Is there a way to stop the VMware scan during office hours?

[thesanman]

As I start setting up my VMware backups through NetBackup policies I find the background VMware scan takes about an hour to complete.  If I try and add new clients whilst the scan is running using the "browse client" function it has to wait until the scan completes which of course is annoying.

How often does this scan run?  Is there a way to disable this background scan during (say) office hours or (say) 8am to 6pm 7 days a week?  Of course if VM's appear during this time I can always start a manual scan to get the client name browseable.

NBU is v7.0.1 across the board.

Malcolm

[Tim_Hansen]

The scan only runs upon the first time populating the VMware client information. This data is then cached locally on the server for subsequent client lookups. Only if you hit the REFRESH button on the right hand side of the window is the local data refreshed. NBU even warns you in a popup window that the refresh option may take some time to complete.

[thesanman]

I'm not so sure; my bpVMutil log shows regular periodic scans and I know it's not me hitting refresh at 1am!

[Andy_Welburn]

of it's relevance. Maybe it is?

bpVMutil continuously restarts itself if cache file cannot be updated causing session strain on vCenter server
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH129714

Problem

bpVMutil continuously restarts itself if cache file cannot be updated causing session strain on vCenter server

Solution

Symantec Defect ID: ET2027111
 

Under certain circumstances, bpVMutil may continuously restart itself if cache file cannot be updated on VMware backup host. This results in NetBackup logging into vCenter repeatedly and may use up all the client sessions available.
 

Symptoms:
 

This issue can be identified by logging vCenter using vSphere client and monitoring sessions at Home ==> Administration ==> Sessions view. If there are continuous logins (one login per second) from NetBackup even when there are no backups running, this issue is present.
 

Resolution:
 

Symantec Corporation has acknowledged that the above mentioned issue (Etrack 2027111) is present in the current version(s) of the product(s) mentioned at the end of this article. Symantec Corporation is committed to product quality and satisfied customers. This defect will be fixed in NetBackup 7.1. Hotfixes may be available for earlier versions. Please contact Symantec Technical Support and quote this document.

[thesanman]

The scan seems to complete; it just seems to do it periodically.

For example; today my scan started at 01:52; finished at 02:15.  Then I see something but not a full scan at 06:30; then another what appears to be a full scan starting at 10:44, finishing at 11:09.

Then I saw a few quick scans at 15:23 and 15:32.

I guess with over 800 VM's to work its way through this takes a finite amount of time to do and catalog.  Maybe I'm just unlucky to be trying to add clients as the scan is occurring.

Might log a low prior call with Symantec to try and get some info on when scans occurr.

[RiaanBadenhorst]

Hi,

I would suspect that NetBackup needs to do this regularly to keep track if any guest have moved to another host, datastore etc? Or is this part of the backup process i.e. to resolve/find the guest so it knows which host/datastore its residing on. Suppose it comes down to how the backup is initiated and/or passed to vCenter??

Maybe someone can shed light on the process. Always easier to troubleshoot if you know what the process flow is etc.

[thesanman]

I agree; I guess it needs to do this but it would be nice to understand the process flow.

What I'm also finding is that VMware backups fail with 156 error (snapshot fails) when the scan is happening which is a bit of a pain.  Evertime one of my nightly VM backups fail with 156 I can see the background scan running. 

Of course it's never one single failure because I queue 40 odd VMware backups from the one policy.

I come in the next morning to find a number of failed backups which I simply "restart" and they work.

I've logged a call.

[thesanman]

I talked to Symantec; a sugestion was to disable ip address resolution via a registry edit.  This is documented on page 89 of the v7.01 VMware admin guide.

In my case this worked well because we select our VMware clients for backup by Display Name rather than VM hostname which requires an address resolution to display a name of some description.  Our VM's cross a mix of different LAN and subnets but DNS doesn't cover them all.

By disabling the ip address resolution the background scan doesn't get stuck anymore; this the backups seems to work with no issues.

[J_H_Is_gone]

Thanks for that - I have added that to my notes for vmware

[Will_Restore]

thanks for the followup!