BE2101 - VMWare exception Errors

[Rob_Coenders]

I'm running a Backup Exec 2010 media server based on Windows 2008R2 64 Bit for back-ups of VMware vSphere guests using the AVVI and GRT. With the vmdk's on a Lefthand San. The mediaserver has unrestricted access to the datastores on the Lefthand thru iSCSI.

Almost every Backup Full or differential does have exceptions like:

Backup- VMVCB::\\<VC-Machine>\VCGuestVm\xxxx\vm\Discovered virtual machine\Kaap1
V-79-57344-38727 - Backup Exec failed to snap virtual machine '\SIDN-KA\vm\Discovered virtual machine\Kaap1' and was unable to collect the necessary metadata to restore individual application items. You cannot perform GRT-enabled restores of application data from this backup.

I'm using a backup account that held the nessecary priviliges on the guests and can acces te machines with this account. The privileges are set using a local policy. Some machine doesn't have the exceptions when using the same account.
I also tried to use the Domain administrator for backup these machines but the results are the same.



Someone any hints?


Regards,

Rob Coenders

[Solarleaf]

Hi Rob,

I'm experiencing the same issue, however I do not have a SAN and am backing up the ESX machines to the local disk. It was working fine until this week; this error started happening in the last two days. I looked at the article the log refers to:
 http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/340489.htm

However the event logs are clean and services are running the whole time. I should mention this is a SQL server, but the event log indicates all databases are properly being backed up.

Anybody have an idea?

Thanks.

[teiva-boy]

You do you have an agent installed in the virtual guest right?

[YvieD]

The message in the backup log reporting "Backup Exec failed to snap virtual machine '\DOMAIN\vm\MAILSERVER' and was unable to collect the necessary metadata to restore individual application items. You cannot perform GRT-enabled restores of application data from this backup."   is a direct result of having one of the three Application GRT components checked in the VMWare properties box but not having that application installed on the virtual machine. The VMWare job will try to gather snapshots from the Exchange, SQL and Active Directory writers by default and throw this exception when any of those are not present.

RESOLUTION:

In the VMWare dialog of the job properties, click the "EDIT" button and de-select the options for Exchange, AD or SQL, as appropriate for each virtual server. This basically means having seperate jobs for the SQL servers, the DCs and the Exchange servers.