Backup Central

I'm trialling the virtual agent for vmware.
I have the 8.0 virtual agent (plus all patches/sp's) installed on a machine that also has the various vmware elements installed.
I sucessfully did backups of several vm's without any issues, however when I added some vm's to my test subclient I'm seeing errors like this:
VCBMounter failed for VM [vmname]. Please check VCBMounter logs in the WINDOWS/Temp folder.
Only problem is there are no logs in the WindowsTemp folder.
The VM's in question are version 7 VM hardware and are running full tools on vsphere 4.1 hosts, and the virtual agent is configured to access the vsphere environment via the vcenter server.
The VM’s that are failing are 2008 R2 and the event logs are full of VSS errors at the time of the (attempted) backup so I’m guessing that the VSA is trying to quiesce the VM’s or something that isn’t working so it’s simply failing?
The backup type is set to "disk" as I want to be able to restore entire VM's.
Not sure what additional info is needed so please let me know.
Thanks,
Paul


MIRA Ltd


Watling Street, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, CV10 0TU, England

Registered in England and Wales No. 402570
VAT Registration  GB 100 1464 84


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Hi Paul,

Using Virtual Backups is a bit of a pain in Commvault. I'm hopping this is cleared up in 9 but haven't had a chance to test this yet.

First question you should answer for yourself is are you trying to do VCB backup (http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/consolidated_backup.html)

or VADP bakcup? (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1021175)

These are two very different methods of virtual disk backup and both are supported by Commvault. VCB is supported by default but requires you to install vcb proxy on your media agent. VDAP requires you to modify commvault's registry to work but can be much faster and more stable as it will use your storage network (fiber channel/iscsi) rather than TCP/IP network like VCB.

In my experience VCB is far to unstable. We have abandoned it in favor of VDAP and I've heard similar sentiments from other organizations.

In general the issues I found with VCB was as you described either a failure to create a proper snapshot or a failure to remove it. Check and see if your VM has any snapshots on them? You may see a snapshot called vcb_guest or something similar. This is the VCB proxy attempting to snapshot the machine. This process will either fail or timeout for various reasons causing the backup job to fail out completely.

In any case the best place to look for issue and diagnostics is the vsbkp.log file in the logs folder on your media agent's install directory. There is a lot of great information in there but it takes some time to digest it all.

Hope this helps some.

Taylor

--- In commvault < at > yahoogroups.com ([email]commvault%40yahoogroups.com[/email]), "Paul Hutchings" <paul.hutchings < at > ...> wrote:

I'm trialling the virtual agent for vmware.

I have the 8.0 virtual agent (plus all patches/sp's) installed on a
machine that also has the various vmware elements installed.

I sucessfully did backups of several vm's without any issues, however
when I added some vm's to my test subclient I'm seeing errors like this:

VCBMounter failed for VM [vmname]. Please check VCBMounter logs in the
WINDOWS/Temp folder.

Only problem is there are no logs in the WindowsTemp folder.

The VM's in question are version 7 VM hardware and are running full
tools on vsphere 4.1 hosts, and the virtual agent is configured to
access the vsphere environment via the vcenter server.

The VM's that are failing are 2008 R2 and the event logs are full of VSS
errors at the time of the (attempted) backup so I'm guessing that the
VSA is trying to quiesce the VM's or something that isn't working so
it's simply failing?

The backup type is set to "disk" as I want to be able to restore entire
VM's.

Not sure what additional info is needed so please let me know.

Thanks,

Paul


--
MIRA Ltd

Watling Street, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, CV10 0TU, England
Registered in England and Wales No. 402570
VAT Registration GB 100 1464 84

The contents of this e-mail are confidential and are solely for the use of the intended recipient. If you receive this e-mail in error, please delete it and notify us either by e-mail, telephone or fax. You should not copy, forward or otherwise disclose the content of the e-mail as this is prohibited.



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Huge help actually Taylor. I got it all working, looks like an issue specificially with quiescing Windows 2008 R2 VM’s that’s mitigated by Commvault patch 19461.

We’re on 4.1 so VADP is the way to go if for no other reason that you obviously need => the size of your biggest VMDK on your virtual agent to use VCB.

One thing I am interested in is what you said about how VADP uses your storage network – any pointers on how that would work as we do have a dedicated iSCSI SAN that we could connect the media agent/virtual agent (same box) into.

Thanks,
Paul

From: commvault < at > yahoogroups.com [mailto:commvault < at > yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of gray.race < at > ymail.com
Sent: 15 February 2011 17:16
To: commvault < at > yahoogroups.com
Subject: [commvault] Re: VADP backup errors - VCBMounter failed for VM [vmname]






Hi Paul,

Using Virtual Backups is a bit of a pain in Commvault. I'm hopping this is cleared up in 9 but haven't had a chance to test this yet.

First question you should answer for yourself is are you trying to do VCB backup (http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/consolidated_backup.html)

or VADP bakcup? (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1021175)

These are two very different methods of virtual disk backup and both are supported by Commvault. VCB is supported by default but requires you to install vcb proxy on your media agent. VDAP requires you to modify commvault's registry to work but can be much faster and more stable as it will use your storage network (fiber channel/iscsi) rather than TCP/IP network like VCB.

In my experience VCB is far to unstable. We have abandoned it in favor of VDAP and I've heard similar sentiments from other organizations.

In general the issues I found with VCB was as you described either a failure to create a proper snapshot or a failure to remove it. Check and see if your VM has any snapshots on them? You may see a snapshot called vcb_guest or something similar. This is the VCB proxy attempting to snapshot the machine. This process will either fail or timeout for various reasons causing the backup job to fail out completely.

In any case the best place to look for issue and diagnostics is the vsbkp.log file in the logs folder on your media agent's install directory. There is a lot of great information in there but it takes some time to digest it all.

Hope this helps some.

Taylor

--- In commvault < at > yahoogroups.com ([email]commvault%40yahoogroups.com[/email]), "Paul Hutchings" <paul.hutchings < at > ...> wrote:

I'm trialling the virtual agent for vmware.

I have the 8.0 virtual agent (plus all patches/sp's) installed on a
machine that also has the various vmware elements installed.

I sucessfully did backups of several vm's without any issues, however
when I added some vm's to my test subclient I'm seeing errors like this:

VCBMounter failed for VM [vmname]. Please check VCBMounter logs in the
WINDOWS/Temp folder.

Only problem is there are no logs in the WindowsTemp folder.

The VM's in question are version 7 VM hardware and are running full
tools on vsphere 4.1 hosts, and the virtual agent is configured to
access the vsphere environment via the vcenter server.

The VM's that are failing are 2008 R2 and the event logs are full of VSS
errors at the time of the (attempted) backup so I'm guessing that the
VSA is trying to quiesce the VM's or something that isn't working so
it's simply failing?

The backup type is set to "disk" as I want to be able to restore entire
VM's.

Not sure what additional info is needed so please let me know.

Thanks,

Paul


--
MIRA Ltd

Watling Street, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, CV10 0TU, England
Registered in England and Wales No. 402570
VAT Registration GB 100 1464 84

The contents of this e-mail are confidential and are solely for the use of the intended recipient. If you receive this e-mail in error, please delete it and notify us either by e-mail, telephone or fax. You should not copy, forward or otherwise disclose the content of the e-mail as this is prohibited.







__._,_.___
Reply to sender ([email]paul.hutchings < at > mira.co.uk?subject=RE%3A%20%5Bcommvault%5D%20Re%3A%20VADP%20backup%20errors%20-%20VCBMounter%20failed%20for%20VM%20%5Bvmname%5D[/email]) | Reply to group ([email]commvault < at > yahoogroups.com?subject=RE%3A%20%5Bcommvault%5D%20Re%3A%20VADP%20backup%20errors%20-%20VCBMounter%20failed%20for%20VM%20%5Bvmname%5D[/email]) | Reply via web post | Start a New Topic
Messages in this topic (3)
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