VM restores as read only

[GarryB]

Good morning all,

Can anyone help with this one, I have several Linux servers I need to backup.  The servers are running on ESX 4 and being backup up using BE 2010 with the agent for Vertual Infrastucture.  The backup are running fine, however when I test a restore some of the servers boot up with the OS running in read only mode, where as the other are running fine. 

I am able to clone and restore snapshots on the same servers and this works fine.

Any Ideas ?

[Simon_B_ · Accepted solution]

I guess this is because of the linux file System. When an AVVI snapshot is performed it will do exactly that on the ESX Server: Perform a Snapshot. If the IO is not frozen (which is, afaik, still an experimental feature of vmware tools on linux and thus not enabled by default) it could be that there are still active transactions in the moment of the snapshot.

EXT3 as journaling file system will recognize that when booting up the first time after a restore and will demand a fsck (and maybe boot into ro file system).

You should verify that vmware tools are in place on every system and maybe manually enable the sync driver of the vmware tools on some test machines and see if the error is still reproducible.