Forum Discussion

Dead-Data's avatar
Dead-Data
Level 5
10 years ago

VMware based incrementals not working

Hi,

I'm having issues with getting Incremental backups of VMware virtual machines working using the AVVI agent.

V-79-57344-38324 - Incremental\\Differential backup methods are not supported for this VM. The backup job failed, since the option 'to fall back to a full backup' was not selected. V-79-57344-38366 -

Backup Exec 2014. vSphere 5.5

I've confirmed that VM hardware version is appropriate and that CBT is enabled and working.

Full backups have completed successfully.

What can caused the above message and incrementals to not be possible?

Thanks

2014
Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructure
Backing Up
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec
Not Applicable
Troubleshooting
Virtualization
  • VJware's avatar
    VJware
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Is this error occuring for specific VMs or all VMs ?

    Try resetting the CBT on the affected VM. This would involve a reboot of the VM.

    Are the full + incrementals targetted to the same storage type i.e. disk or tape ?

    Are these VMs all running Windows or another OS ?

  • Dead-Data's avatar
    Dead-Data
    Level 5
    10 years ago

    There are around 500 VMs across 20 backup jobs.  Some jobs are working fine, others don't work for any VM within the job. 

    Does the whole job has to succeed without exceptions for incrementals to be allowed?

    Have previously used PowerCLI to enable CBT were it was not already enabled.  All VMs have then had new snaps created and dropped.  Which I understood was sufficient to reset CBT.  Certainly it gets the CTK files running. 

    Restarting the VMs is problematic as it's a production environment.

    All jobs go via CASO to set of MMS servers with OST dedupe storage as target.

    90% of estate is Windows.

  • VJware's avatar
    VJware
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Does the whole job has to succeed without exceptions for incrementals to be allowed?

    Not necessary. Would need to have a look @ the job logs to check which VMs are specifically reporting the exception.

    Were any of the VMs powered off / offline during the incremental backup ?

    Are all VMs part of the same host or different hosts ? If multiple hosts are involved, pls ensure all hosts are licensed for vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP).

    And resetting / enabling CBT definitely requires a reboot. If possible, try resetting and reboots in small batches of VMs and check if the incrementals succeed. If they do, then you can accordingly plan for the remaining VMs.

     

     

  • Dead-Data's avatar
    Dead-Data
    Level 5
    10 years ago

    Jobs are set to exclude powered off VMs, also not allowed to fallback to full backups.

     

    VMware environment fully licensed for Enterprise Plus feature set.

    (500 VMs spread across 50 hosts in 8 host clusters for this datacenter)

     

    Server groupings within jobs may well span host and datastore clusters, haven't looked at this aspect.

    Host and Storage DRS are in use, so VMs and associated VMDKs could will move between hosts and datastores between backups.

     

    OK, will target one of the server groups where restart requests will have less disruption.