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VMs showing as physical (AGAIN!) in BE2012 soooo frustrating, please help

JS_IT
Level 4

Hi,

 

We had an issue where our VMs in Backup exec were showing as physical boxes (grey icon) when they were in fact virtual machines (blue icon).

We were obviously told to wait for BE2012 SP2, which we did, installed and it worked perfectly (all VMs showed up as blue icon allowing full GRT).

 

I have since had to remove and readd the ESX server but now they are all showing as physicals, not allowing GRT again!!

So far I have,

 

Reinstalled the latest agent on the hosts (rebooting each VM)

Readded the ESX VCentre both with FQDN and shorter name

Tried with different credentials (all test fine and am using a domain account with privalidges on the VMs themselves)

 

Could someone please help, Im tearing my hair out here. I feel as if my job role has become backup exec problem solving assistant (been at it three days now).

 

Thanks VERRRY much in advance.

 

 

9 REPLIES 9

Kunal_Mudliyar1
Level 6
Employee Accredited

I think this is because the VMs were already present before readdin the New Vcenter /ESX entry they are showing as physical.

Can you delete the VM entry from the console and rerun the backup from teh ESX host?

JS_IT
Level 4

I have already tried removing them and rerunning the backups many times while experimenting (over 15 times).

 

Thanks,

Kunal_Mudliyar1
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Have you also removed the remote agents in the process of deleting the VMs from the BE console  > Server`s tab?

JS_IT
Level 4

I have tried manually removing the agents from each of the vms (from their consoles), reinstalling the agents, then rerunning the backup after removing them all from BE servers tab.

 

Are you suggesting removing the agents then running the backup firstly with no agents installed, then readding the agents afterwards?

 

 

Kunal_Mudliyar1
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Yes

=Remove the VM entries from the console.

=Unistall the remote agent from the VM

=Take a backup with file level GRT enabled

=The entry will appear automatically

=Install remote agent inside the VM

JS_IT
Level 4

Im trying this now and will post back.

Thanks very much.

JS_IT
Level 4

OK, this is looking really good, added ESX VC without agents and they all appear as virtual machines now, there was the exception for GRT which is understandable so I have added the agents back on and am performing another full backup, Im really confident that the issues will be resolved.

I cant thank you enough for this piece of information!

Sorry, one last question. When installing agents, we have two AVVI licenses for our two hosts which I understand will allow us to perform GRT by adding the windows agents to the windows hosts. We already have the ability to add the windows agents to the VMs as we have Windows agent licenses (for separate physical machines).

My question is, how can we add the agents for our linux machines to allow GRT (not so much so we can perform GRT but so we are not backing up the white space on the VM's, specifically our virtual centre appliance)?

Thanks again for the help!

 

Kunal_Mudliyar1
Level 6
Employee Accredited

You dont have to install remote agent for linux (RALUS) on the linux VM as GRT will not work and its not supported

The only way to bakcup the linux is by disabling GRT

By white spaces are you refereing to the thin provisioned disk?

Vmware vstorage api`s integration with backup exec will take care of that no additional settings are required from your end.

 

JS_IT
Level 4

Thanks but that does not seem to be the case on our system.

 

 

Family Name: "Media created 16/08/2013 08:52:19"
Backup of "VMVCB::\\xxxx.xxx.xxx\VCGuestVm\(DC)xxxxx(DC)\vm\VMware vCenter Server Appliance"
Backup set #1 on storage media #1
Backup set description: "ESX, Non Windows, No GRT-Weekly Full"
Backup Method: Full - Back up virtual machines

Backup started on 16/08/2013 at 08:54:45.

 

Backup Set Detail Information
Transport mode 'nbd' was used for the disk 'VMware vCenter Server Appliance.vmdk'
Transport mode 'nbd' was used for the disk 'VMware vCenter Server Appliance_1.vmdk'
Backup completed on 16/08/2013 at 09:30:37.

 

Backup Set Summary
Backed up 0 files in 0 directories.
Backed up 1 virtual machines
Backed up 2 virtual machine disks
Processed 91,268,084,396 bytes in  35 minutes and  52 seconds.
Throughput rate: 2427 MB/min
Compression Type: Hardware

Shows 85GB being transferred/backed up, the screenshot (attached) shows the vmdk's in the datastore (14GB being used, 85 being provisioned) hence the white space is being transferred (although it is removed via compression).

Any ideas?

Thanks again.