Backup Exec hangs while backing up VMware VMs (snapshot)
We are having this issue for weeks/months now : while processing a backup-to-disk job using Backup Exec 2012 SP1a VMware infrastructure agent the backup process hangs at some point. We are running a VMware 5 (Build 768111) environment with a fibre channel SAN which is being backed up by a Windows 2008 R2 BE2012 SP1a (Verion 14.0 Rev. 1798 64 Bit) VM.
At some point in the backup process - and different VMs - I can see that there is no progress anymore for hours or days in my vSphere client (percentage of the job freezes) and in BE the MB/min indicator decreases and no changes to the number of backed up Bytes. This is only when using backup-to-disk, which actually is a (VMFS 5) partition within the BE virtual machine (drive letter V: size 1,5TB). Last time it stopped at 95% of our backend Exchange 2010 server (running, approx. 300GB), last time before it stopped while backing up a powered off Windows Server 2003 test system (approx. 30GB).
The only thing to do is hit cancel at the BE machine (which actually wouldn't cancel or stop the job), then reboot the BE machine, cancel the VMware job in vSphere client and then "delete" the VMware snapshot to return to merge the changes on the disks.
Gladly we back up all data (non-VMs) separately directly to tape (VMware Direct I/O connected SCSI LTO juke box), so I have at least my data at hand, but I don't understand why even a snapshot of a powered off system halts the Symantec VMware job. Snapshots manually initiated in vSphere client have not been an issue yet, disk space is available, too. Have not found any similar problem desciption in Google...
Any help really appreaciated!
Hi everyone,
finally everything seems to be OK now. For me the solution was
1.) uninstalling VMware VSS providers where BE VSS providers (agents) are installed,
2.) deactivating GRT within these backups (for me not needed anyway) and
3.) specifically choose Microsoft VSS provider under "Advanced Open File"
For 3.) I got this hint from the Symantec support technician who helped me with another problem; he basically said that for VM AVVI backup taking snapshots under "Advanced Open File" must be activated, but the default to automatically chosse the snapshot provider is not the best setting because this could result in the problems described in this thread. The best choice is "System - Microsoft VSS provider".
That was my choice yesterday and for the first time the job finished without any problem :-)
Hope this helps!
