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Backup Exec 2014 - Cannot do Hyper-V VM incrementals on Server 2012

today
Level 4

None of the Hyper-V VM clients on my Server 2012 host can do an incremental backup.  I get the following error.

A Full backup was run on this virtual machine, since the option to fall back to a full backup was selected. Incremental\\Differential backup methods are not supported for this virtual machine.

All of these failing clients have no problem with the full backups.  The clients are either Server 2008 R2 or Server 2012 - both types fail.  All clients have the latest appropriate Hyper-V client tools/drivers installed.

I can find no problems in the log files.

I am having no trouble with incremental backups with the VMs on my Server 2008 R2 host.

These VMs are all running on VHDX files, on simple volumes.  Very simple expanding VHDX, no deduplication going on or anything else fancy.  I've checked and I'm pretty sure these hosts all have a logical sector size of 512.  The VHDX files are all on the local drives of the Hyper-V host - no iSCSI or shares or clustering, etc.

Is the problem is that "Symantec incremental backup" doesn't work on Server 2012 Hyper-V VMs, or maybe doesn't work with VHDX files?

Thanks for any insight.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

today
Level 4

I fixed this problem, but I don't know exactly how. I think it has to do with me trying to move the data/logs/catalogs directories to another drive. The C: drive of my media server had only 60GB available. Backup Exec does a horrible thing and writes its data into the Program Files directory. This is pure evil and violates standard Windows programming guidelines. So I used the BEUtility to move the logs and catalogs directories, but that wasn't the biggest offender. After stopping all services, I went into the registry and pointed the Data folder reference in there to another drive as well (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\Backup Exec For Windows\Backup Exec\Engine\Misc\Data Path), plus I moved all the data that was in there.

However, even though I had moved where Data Path pointed to, BE 2014 still insists on writing some Hyper-V temporary information in "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Data". This means there is a hard-coded path in Backup Exec that should be changed to use the registry entry instead.

I turned on debugging and caught BE looking for some thumbprint data in "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Data" that wasn't there because I had moved the Data folder. Shortly thereafter, it would throw an error that incrementals weren't supported on this virtual machine.  Remember, this is a bug, because it should be using the Data Path key in the registry and it clearly isn't.

Here's the cuplrit:

1366    BEREMOTE    5076    2014-06-17 4:35:29 AM    9188    [fsys\vrtsrv]        - VirtualServer::AttachToDLE: failed to open 'C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Data\Hyper-V\Temp\DADD3CD8-C42D-48F1-B26B-C549DD1829F4\A9C309AE-0305-45D5-9F5A-CB3CEE2E7922\FingerPrintDiskMap.txt' - err: 2 3

The "solution" to this problem was to shut my machine down, move a bunch of storage around, and expand the C: drive of my media server from 60GB to 1TB. This insures that I will never run into a problem with Backup Exec consuming all of the space on the drive. It also means I can use all the Backup Exec defaults and not jack around with registry editing. It also means I use the Backup Exec software with all of its default settings, so this is most likely to work, because this configuration was the most tested configuration. So I tore down the previous install and reinstalled everything with default settings for all paths and no registry editing.

Symantec has a larger problem with this product. They need to allow an alternate path in the setup where you can store ALL OF THE DATA without worrying about running out of space on your Operating System boot drive! It is very common to have servers where the C: drive is partitioned to 100GB or less FROM THE FACTORY.

Besides, the C: drive is not really an appropriate area to store lots and lots of data on a server.

 

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3 REPLIES 3

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Are any of the vhdx files larger than 2TB (max size not current use if you are using thin provisioning)

 

 

today
Level 4

Thank you for the reply.

None of the VMs have VHDX bigger than 500GB.  Some of the VMs have only a single dynamic expanding 60GB VHDX.  Two of the VMs have pre-allocated VHDX.  No matter what the combination, all of the VMs on that Server 2012 host fail with the same error message.

 

today
Level 4

I fixed this problem, but I don't know exactly how. I think it has to do with me trying to move the data/logs/catalogs directories to another drive. The C: drive of my media server had only 60GB available. Backup Exec does a horrible thing and writes its data into the Program Files directory. This is pure evil and violates standard Windows programming guidelines. So I used the BEUtility to move the logs and catalogs directories, but that wasn't the biggest offender. After stopping all services, I went into the registry and pointed the Data folder reference in there to another drive as well (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\Backup Exec For Windows\Backup Exec\Engine\Misc\Data Path), plus I moved all the data that was in there.

However, even though I had moved where Data Path pointed to, BE 2014 still insists on writing some Hyper-V temporary information in "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Data". This means there is a hard-coded path in Backup Exec that should be changed to use the registry entry instead.

I turned on debugging and caught BE looking for some thumbprint data in "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Data" that wasn't there because I had moved the Data folder. Shortly thereafter, it would throw an error that incrementals weren't supported on this virtual machine.  Remember, this is a bug, because it should be using the Data Path key in the registry and it clearly isn't.

Here's the cuplrit:

1366    BEREMOTE    5076    2014-06-17 4:35:29 AM    9188    [fsys\vrtsrv]        - VirtualServer::AttachToDLE: failed to open 'C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Data\Hyper-V\Temp\DADD3CD8-C42D-48F1-B26B-C549DD1829F4\A9C309AE-0305-45D5-9F5A-CB3CEE2E7922\FingerPrintDiskMap.txt' - err: 2 3

The "solution" to this problem was to shut my machine down, move a bunch of storage around, and expand the C: drive of my media server from 60GB to 1TB. This insures that I will never run into a problem with Backup Exec consuming all of the space on the drive. It also means I can use all the Backup Exec defaults and not jack around with registry editing. It also means I use the Backup Exec software with all of its default settings, so this is most likely to work, because this configuration was the most tested configuration. So I tore down the previous install and reinstalled everything with default settings for all paths and no registry editing.

Symantec has a larger problem with this product. They need to allow an alternate path in the setup where you can store ALL OF THE DATA without worrying about running out of space on your Operating System boot drive! It is very common to have servers where the C: drive is partitioned to 100GB or less FROM THE FACTORY.

Besides, the C: drive is not really an appropriate area to store lots and lots of data on a server.