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Unable to achieve Vmware Restore of a virtual Machine

Chidobrad
Level 3

Hello People,

Please i need help resolving an issue i am currently experiencing. i configured virtual image backups successfully and got successfull backups (snapshot inclusive) but when i try initiating a restore, the back up virtual machine gets created on Vmware  with some preliminary activities going on (disk lease etc) but later the VM gets deleted and the restore fails with VMware restore policy 2820. Pleasse find attached logs from recovery host to help in troubleshooting. Much appreciations for your previous assistance 

9 REPLIES 9

Krutons
Moderator
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Have you tried the restore using NBD instead of SAN?

I second Krutons.

I was never able to run a VM restore via SAN protocol.

In fact, I believe the manual states you need to do it with NBD (or NBDSSL) protocol.

Krutons
Moderator
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   VIP   

That's not true, you can defintely restore over SAN. I just want to see if it works over NBD because if it does, it limits what the potential issue could be. Such as, the LUN on the datastore being offline.

Ok, my bad, I blame a poor memory!

It's been a long while since I've had SAN protcol use.

yes NBD works but you know the issue with NBD when you are restoring a VM that is hugh. how do i troubleshoot the SAN failure cos obviously i now know its a SAN problem (zoning looks fine from SAN switch). i will check the storage for any discrepancies and revert. what logs can i share to determine or troubleshoot issue

Hamza_H
Moderator
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   VIP   

Hello,

 

AS long as the restore went successfully through NBD, you should probably look at the backup host permissions on the datastore, read-only access for backups but read&write for restores.

this error "cannot write data to socket, 10053" says all..

you should also check the tar & vxms logs on the vm backup host, the bpbrm on the media server.

 

BR.

 

Please how can i achieve this host permissions? is it via Vsphere client when assigning permissions to the account used in querying the vcenter?? please i need specifics as i want to be able to achieve SAN backups ASAP. Many thanks

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

@Chidobrad 

Have you had a look at this Best Practice doc?

VMware Transport Modes: Best practices and troubleshooting 
https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/article.100030882

 

Hamza_H
Moderator
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Hello,

VM backup host is the server used to access the datastores, mostly it's the media server.

from your detailled status, look at the line : host to restore to (the name of the server is right there).

as Marianne posted, the link shows you the best practice, and especially -The line I was looking for :

  • SAN transport is not always the best choice for restores. It offers the best performance on thick disks, but the worst performance on thin disks, because of the way vStorage APIs work. For thin disk restore, LAN(NBD) is faster.
  • For SAN restores, disk size should be a multiple of the underlying VMFS block size, otherwise the write to the last fraction of a disk will fail. For example, if virtual disk has a 1MB block size and the datastore is 16.3MB large, the last 0.3MB will not get written. The workaround in this case would be to use NBD for restores of such Virtual Machines.

you should look at this to know more about the account's permissions:

https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/article.100001960