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maurijo's avatar
maurijo
Level 6
10 years ago

VMWARE and mount points

My customer has an issue on a linux vm. When he restores files from his machine he can't see files that are on an other filesystem mounted under /opt.

So the VM has 3 disks, normal os, swap and data disk. In the restore gui for policy type vmware and restore type virtual machine I can see all 3 vmdks in the backup, when I select normal restore I can see all files and folders except the files and folders below the mount point.

 

Is this normal behaviour ? When we use normal agent backup (backup like physical) it's all ok and I can see all the files and folders below the mount point.

I checked the partition table and they are both msdos (not gpt) and filesystem is ext3. Using bplist commando I can't see the mount point either, it is not listed.

 

Or is it simply not possible to restore single items that are located under a mount point from a vmware type backup ?

 

NBU version is 7.6.0.3

Backing Up
Backup and Recovery
Linux
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  • maurijo's avatar
    maurijo
    10 years ago

    Marianne, thanks alot for still replying to this. I didn't receive a notification about your first reply...

    I PMed to Nicolai that I made a support case and that it was pending investigation.

    Past friday I received a solution from the symantec engineer. According to him and his testing done in his lab it has to do with the formatting of the disk. The partition type is not the same as the filesystem on it. In "df -h" it shows as a "VMWARE VMFS" system, it should show "Linux". So my customer made a partition of type vmware vmfs and formatted it using ext3...

     

    Changing the partition type can be done with fdisk but it can mean data loss... My customer will be copying the data to a new correctly formatted disk.

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  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    What file system type is /opt ?

    Mount points not available when restoring files from a Linux virtual machine

    http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO70951

  • maurijo's avatar
    maurijo
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Thanks for your reply!

     

    I see this in /etc/fstab:

    LABEL=/opt              /opt                    ext3    defaults        1 2

     

    I checked your link but considering that everything is ext3 I don't think that technote applies to this setup.

  • maurijo's avatar
    maurijo
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    So is this normal behaviour then or not ? Any more suggestions ?

  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    My host consist of only one VMDK. I do not have same issue as you in this setup .....

  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    Is /opt the only file system with that issue.

    Are all file system in vmdk files - using raw device mappings  ?

    Raw device mapped files are not direct supported with the VMware backup method - See page 37 in 

    DOCUMENTATION: Support for NetBackup 7.x in virtual environments 

    http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH127089

     

  • maurijo's avatar
    maurijo
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Nicolai,

     

    My host consists of 3 vmdk, the 2 extra ones are swap and then the disk for /opt/folder.

    Customer tells me it is regular vmdks, how can I check if it is raw device mapping ?

     

    So /opt/folder is the only one mapped on another vmdk, all of the rest is on the first vmdk and has no problems (I can see all files under those mount points, just not the files under /opt/folder)

     

    UPDATE: I had the customer do some test yesterday, I asked him to restore the machine as a vm and check if the data is there. It was there, so netbackup succeeds in backing it up as vmdk as a whole. We just cannot see the data when we select the folder in the BAR gui. So I think GRT or cataloging of the mount point is not working ?

    Also, with a normal agent based backup I can select "cross mount points", in a vmware policy this is impossible. How is this treated then by netbackup ? Because this is in fact a cross mount point, its a filesystem mounted on the system and the file system in question is located on a seperate disk (vmdk).

    That could be the explanation...? It backs up the vmdk because it is part of the vm but it will not GRT/catalog the mount point since its a cross mount point.

  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    I am pussled why you can't see files under /opt.

    I will ask fellow TA to take a look at this thread.

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Anything 'different' at VMware level about vmdk's?

    Independent disk?

    RDM disk?