BE 2012 VM ESX 5.0.0u1 VSS Quiesce issue

[Jordon]

Hi there.

I'm getting a failure to back up one of my vmware esx 5.0.0u1 servers.  I added the host as a vmware host and scheduled my backup. Every time I tried to back up it comes back that all of the guests failed to generate shadow compies due to not being able to quiesce them.  

This host is not highly loaded.  My other host was ok after I deleted the server from backup exec console and re-added it.  I tried that with this server and I still have the same issue.  Some online articles suggest upgrading the vmware tools and backup exec agent on the machine.  They're running the latest version.  The only difference here is that this host is running vmware 5.0.0u1 and my other host is 5.0.0.  

My only recourse at the moment is to perform guest backups directly.

My vshepere client reports the backupexec user logging in and out of the server, but no other errors that I can tell in the recent tasks or event views indicating that vmware saw an issue.

Thanks!

[CraigV]

Hi,

The BE 2012 SCL only shows vSphere 5 as being supported...this might explain why the host with U1 doesn't run backups.

Check the link below:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH175581

You might want to add this in as an Idea, or contact Symantec and find out when/if support is added.

I do know there are a couple of new updates for BE, so patch your media server and check again...

Thanks! 

[Jordon · Accepted solution]

I'm using vmware esxi v5 free edition, so am wondering if they're enforcing the inability to backup the vmware host using 3rd party tools.  both of my hosts are free, and the v5.0.0 one backs up fine, and the u1 does not.  

I'll see if I can downgrade the vm esx 5u1 to esx 5.0

[Jordon]

I did some digging around and found that my backup problem might be related to the free version of esxi v5. There was an "unintentional" change that allowed the original v5 esxi to allow backups via the vstorage api, and they intended to fix that.  perhaps this is why it now doesn't work in my esxi v5u1

http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?t=10691

Still in Symantec's SCL it stats that the Free version of esxi requires a minimum license to support backups.  Having a paid license, such as essentials, to me makes the free product no longer free.  so then it's not the free version with minimum license, but basically it's a paid license that is required.

I'm further confused by vmware's free esxi page saying the benefit to their free product is backups. :\
http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/overview.html which states that you can do non-intrusive backups.

i'm testing my theory by setting up a new esxi host in evaluation mode, checking the backup, then installing the free license and checking again, all while using v5u1

[Jordon]

Booo

I have verified that backup exec could backup esxi v5, but not v5u1 not because of update 1 not being on the SCL list, but because vmware fixed their unintential feature in the free product to allow backups at the host level.

I tried it in eval mode, worked.  put in my free key, stopped working.

I either have to do guest level backups, downgrade to 5.0 or by essentials kit. :(

[pkh]

BE needs the vStorage API which is only available with a licenced version of ESXi.  The free version does not have the vStorage API.  This vStorage API requirement is since BE 2010 when BE switch to using vStorage API, instead of VCB.