Issues backing up/restoring VMware VMs

[Dan_Vargas]

Hi all,

First of all, I'm ready the NBU for VMware admins guide but it's 300 pages. Asking here too in case I missed something

So, I use NBU with standar client licences, and we only backup windows machines. We are trialing the advanced client, which allows us to backup our machines at the vmware level, etc. We run NBU 7.6.0.4 on a server that is both master and media servers.

I've created the backup policy, configured it (several jobs per policy, include all the VM's disks, created the vmware credential, etc.) and I'm having a few issues:

1. My policy is only backing up the VM's system disk. C: and the boot partition is the only thing I see if I open BAR and search for this backup on "Normal backup" mode. If I switch to "VMware" mode, I can see the VM's 3 disks (40GB, 1TB and 2TB), but the backup job finishes kind of quicklyt and only backs up around 22GB, which is the used space on C:.

I tested this with 3 machines and it doesn't make a difference if all vmdks are stored in the same datastore or each disk on a different datastore..   EDIT: it seems it only picks up the disks that are in the same datastore as the VM config file (.vmx file)

Any ideas why this is happening?

2. File level restoring. It seems this is not compatible with NBU 7.6? If so I don't understand why they let me enable it without any warnings:

NetBackup 7.6 environments (master server , media server , and backup host all at 7.6 or later) do not support file-level backup of Windows virtual machines. Windows file-level backup of a VMware virtual machine requires VCB. VCB is supported only for 7.1 and earlier backup hosts (clients).

I believe I've read somewhere that if you want to do file level restore you have to:

2.1 If restoring from a NBU server, restore to an UNC path of the destination server. This fails for me with the error:
31/10/2016 14:29:42 - Error bpbrm(pid=6280) client restore EXIT STATUS 58: can't connect to client
31/10/2016 14:38:05 - restored image SERVERNAME_1477474078 - (cannot connect on socket(25)); restore time 0:16:59
2.2 Invoke BAR from the client itself. If I do this, BAR fails with error 23

Any suggestions?

==Other questions==

3. As I said, one of my servers has a 2TB drive with let's say four 500GB subfolders. Backing this up sequentially would be terribly inefficient, does NBU optimize the backup so (when the max number of jobs hasn't been reached, for example) it backs up on parallel for individual drives? Or perhaps for these kind of servers it's best to only include the system disk in the VM backup and then have a separate windows-level backup to manually specify an optimised list of folders with multi streaming enabled?

Thanks!!

[X2]

I have had VMware type backups and performed file/VM restores from the NetBackup 7.6.x days. Now we are running 7.7.3 and things still work.

To clarify some confusion from your post, it would be easier for others if the following information was provided:

1. Details of the VMware policy (bpplinfo POLICYNAME -L) - did you set BLIB option in VMware policy?

2. Storage unit type for VMware policy (PureDisk? others?)

3. Do you have VMware tools installed on the Windows VMs?

I know that you have read the VMware admins guide, but page 29-42 (version for 7.7.1) describe the prerequisites for setting up VMware type backups.

Regarding your question about 2TB drive - what do you mean "does NetBackup optimize the backup"? Optimize can mean different things for NetBackup. The VMware Intelligent policy will create a snapshot of the vmdk and back it up. If you are using deduplication, you might see reduction in backup times for your 2TB drive. However, other factors e.g. do you have a SAN infrastructure setup and are you using SAN transport for VMware backup, do come in play. We would definitly need more information regarding your environment to be able to help.

[Dan_Vargas]

Hi,

I only tried with one machine and am trying with a second one now.

1. Please find outpout at the end of the post.

2. Tape.

3. Yes. Not the latest version on all of them though.

Regarding my big drive backup, I meant... With OS level backups I can explicitly name the four 500GB folders as backup selections and if multiple data streams is enabled, it will back them up on paralell within the MAX_JOBS limit. I'm assuming that NBU creates different jobs for each of the VM's drive, but if one VMDK was really large and backed up sequentially from first to last block. Does NBU have any optimisations in these scenarios, like "splitting" vmdks in 1GB chunks and backing up several on paralell?

==========
Policy Type: VMware (40)
Active: yes
Effective: 25/10/2016 16:41:16
Follow NFS Mounts: no
Cross Mount Points: no
Client Compress: no
Collect TIR info: no
Policy Priority: 0
Ext Security Info: no
File Restore Raw: yes
Application Consistent: yes
Client Encrypt: no
Max Jobs/Policy: 10
Mult. Data Stream: no
Block Level Incremental: yes
Perform Snapshot Backup: yes
Snapshot Method: VMware_v2
Snapshot Method Arguments: Virtual_machine_backup=2,disable_quiesce=0,drive_selection=0,enable_vCloud=0,exclude_swap=1,file_system_optimization=1,ignore_irvm=1,multi_org=0,nameuse=1,post_events=1,rHz=10,rLim=10,rTO=30,serverlist=,skipnodisk=0,snapact=2,trantype=san:hotadd:nbd:nbdssl
Perform Offhost Backup: yes
Backup Copy: 0
Use Data Mover: no
Data Mover Type: 2
Use Alternate Client: no
Alternate Client Name: MEDIA_SERVER
Use Virtual Machine: 1
Hyper-V Server: (none)
Enable Instant Recovery: no
Collect BMR Info: no
Max Frag Size: 0 MB
Checkpoint Restart: no
Residence: gbgwrsv009-hcart2-robot-tld-0
Volume Pool: vmware-test
Server Group: *ANY*
Data Classification: -
Residence is storage lifecycle policy: no
Granular Restore: no
Generation: 19
Ignore Client Direct: no
Use Accelerator: no
Exchange Source attributes: no
Enable Metadata Indexing: no
Application Discovery: no
Discovery Lifetime: 28800 seconds
ASC Application and attributes: (none defined)
Enable Optimized Backups: no

[Michal_Mikulik1]

Hello,

here are most likely causes of your troubles:

1/ all VM disks instead VMDK hosting "C:\" are marked as Independent on VMware level. Check with your VMware admin

2/ missing NBU client in VM's where you want restore to

3/ something like parallel backup of individual VMDK in the same VM is not possible. I admit that it would be a nice feature. I asked a PM for this feature 3 months ago and it was not on a roadmap at that time

Regards

Michal

[X2]

Also, forgot to ask:

2.1 and 2.2: Can you verify communication from both sides client <-> master

From client run bpclntcmd -pn

and from master: bptestbpcd -verbose -client "client_fqdn"