Not able to restore an 'online' VM correctly with 12.5 Virtual Server Agent

[JNUSSLE]

We are specifically interested in backing up a Hyper-V Virtual Machine while it is online.  According to the documentation, the VM has to be running M$ 2003 SP2 at a minimum to be backed-up while online, so we built a VM to this specification, and it has the Hyper-V additions (services) installed and running on it as well.

It appears to backup fine, but even with the few restore attributes set apparently correctly, it restores the VM in an OFF state and then starts it, eventhough it was backed up while online.

It was our impression that the advantage of backing-up an Online VM was that you could restore it to that point-in-time - i.e., like it was 'saved', and then 'restored'.   Does anyone have any ideas why the restore is putting us back to a boot state ?  I can't imagine this is correct, because it was not really cleanly shut-down or paused...

Thanks for the help !

Message Edited by JNUSSLE on 10-13-2008 04:33 PM

Message Edited by JNUSSLE on 10-13-2008 04:41 PM

[Backup246525344]

I had to restore a VM just yesterday and it restored it to a non booted state (which is what I expected and wanted).  The Virtual Machine agent backed it up while it was online.....but when I restored it the VM was offline and I booted it.

[JNUSSLE]

If the VM was truely backed-up while running, then wouldn't it follow that just restoring the .VHD from a stopped state could cause it to be corrupted based on the fact that its state was running during the backup (doing work, changing the filesystem, changing what is in memory, etc.).  How could the VHD not be corrupted ?

I did a couple backups and restores of a running 2003 SP2 VM, and several times I got the dreaded eventid 6008 after the restore started the VM.  I think this supports my concern.

"The previous system shutdown at 9:23:14 AM on 10/14/2008 was unexpected."

What do you think ?

 

[Backup246525344]

Well I didn't code the agent but I'm sure it works simliar to SQL/Exchange/Dominio/AD etc where you can backup while services are running without any corruption.

Right after you do the VM backup is there anything in the eventID in the VS regaurding a system shut down or are you only getting that after you do the restore?

[JNUSSLE]

There are no abnormal events in the VM after the backup, only after the file(s) have been restored and the VM was automatically booted by BackupExec do I get the 6008 event.

Thanks

[Backup246525344]

Crazy I didn't know backupexec would auto boot the VM after it was restored.  In my case I:

Shut down the VM

Restored from Backup Exec

Booted the VM (in Hyper-V manager) and my image came up without issue

*edit* looks like I completly missed the settings under tools options for that.  Maybe its a bug related to that feature? 

Message Edited by mememememmememememe on 10-14-2008 08:35 AM

[Argo16]

I have exactly the same issue.
Actually I've found a workaround shutting down the Hyper-V Volume Shadow Copy Requestor on the guest machine. This results in temporary pause of the VM (some seconds) just before the backup starts.

Any update?

Simone