BE2014, Exchange 2013, VMWare, Transaction log flush not occuring

[Thernlund]

I'm having this issue with Backup Exec 2014 where my Exchange transaction logs are not being flushed when doing a VM backup through vCenter.  I discovered the issue because I was running out of space.   Turns out I had over 360,000 Exchange transaction logs. 

I did a direct datastore backup in a pinch (read: not VM backup) and the logs were flushed just fine.

So what am I doing wrong here?  Should not the Exchange transaction logs be flushed when doing a vCenter backup with BE2014?

Any advice is appreciated.

[pkh]

If AOF is on, turn it off

[Thernlund]

Thank you for the reply.

If I were to turn that off, wouldn't it be a problem for backing up VMs?  Or does that option not apply to VM backups?  Please advise.

As it happens, last night shortly after posting I noticed that both the BE VSS provider and the VMWare VSS provider were installed.  Well-known problem.  *facepalm*  I proceeded to remove the VMWarwe VSS provider *AND* manually deleted the following key from the registry...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BeVssProviderConflict

I then restarted the machine and ran a VM backup through vCenter.  Exchange transaction logs did appear to be flushed this time.

Right now I'm concerned about the reprocussions of not having VMWare's VSS provider installed.  Hmm...

[pkh · Accepted solution]

You should be using the BE provider.  You can either remove the Vmware provider manually as you have done or just push out the remote agent again to the VM.  The remote agent installation will remove the Vmware provider.

[Thernlund]

Alright.  I ran a few incremental backups after the above-mentioned full backup completed.  The logs are not being flushed with the incrementals.  They *did* flush the logs on that full backup though.

The only difference I can see here that the full I ran that did flush the logs was a one-off VM backup (through vCenter) of that VM by itself.  The subsequent incremental jobs are in a recurring job that backs up many VMs, incrementally during the week and a full on Sunday.

I don't think a backup of the Exchange VM has to run in a job by itself in order to truncate logs, hm?  That seems like it'd be silly.

Unfortunately I have to wait until Sunday to see if the recurring full does what it's supposed to do.

I do not have the AOFO checked, I do have the main GRT box checked, but not for individual apps.

^^ There's probably a question in there someplace, but I'm not sure what it is right now.  At this point I'm tired and getting kind of angry at this thing.  Have to wait see what happens I guess.  Hmph.  

Any advice off the cuff is certainly appreciated.

[pkh · Accepted solution]

If I understand things correctly, only a full backup will flush the transaction logs.  An incremental backup only backs up the logs.

[Thernlund]

Now that I've had some sleep, that sounds reasonable to me.  Hmm.

I'll see on Sunday if this thing is working right.

[Thernlund]

Sunday backup worked as expected.  Exchange logs were flushed/truncated.

Seems like removing the conflicting VSS provider and the above registry key did the trick.  

I also unchecked the AOFO as suggested.  As a side note on that, seems like the AOFO only applies to file-level agent-based backups.  VM backups are snapped by VMWare at the hypervisor-level.  As such, no file-level snap is necessary, or even possible.  Seems obivous now.  Pff.  I was seeing messages in the job logs that said "Volume not snappable", or something of that nature.  Not anymore with AOFO off.

Anyway, thanks for the tips.  Appreciated.