Netbackup 7 and VMWare backup of Windows 2008 x64 guests

[Prak]

Hi I have a number of VMWare virtual environment running a mixture of o/s's including Windows 2003 32 and 64 bit, Linux and Windows 2008 64bit. I also have a Netbackup 7 master server which is acting as a VMWare backup host.

I have setup a VMWare policy to use the Mapped full VM Backup type to backup the virtual machines. All of the clients except for the Windows 2008 x64 backup successfully. The 2008 clients error with error 6 "Errors caused the user backup to fail. "

I have been able to narrow it down to the setting "Virtual machine quiesce". If that is disabled, I am able to get a successful backup. But this is not an application consistent backup and as these are application systems, I would like to get a suitable backup of these machines.

I don't have any issues with getting snapshots on these clients through VMWare but cannot backup the snapshot using Netbackup.

I have checked all the VMWare knowledgebases and have not seen anything which helps resolve this

Any one else come across the problem or have any idea why this could be causing it?

Thanks

[Giroevolver]

you said that you can take a snapshot in VMware ok. When you take a snapshot in VMware, do you tick the box that says Quiesce guest file system?

Also what application is running on the guest?

[reto_bachmann]

We do have the same Problem.

ESX & vCenter 4.1

NBU 7.0.1 on Windows 2008 R2

We backup with NBD, we can backup all Windows Servers except the Windows 2008 R2 servers. Without quiesce it works, but with quiesce we get this error:

30.11.2010 09:30:09 - begin writing
30.11.2010 09:30:23 - Error bpbrm(pid=7956) from client <SERVERNAME>: ERR - Error opening the snapshot disks using given transport mode: Status 23.
30.11.2010 09:30:28 - Error bpbrm(pid=7956) could not send server status message      
30.11.2010 09:30:28 - end writing; write time: 00:00:19

In the vSphere Client I can see that the snapshot is created successfully. There is nothing special installed on the server, its just a small file server.

[dgorokhov]

Hello!

We have the same issue. Did you find the resolution for this problem?

[Jim-90]

"Virtual machine quiesce" my understanding that's  for filesystem not application.

If you want application quience then you will to do that yourself.

Advisable if you are running busy databases as they don't like the filesystem quiescence - they throw up errros.

Also have a chat with support there may be a ETRACK binary for NBU7.0.1 & VMware. 

I had a look at going from 7.0.0 to 7.0.1 but the amount of issues regarding VMware backups changed my mind.

Jim  

[Prak · Accepted solution]

Issue got resolved after logging a call with Symantec. Basically  the application quiscence based on disk UUID must be disabled.

Here is the KB article for it.

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH141518