VMware

320 Topics

Virtual Machine Backups Suddenly Got Slow
Hello, In December, our backups of VMWare full virtual machines suddenly slowed way down. At that time a staff admin recreated datastores and bumped the VMFS version from 5 to 6. There were no other changes that I'm aware of. Agent based backups run fine. Only Virtual machine backups run poorly now. It doesn't matter whether I backup to disk or tape, they never achieve a rate above 300 MB/min. Ideas on where the bottleneck is? Something is limiting the communication from Backup Exec to vCenter. I have a case open with support, but they are not figuring it out. I run BE 21.4 on a physical Windows 2016 server. Backup targets are NAS appliances and direct attached SAS tape drives. The server has teamed NIC that connect to three VLAN's: data to servers, second to NAS appliances, and third to underlying SAN appliances that host our VMWare environment. Our VMWare is old: 6.5. Thanks for your help. Ray
Raydar
3 years ago Place Backup Exec
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Backup Exec Architecture for VMWARE
Hello, Please guide me what's best way to deploy vertias backup exec for VMWARE . Can I install 2 instances of Backup Exec 1 on physical server and 1 within VM. if my VM environment have issues I can use Physical one to restore VM's . The virtual backup exec server will speed up the backup operation by using hot add features. do I make sense? what's the role of media server?
gsinghtexala
4 years ago Place Backup Exec
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[closed] Block level backup of encrypted VM
Hello, We have encrypted our VM thru the VM encryption module provided by VMWare since 6.5 version. As it is not supported by BE 16, we are doing now file level backup. Is there some news regarding an update of BE 16 that will allow block level backup with encrypted VM ?
ushincorp
8 years ago Place Backup Exec
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Backup Exec 16 cannot recover single elements from virtual machines using GRT
I'm using Backup Exec 16 to backup 2 Vmware virtual machines with Active Directory and Exchange 2013. I have noticed that even if i have enabled GRT in the job options i can only restore the whole vmdk. I cannot restore single elements from Active Directory or Exchange using GRT. Both virtual machines have the backup exec agent installed. I'm using the default Microsoft VSS provider to backup the virtual machines. Jobs successfully complete without errors. I cannot understand why the backups aren't granular.
MG_TT11
8 years ago Place Backup Exec
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Solution for VSS exceptions with VMware guests / VM tools
Hi everyone, We have been experiencing VSS issues with VMware guests in regards to the installed Backup Exec Agent and a previously installed VMware Tools VSS option. Uninstalling the VMware Tools VSS option in various ways including restarts did not fix our issues. If you search the internet for solutions, you find many attempts but no real solution or explanation. One of our admins spend several hours with the Veritas support without a solution, he was about to escalate the issue with them, when we found the root cause and could actually fix our issues. First the steps to solve this: Uninstall the VMware Tools VSS option (no restart will be requiered) Make sure VMware VSS service was deleted If this is not the case, you might need to do so manually and remove additional DLL's etc. as well as restart the system, but this is independent from this solution You might have already done steps 1 and 2 but you still get VSS exceptions from the backup that says you have more than one VSS agent installed: V-79-8192-38331 - The backup has detected that both the VMware VSS Provider and the Symantec VSS Provider have been installed on the virtual machine 'hostname'. However, only one VSS Provider can be used on a virutal machine. You must uninstall the VMware VSS Provider. Now you wonder what causes this and you get stuck You could uninstall the Veritas/Symantec Backup Exec Agent and only back the system up per VMDK You would lose the GRT / granular backup / restore capabilities Check your registry for the following reg key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\BeVssProviderConflict If this key exists, but your VMware VSS provider is uninstalled, you need to follow up with step 5 Open a notepad as administrator Open this file in the notepad C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Tools\manifest.txt Search for the following two entries: Vcbprovider_2003.installed vcbprovider.installed Make sure both of them are set to FALSE, most likely one of them is TRUE Run a test backup This test backup now should not show the exception anymore The registry key should vanish (refresh/press F5) without you taking action So what happened? You uninstalled the VMware Tools VSS provider, but this manifest file did not get updated. We actually could see that it sometimes does get updated and sometimes does not. This seems to be some kind of issue with the VMware Tools uninstalled/installer. But why this manifest.txt file? As we found out, there scripts that get executed by Symantec/Veritas Backup Exec before the backup. You might find them in two locations, and it seems to depend a bit on the Windows version which script is executed (at which location). You could edit them both and just undo the checks in the scripts, but this wouldn't be correct. It is more correct to update the manifest.txt file. If you want to, you can check the date/time of the manifest.txt file before you change it - you might see it was not updated while you uninstalled the VMware Tools VSS provider (assuming you did only do this and not do additional installs/uninstalls within the VMware Tools / please note as well that this only is true when you still experienced those issues). Now, back to those scripts, you find them here: C:\Windows C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\RAWS\VSS Provider The name of the script that matters: pre-freeze-script.bat This script checks several DLLs, registry entries, paths and on Windows 2008 and newer the ProgramData-Path for this specific manifest.txt file and the two entries mentioned. Once you uninstall the VMware VSS provider, and the file did not get updated, you might see this issue and wonder how to solve it. The solution is to simply update it to mirror the uninstallation of the VMware VSS provider (vcbprovider). We double checked this with several installations and could see if the file actually gets updated, those two values are set to FALSE, if it doesn't, at least one of the values remains true, what causes the pre-freeze-script.bat to write the registry key mentioned earlier and therefor causing the issue in the backup - exceptions. If you still have the same issues after updating the manifest.txt, simply check all the DLL's that are mentioned in the script and make sure they don't exist. You might also consider to manually delete the registry-key (it seems to be just a dumy-key) to make sure there is no issue that prevents the script from deleting it. Make sure it does not re-appear after a backup! Otherwise you might still have some DLLs left on your system that cause the script to re-create the registry key. Hope this helps a few of you out there. This was an ongoing issue for a while and I came accross those issues many times ever since Windows 2008. This applies to Windows 2008 R2, Windows 2012, Windows 2012 R2 and pretty sure to Windows 2016 as well. It helped us getting rid of those issues completely and actually not even needing a single restart of the guest VM to solve the issues (removing the VMware VSS provide did not need a restart). Regards Florian Rossmark
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frossmark
8 years ago Place Backup Exec
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Backup Exec 16 - Temporary VMware folders are not cleaned from the Backup Exec data directory
HI All, So we started with Backup Exec 14 few years back and I've updated to BE 16 last week with latest patch due to following issue when Symantec could not resolve it. Issue: When backup up VM's, there are lot of Temporary folders been created in folder C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Data. (Folders name include VM's name and date ), and number of folders been created keep growing everyday. Troubleshoot done: I've logged a call with Symantec and for a week they did troubleshooting and today an Advanced tech called me and advised that this is a known issue and only work-around is to delete these folders manually ? Now I have had the same above issue while we were on BE 15, with all the patches installed, hence why I quickly upgraded to BE 16 to see if that resolve the issue. Symantec advance support tech directed me to this article ( https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000023219 ) which is according to the article was an issue on BE 2014. So I don't believe that Backup Exec 16 will have this now, will it ? And I can't accept an answer been deleting these folder manually every day as a solution. Does anyone experienced this kind of issue ? Cheers
VALEXEC15
8 years ago Place Backup Exec
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vSphere 5.1 Support Update
Symantec and VMware are unwaveringly dedicated to quality in our jointly developed solutions. During our testing with the VMware vStorage 5.1 API Symantec discovered issues* that introduce data recovery risks. We raised these concerns with our friends at VMware, who documented them in their knowledge base and in the VMware vSphere 5.1 release notes. VMware expects to release a vStorage API update, and at that time we expect to retest and once again support joint solutions. Read this blog for more details!
Turls
12 years ago Place Backup Exec
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Backup Exec 2010/2012 Media Server Installation on a ESXi 5.0 Virtual Machine
Hi All, I would need to heed your expert advice in regards to the Backup Exec Media Server. I have a plan to run Backup Exec 2010/2012 on a ESXi 5 Virtual Machine running Windows Server 2008 R2 Operating System. I have read through some of the KBs available like the one that is an Alternative Configuration using the SCSI passthrough. Some have commented that it will experience issues. I would wish to run the Backup Exec 2010/2012 in a Virtual machine, with SAS connectivity from the ESXi Host to a HP autoloader/library. Regards, Chong Yee
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Chong
12 years ago Place Backup Exec
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Exchange 2010 Backup : Updating Catalogs Very Long
When backing up Exchange Server 2010 it appears to backup the data with zero issues. However, it takes 20+ hours to run a Differential backup due to the length of time it takes to update the catalogs. This was an issue for us in the previous version of Backup Exec 2010 R3.The issue was not consistent though. For instance; in 2012 we had an issue inlate July andearly December. Theissue in July seemed to correct itself? The issue from December is still ongoing. The backup rate is at about 282 MB/min. Whereas while updating catalogs runs at about 1 MB/min. This definitely appears to be the issue as the entire backup is less than 10GB. The full backup runs normally and does not take an extended period of time while updating catalogs. For all Exchange backups we are running GRT. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
snosurfur
12 years ago Place Backup Exec
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Setting up direct access san storage Backup exec 2012 and Equallogic san
Does any one know, of have experience in setting up Backup Exec 2012 to connect directly to the Equallogic SAN Device. We are wanting to use replicated/shared storage opton so backups are automatically available at both our backup exec servers over our san.
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leeweedon
12 years ago Place Backup Exec
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