Can BackupExec 2012 skip failed VM image backups?

[ForemanNZ]

Can BackupExec 2012 skip a failed VM drive backup - if Vista can skip failed file moves/copies, and Vista is a pile of poo, surely its not that hard!

Backup 1 VM tree, 3rd server backup fails, then BackupExec stops the job - do I need to create a job for backing up each VM to prevent this from happening, because my end of month backups now need to be checked to see whats backed up!

[Backup_Exec1]

Hi When you are selecting virtual machine under ESX host or Hyperv host you can select whatever virtual machines you need to backup instead of selecting all. Also if you can give more information is this ESX or Hyper and if only monthly backup is failing then what error it is failing on a virtual machine would be good Thanks

[pkh]

Unfortunately, backups are not like copying files.  If a file is missing from the backup, the backup set is useless because it could be the one file that will cause the server to fail to boot.  Hence, the backup job will fail when a file is missing.  There is no point in carrying on the backup if the backup of a file fails.  It is better to fail the job at that point, rather than waste x hours and hold up other jobs.

Likewise, there is no point carrying on the backup of other VM's because the VM that failed to backup successfully could be part of a Sharepoint farm. and the rest of the backups would be useless.

I suspect this is one reason why BE 2012 went server-centric.  If a job is backing up only one server, the failure in one server backup will not affect the rest of the servers.

[ForemanNZ]

The backup failed for an unknown reason, but it is a new server so I suspect theres some agent missing - for this I would not expect BE to fail.

[Backup_Exec1]

Hi

It would be good if you post the entire job log here to understand what is going on or as said above you can backup only those machine you wanted from the selection of ESX host or Hyper V host

Thanks

[pkh]

If you suspect it is an agent problem, why don't you push out the agents again?

If you know which VM is having the problem, isolate it by backing it up in a separate job.

[ForemanNZ · Accepted solution]

After reinstalling BE, backups of the problem VM are working now, but I have a new problem that I've posted elsewhere (BE server backup only 4GB)