cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

.VMX files not listed when creating backup list using VMware agent

agwilson4500
Not applicable
Hello, I am trialling Backup Exec 2010, looking at the possibility of backing up our small VMware cluster. I have loaded the agent and my vCenter server is found with all the VMs listed below it. However when I select any one of the VMs I only see the VMDK file. Is this normal? I was expecting to see the VMX file as well as the other files usually found when browsing a VM datastore. I am using VMware vSphere 4.0 Update 1 with the VMs on an iSCSI SAN.
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

gdassieu
Level 3
Hello All,

I just wanted to let you know that the problem is solved for me. I had to upgrade to BE2010 R2, and now it's fine.

VMX file still does not appear in the listing when creating a restore job, but it is correctly restored along with the VMDKs when choosing the VMware redirect option.

Kind regards,

Gaston

View solution in original post

16 REPLIES 16

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited
Hi,

Your first point of call should be to get hold of the Backup Exec 2010 Admin Guide from the link below...

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/338514.htm


...give the section on backing up VMs a read, and then see if it helps.
Please report back here either way.

Laters!

sugurlu
Level 2
Hello,
I have the same problem too, I can not see vmx files, only vmdk files.
I can backup all vmdk files but no other files.
I was able to backup these files when using backup exex 12.5 vith vcb proxy. After upgrading to BE 2010, only vmdk files can be backup up.

I read all documents, I found nothing about this problem.

Regards, Suat.

teiva-boy
Level 6
Not seeing the VMX files are normal.  It's just a GUI thing, and your data is still protected.  I'm not sure if it's a bug, or intentional.  But it works for backup and restores.

sugurlu
Level 2

I restored one of the virtual machines by redirecting the restore to the local disk, and only vmdk restored, nothing else.
Is that also normal?
 

Lachlan_Tailby
Level 3
I am successfully backing up and restoring VMware machines with BEX2010, although only the VMDK is listed when I choose to restore the full virtual machine configuration is restored using the VMware options.  The only gotcha so far is if you try and put VMWare incremental / full backups on deduplicated storage BEX2010 is unable to restore the incrementals merged with the latest full backup to the to a VM host.

I have no idea whether restoring to a local disk should produce a machine configuration file or not as I always redirect to our development virtual center server when testing restores.

sksujeet
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified
In 2010 we can only backup the vmdk files

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

The VMX files are not listed however the configuratiopn data is still backed up with the virtual machine - if you do a Backup to disk then look inside the IMG folder you will see there are some XML files as well as the VMDKs. If you look  inside the XML files with notepad/wordpad you will see that one of them contains the content of the VMX file.

Unknown_Strange
Not applicable
I am running Symantec Backup Exec 2010 v13.0 Rev 2896 (64-bit) and vSphere 4 with all the latest updates and I have the same problem, when restoring a VM from disk or tape I can only select vmdk files. I restore to a local disk and only vmdk files are available. I have tried importing manually these vmdks to VMware Workstation 7.0.1 using the import wizard but it cannot import as the “source VM type was not recognized”. I also tried to manually copy the vmdk files to a datastore and trying VMware converter from vCenter, but once again it doesn’t let you import the vmdks without a VMX file.

If you restore using the “VMware Redirection” option, redirecting the files to the vCenter it will work and will create the VMX file for you in the datastore. A solution for VMware Workstation would be to just create a new VM and attach the disks but it would be very helpful to have the VMX files.

By the way, I checked the IMG folder and there is no XML or VMX files present, only vmdks files are restored.

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited
Any news here...?

teiva-boy
Level 6
Seems to me, that BackupExec is working as intended.  Being able to backup guests from vcenter, and restoring to vcenter/esx.

What you want is actually more of an enhancement request.  

gdassieu
Level 3

I also think this is strange. Why is the VMX not restored?

In our case, we use this function to restore the VMDKs and "play" them with VMware player (in case a major disaster where original ESX host is unavailable). However, without the VMX file this is not possible!

teiva-boy
Level 6
Again, Enhancement request.  It's not a bug or flaw, it just cant be done currently the way BE stores the VMX info within XML files in the application, and is only able to restore back to an ESX/vCenter installation.


Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

A little more information - BackuP Exec 12.5 with VCB did used to get the VMX files as a function of how the VCB (VMware utility) operation works, Backup Exec 2010 uses the vSpshere API's as provided by VMware and it appears that these APIis do not easily provide the ability to gather the complete VMX file. The XML file we store iwth teh VMDK files contains metadata based on the content of the VMX file in order to get round this issue but does limit your restore options as it is not a VMX file.


leeroyrichardso
Level 3
Again we had a similar use as gdassieu.

With BE 12.5 and vmware 3.5 we used backup exec to restore a vm to a central location on our backup scan from here we are able to import machines to either our test environment or DR site using the vm convertor. This now does not work without the vmx files being available.

If we cannot get a fix for the fairly soon we are going to have to look at alternative backup solutions. This is an important function for us.

This along with the continuous quiesce error and the difficulty in single file restore is really lacking with this product. 

leeroyrichardso
Level 3
I have asked this question on a number of forums and it would seem that this is a BE issue, no-one else seems to be suffering this problem using other agents.

gdassieu
Level 3
Hello All,

I just wanted to let you know that the problem is solved for me. I had to upgrade to BE2010 R2, and now it's fine.

VMX file still does not appear in the listing when creating a restore job, but it is correctly restored along with the VMDKs when choosing the VMware redirect option.

Kind regards,

Gaston