VMWARE and mount points

[maurijo]

My customer has an issue on a linux vm. When he restores files from his machine he can't see files that are on an other filesystem mounted under /opt.

So the VM has 3 disks, normal os, swap and data disk. In the restore gui for policy type vmware and restore type virtual machine I can see all 3 vmdks in the backup, when I select normal restore I can see all files and folders except the files and folders below the mount point.

Is this normal behaviour ? When we use normal agent backup (backup like physical) it's all ok and I can see all the files and folders below the mount point.

I checked the partition table and they are both msdos (not gpt) and filesystem is ext3. Using bplist commando I can't see the mount point either, it is not listed.

Or is it simply not possible to restore single items that are located under a mount point from a vmware type backup ?

NBU version is 7.6.0.3

[Nicolai]

What file system type is /opt ?

Mount points not available when restoring files from a Linux virtual machine

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO70951

[maurijo]

Thanks for your reply!

I see this in /etc/fstab:

LABEL=/opt              /opt                    ext3    defaults        1 2

I checked your link but considering that everything is ext3 I don't think that technote applies to this setup.

[Nicolai]

Agree

[maurijo]

So is this normal behaviour then or not ? Any more suggestions ?

[Nicolai]

I am performing the same operation in my lab :)

[Nicolai]

My host consist of only one VMDK. I do not have same issue as you in this setup .....

[Nicolai]

Is /opt the only file system with that issue.

Are all file system in vmdk files - using raw device mappings  ?

Raw device mapped files are not direct supported with the VMware backup method - See page 37 in 

DOCUMENTATION: Support for NetBackup 7.x in virtual environments 

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH127089

[maurijo]

Nicolai,

My host consists of 3 vmdk, the 2 extra ones are swap and then the disk for /opt/folder.

Customer tells me it is regular vmdks, how can I check if it is raw device mapping ?

So /opt/folder is the only one mapped on another vmdk, all of the rest is on the first vmdk and has no problems (I can see all files under those mount points, just not the files under /opt/folder)

UPDATE: I had the customer do some test yesterday, I asked him to restore the machine as a vm and check if the data is there. It was there, so netbackup succeeds in backing it up as vmdk as a whole. We just cannot see the data when we select the folder in the BAR gui. So I think GRT or cataloging of the mount point is not working ?

Also, with a normal agent based backup I can select "cross mount points", in a vmware policy this is impossible. How is this treated then by netbackup ? Because this is in fact a cross mount point, its a filesystem mounted on the system and the file system in question is located on a seperate disk (vmdk).

That could be the explanation...? It backs up the vmdk because it is part of the vm but it will not GRT/catalog the mount point since its a cross mount point.

[Nicolai]

I am pussled why you can't see files under /opt.

I will ask fellow TA to take a look at this thread.

[Marianne]

Anything 'different' at VMware level about vmdk's?

Independent disk?

RDM disk?

[maurijo]

My customer tells me it is a regular vmdk, I will try to gain access to vCenter and check this myself.

NBU is able to backup all of the three vmdks AND restore the entire machine without any problems. I think that if this is a RDM this would not be possible ?

And Nicolai, to be clear... I CAN see files under /opt directly, just not under the mount point /opt/folder . Folder is the location where an other vmdk is mounted.

/etc/fstab:

LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/usr              /usr                    ext3    defaults        1 2
LABEL=/var              /var                    ext3    defaults        1 2
LABEL=/var/log          /var/log                ext3    defaults        1 2
LABEL=/opt              /opt                    ext3    defaults        1 2
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
LABEL=SWAP-sdb1         swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/sdc1               /opt/folder           ext3    defaults        1 2

Thanks for taking a look at this by the way Marianne!

UPDATE: Verified with customer and the vmdk is normal dependant one.

[Nicolai]

please do ls -la /opt/folder

What type of files are in /opt/folder ?

We need to look what oddity of /opt/folder - the cat is buried here I would think.

[maurijo]

I can not see the actual content, the machine I have is a cloned vm, the original contained sensitive data in /opt/folder. I asked the customer and he says its a mix of file types, log files, text files, folders...

They removed the sensitive data but left the top level folders, so I can see 3 folders below /opt/folder. "Test" is a file I created to see if the worked;

They say that the disk is not encrypted or compressed.

The output you asked for:

[root@neoria netbackup]# ls -la /opt/folder
total 48
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root  4096 Mar 16 14:08 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root  4096 Jul 14  2014 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 Mar 16 14:07 alfresco
drwxrwxr-x 2 root root  4096 Mar  5 08:30 blueweb_data
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Jan 13  2012 lost+found
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root    16 Mar 16 14:08 test

[Nicolai]

Sorry I ment  ls -ld /opt/folder

Do you know if access control list is used on the host ?

[maurijo]

Here you go:

[root@neoria /]# ls -ld /opt/folder
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Mar 16 14:08 /opt/folder

I dont see an acl entry in fstab so I guess no ?

[Nicolai]

Look like so. I am running out of ideas.

Maybe consider to open a support case with Symantec ?

[Marianne]

Have you opened a Support call with Symantec yet?

[Marianne]

I have just seen this TN referenced in another post:

VMware backups with the file recovery option enabled may show LVM partitions in wrong paths
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH222609 

Seems issue is fixed in NBU 7.6.0.4.

[maurijo · Accepted solution]

Marianne, thanks alot for still replying to this. I didn't receive a notification about your first reply...

I PMed to Nicolai that I made a support case and that it was pending investigation.

Past friday I received a solution from the symantec engineer. According to him and his testing done in his lab it has to do with the formatting of the disk. The partition type is not the same as the filesystem on it. In "df -h" it shows as a "VMWARE VMFS" system, it should show "Linux". So my customer made a partition of type vmware vmfs and formatted it using ext3...

Changing the partition type can be done with fdisk but it can mean data loss... My customer will be copying the data to a new correctly formatted disk.