client;

-Não é possível selecionar o novo appliance no drop-down do VDP para gerenciá-lo (aparece somente o nome da VM do appliance antigo);

-Verifiquei que existia um alerta de consistência no novo VDP, iniciando então o processo de verificação de integridade para verificar se este é o motivo da VM não estar na lista de appliances válidos no VDP.

Hi all.

We have deployed a VDP 6,0.2 over a vSphere 5.5 on which we will integrate a Data Domain as storage for backups.

However, after going to the storage tab there is no "gear icon" to get action list such as "Add Data Domain".

We are running vCenter Server / ESXi hosts 5.5,

We have and up to date Adobe Flash Player Plugin installed

We have tested from different browers above the release requested in the documentation:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 10.0.19 and later.
Mozilla Firefox 34 and later.
Google Chrome 39 and later.

We don't know what can be failing, but at the end as we cannot see the icon to add Data Domain, this integration cannot be done.

Do you have any suggestion/idea what can we do?

Thanks in advance.

In short, I am looking for help recovering "inaccessible" VMs.

Background:

My operating theory is that during maintenance on the UPS connected to our SAN rack, I accidentally tripped the power on one of three fiber channel switches. When this happened, roughly 30 VMs were in vMotion through that switch, and as a result of the power loss several datastores hosted on the SAN were disconnected and listed as inaccessible. The datastores did not reconnect to effected hosts as expected (FC connections are redundant, there was always a path from host to storage array). The roughly 30 VMs previously mentioned were unresponsive. Attempting to open VMRC for any of the affected VMs failed with error: "Unable to connect to the MKS: Could not connect to pipe \\.\pipe\vmware-authpipe within retry period." These VMs reported vmtools not running, 0 bytes allocated storage, but with static CPU load (seemed stuck at whatever the last recorded load was). No commands to the affected VMs completed successfully, most timed out or continued to run indefinitely.

I migrated off unaffected VMs to unaffected hosts. This process completed without issue. Afterwards, all affected hosts were restarted and successfully reconnected to the datastores. At this point, I expected the inaccessible VMs would be identified on the datastores and return to normal operation. This did not happen, and the VMs are still listed as inaccessible.

Brief Version/Config Info:

ESXi 5.5.0 update 3 (VMKernel Release Build 3248547)

vCenter Server Appliance 5.5.0.30500 Build 4180648

All hosts are part of a single cluster which has vSphere DRS enabled (automated)

All datastores are part of a single datastore cluster with Storage DRS enabled (automated) and Storage I/O Control, VMFS5

Steps Taken:

1. Checked logs, noted "nvram write failed" and datastore timeout errors on affected hosts (read Powering on a virtual machine fails with the error: NVRAM write failure (2097213) | VMware KB but was unable to power off/on the affected VMs to allow creation of a new .nvram file)
2. Verified files still present on datastore, noted presence of *.vmx.lck file for affected VMs (tried steps listed here: can't register/add to inventory a vm because of locked file)
3. A colleague attempted removing the lock file, but was unsuccessful, I believe they followed this: Investigating virtual machine file locks on ESXi (10051) | VMware KB
4. Attempted removing affected VM from inventory and re-registering with vSphere (tried steps listed here: How to register/add a VM to the Inventory in vCenter Server (1006160) | VMware KB)
5. Attempted created new VM and attaching .vmdk from an affected VM, this process was not successful

Questions:

• What other actions can I take to restore these VMs? The files exist on the datastore, but something is stopping me at every step. I am not against retrying all steps taken previously to record more specific info on why they failed if this would help.
• None of these were backed up--this was a failure in our deployment that I intended to correct later this year. What is the recommended method to backup VMs? I have researched several third-party products but I'm leaning towards VDP (really appreciated this paper: https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere/vmware-vsphere-data-protection-overview.pdf ),

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this. I was fortunate that the failed VMs were not critical, but one of them is important and I would like to understand why I cannot restore it from the datastore.

- Oliver

In vmware-data-protection-administration-guide-61

I can find the configurations:

I don‘t understand it.

VMs need 30T disk space to backup.

How should I configure it in VDP?

Does VDP need separate datastore?

I am installing the VDP 6.1.2 Appliance .OVA file on vCenter 6.5 via the Deploy OVF/OVA tool. VDP installs fine, and I configure VDP through the configuration server after installation and confirm its network settings, test the connection to vCenter, choose the datastore, create the backup disks, etc. The server then reboots. A "task" for this installation in the vCenter dashboard seems to stop at 70% for the VDP install. Regardless, I have tried restarting the vCenter instance as well, logging out and back in, etc. yet I do not see a VDP icon/option. When I access the VDP configuration URL after what I thought was a successful configuration, I am prompted to enter/confirm all my details again as though VDP never finished installing - from what I read in the documentation I am supposed to see some kind of status information.

What am I doing wrong here? Everything *seems* to install properly. The appliance reboots. I log out and back into vCenter. I get no VDP icon / option. It seems to never get past the configuration and vCenter integration stage. I have installed it FOUR times now with the same situation.

What's going on here?

Thanks in advance!

hi,

hope you can advice me selecting a backup solution, 

We  need to buy Essentials Kit, these do not include data protection so we will need to search for a alternative to backups VMs (powered on).

i would like to use veeam but the licences required increase price too much (1 licence for each socket) so im looking for an alternative, what you could recommend?

until now the cheaper i found was cloudbacko, but searching on forums there are many negative opinions.

Hi,

Can I joined two vCSA 6 in linked mode after vCenter been installed, the use case is vMotion cross vCenter

I am looking for help with trying to restore/receover a VM with a corrupt (not recoverable) delta.vmdk file, the file was partially written over with other data.

No backups exist (a mistake during the attempt of a backup operation caused the corruption)

Background Info:

The VM has had snapshots taken in the past

The VM was shutdown normally to perform a cli manual backup operation on the file system. 

VM has 2 disks inside of it

Esxi host is Vsphere 5.5

VM guest OS is windows 2008R2

It appears the corrupted delta file belongs to the first disk (the OS)  FILE-Primary-000001-delta.vmdk

I understand I have lost some of the data from the disk "FILE-Primary.vmdk", I hope only from the time of the last snapshot being taken,  around the May 09 time frame. 

My hope is to be able to get the system restored with the FILE-Primary.vmdk having the data from the May 9th time frame and then the other disk "FILE-Primary_3.vmdk"  up to the time the system was shutdown July 8th.

As an accidental VM admin,  and the inability to get to Dell/VM support until probably tomorrow morning I am hoping to gain some insights from this forum.

Attachment contains the non-flat and non-delta files from the directory.

Thank you  in advance of any insights and support provided.

John D

Error message during start up

**************

An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM FILE-Primary.

Failed to start the virtual machine.

Module DiskEarly power on failed.

Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/6ac399c6-b1733377/FILE-Primary/FILE-Primary-000001.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

One of the parameters supplied is invalid

**************

***************

List of files in directory

************

-rw-------. 1 root root     384624640 Jul  8 18:27 FILE-Primary-000001-delta.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           327 Jun 15 13:39 FILE-Primary-000001.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root    8810139648 Jul  8 11:54 FILE-Primary_3-000001-delta.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           333 Jun 15 13:39 FILE-Primary_3-000001.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root 1099511627776 May  9 02:29 FILE-Primary_3-flat.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           554 May  9 01:58 FILE-Primary_3.vmdk

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root            73 Jun 14 10:29 FILE-Primary-4dae1ab3.hlog

-rw-------. 1 root root   42949672960 May  9 02:29 FILE-Primary-flat.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root          8684 Jul  8 11:54 FILE-Primary.nvram

-rw-------. 1 root root         29079 May  9 02:32 FILE-Primary-Snapshot2.vmsn

-rw-------. 1 root root           550 May  9 01:58 FILE-Primary.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           568 May  9 02:32 FILE-Primary.vmsd

-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root          3555 Jun 15 13:38 FILE-Primary.vmx

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root          4372 Jun 15 15:31 FILE-Primary.vmxf

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        396546 May  8 13:24 vmware-11.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        393369 May  9 02:30 vmware-12.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        281798 Jun 14 10:29 vmware-13.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        150976 Jun 14 10:29 vmware-14.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        279941 Jul  8 11:54 vmware-15.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root         88918 Jul  9 04:19 vmware-16.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root         88835 Jul  9 04:36 vmware.log

************

I have an ESXi 5.5 host stuck with all my hardware in passthrough mode, so it cannot find the datastore. The ESXi OS boots up and in the ESXi GUI client from my Windows machine, I can disable passthrough, but upon reboot it all goes back to passthrough again. So I tried to edit the esx.conf file that is in the ESX host OS image using SSH, set it all to "vmkernel" instead of "passthrough" but the same thing happens: It all goes back to passthrough after reboot.

So the last resort I have is to grab the s.v00 image from the 250MB FAT partition where the ESX OS image resides, mount the image on another machine, edit the esx.conf file offline and then let it boot.

I can't find any info on opening/mounting the s.v00 image file. Any ideas?

Hi,

We received few scheduled backup errors for jobs set up for 'individual disks backup' (x1 hard disk) with the 'fall back to the non-quiesced backup if quiescence fails' option checked.

Error:

"VDP: An unexpected error occurred with the following error code: 10020."

Client Log:

2017-07-20 19:46:30 server System-serverSystem-1501535800867 Info <0000>: <workorder_finished pid="vmimagew" startUTC="2017-07-10 10:00:00" msgver="1" pidnum="3016" finishUTC="2017-07-10 11:00:00" errorcode="170" wid="server System-server System-1501535800867" errormessage="code 170: completed with errors, client log should be examined" errorrealm="Plugin 3016-vmimagew" />

Unable to find a fix/or much information RE this, please help.

Let me know if need more info (I'm new to VDP).

Thank you

Hi all,

I'm not able to find the minimal ESX license needed for MS DPM compatibilty.

What I found so far:

- DPM uses VADP API which I identified as vSphere vStorage API.

- According to datasheet, the Essentials Kit includes VMware vSphere vStorage APIs

- However, according to Thomas Krenn's article the "Data recovery" feature is included only in Essentials Kit Plus (see https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/VMware_vSphere_6_Editions_Overview).

So now I'm wondering if Essentials Kit is enough for both backup and restore, or just for backup (if restore feature is included only in Essentials Plus)...

Does anyone know the answer?

Thank you,

R.*

Hi,

I cancelled in the middle of snapshot deleting process all the snapshot configuration file deleted. I able up the vm but the data's are available before the snapshot date. In datastore i can see delta & snapshot files how merge/recover data from delta.vmdk.

WHMSG.vmdk

WHMSG-flat.vmdk - 40GB

WHMSG_1.vmdk

WHMSG_1-flat.vmdk - 500 GB

WHMSG_1-00001-delta.vmdk - 75GB -> i want restore/merge this vmdk.

note: 2 Hard disk (40GB & 500 GB)

Pls help

Long story short - a folder was deleted from the datastore which contained the flat and descriptor file for one drive on a server containing very important data. This was also the time when we found out the backups were corrupt. We have the *000001-ctk.vmdk, *000001-delta.vmdk, and 000001.vmdk file for this drive. Is it possible to recover the main descriptor and flat file (or the entire deleted directory) from this?

Any help is greatly appreciated

In my home lab I am attempting to manage proxy throughput by reducing the number of simultaneous backup are restore clients via the vSphere Data Protection Configuration Utility web interface.  The web interface will show that the number has been reduced from 8 to the selected amount, but when I monitor the activity via the mccli utility on the VDP appliance it shows that eight VM backups are running as part of the backup job.  I have not been able to test or replicate this with a clients cluster since we do not currently have any clients running VDP 6.1, and thus I am also unable to open a case on this issue.  Has anyone else seen this type of behavior, or know where in the VDP appliance CLI I might be able to force this setting?

Currently the interoperability matrix states that ESXi 5.1 is compatible with VDP 6.1.3.  I don't believe this is accurate.  With VDP 6.1.3 using VDDK 6.5 I don't believe this is supported.  The VDDK release notes say 6.5 was not tested to be compatible to work with esxi 5.1.

I have a customer with VDP 6.1.3 and ESXi 5.1 and the VM backups fail with a bunch of connection and SSL errors in the job logs.  Long story why this scenario happened and will be easy enough to update esxi to 5.5.   Regardless I believe the interoperability matrix should be corrected.

Release Notes

http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/sim/interop_matrix.php?

Hello !

I have a problem.

Every day I see error for one of my servers in "Reports": 

2016-07-05T06:00:47.971+06:00 error -[7F2F3FA5E700] [Originator@6876 sub=transport]

   Cannot use mode hotadd to access [Cisco2-datastore] FileSrv1/FileSrv1_1.vmdk: Cannot mount using this method.

   (Mounting VM vm-3198 using transport hotadd failed : Cannot access datastore for one of the disks of Virtual Machine FileSrv1..)

In the same time, I havn't this error for other servers.

I have a question regarding updating a OVF Export file.

I am using a licensed Vsphere essentials kit Version 6.5.0,

I have backed up VMs using export OVA template.

If I wish to update my backed up OVF's can I snapshot the running machine and just copy the base vmdk file from the datastore to

my backups OVF directory in order to "Refresh" the backup?

Thanks in advance for any advice

Hi,

In the VDP 6.1 Administration Guide, the number of VDP appliances supported per ESXi6 host is not mentioned.

Is it still only 1 VDP appliance supported per ESXi host?

Thanks.

Hi.

We have VDP 6.1.2 with 4T capacity (6T net space). We tried to expand capacity from 4T -> 6T (6T ->9T).

On the vdp-configure storage tab we choosed Expand Storage and got the following message:

expand storage

-vdp: There are incorrect number of disks associated with vdp appliance.

We have two 4Tb storage luns assigned to VDP and one 4Tb lun is created for the expansion.

Now it seems that we cannot expand disks couse we don't have enough space on existing luns.

And becouse this error we can't assign the third lun to vdp to cover that required space.

Is there a chicken egg proglem or am I missed something?

How do we assign more disk space (lun) to VDP so we can do the disk expansion?

Enviroment is ESXi 6 with latest updates

Regards

Pasi