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VDP Change IP Address

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Can you change the IP address of a VDP appliance?  I have gone in through the web GUI and changed it this way, however, upon boot it is still trying to access its old IP?  I know that in the documentation it states if you pick the wrong address you will have to redeploy, but... that just seems strange to me. 

 

Anyone?


Does VDP supports multiple data stores in one appliance?

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Hello community,

 

I got a question about the VDP appliance.

 

I already tried to look out for other discussions that probably answered the question but couldn't find anything specifically about that.

Also took a look into the FAQ and some of the VDP guides but those didn't really help me either.

 

Within vSphere Data Protection Advanced 6.1 is it possible to specify multiple data stores? Or does it only support one data store per appliance?

Because I would like to backup the data to different phyiscal devices and therefore I would need to specifiy more than one data store.

If that's not possible I guess I can just use multiple appliances like one appliance per backup target?

 

Thanks in advance for every help.

 

 

Cheers,

Dominik

Backup solution for (free) ESXi

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Is there any backup solution (freeware, if possible) for VMware ESXi free version?

Regards

marius

New VM and archive old one

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Hello,

 

i have to create a new VM but before i have to uninstall/save/archive an old one. I dont want to delete the old one. i want to be able to re-install it if i need it (urgent case). How can i do it.

Can i archive the old one ? and when i need it can i add it quickely in inventory?

 

Thanks for your answers.

VMware snapshot using CoW or RoW technology

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Sorry for trouble again, not sure if this is correct category, moving this discussion from vCenter to vSphere.

hope get some help from you.

 

Hi, All

 

There is one question regarding VMware snapshot technology - CoW or RoW, confusing me for a long time, hope someone can help clarify this.

 

As we know that the difference between CoW and RoW is the location the changed data is written after a snapshot, like the snapshot space or original data area, for CoW, the changed data will be written to original data area instead of snapshot space after original data to be changed is copied to snapshot space, and for RoW, the changed data will be written to the space stores.

 

When take a snapshot for VMware, it creates some files, like delta disk files, .vmsd file, for delta disk files, it's a snapshot file and will store the changed data since last snapshot. So from this perspective, the snapshot technology VMware uses should be RoW, right?

However, from VMware guide or KB, we know that it uses CoW technology, as follows:

Understanding virtual machine snapshots in VMware ESXi and ESX (1015180) | VMware KB

The child disk

The child disk, which is created with a snapshot, is a sparse disk. Sparse disks employ the copy-on-write (COW) mechanism, in which the virtual disk contains no data in places, until copied there by a write. This optimization saves storage space. The grain is the unit of measure in which the sparse disk uses the copy-on-write mechanism. Each grain is a block of sectors containing virtual disk data. The default size is 128 sectors or 64 KB.

 

In addition, can anyone help explain the following snapshot chain regarding how it forms?

2017-01-06_112314.png

thanks

walker

VDP 6.1 unable to ssh using root password

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Hello,

 

I am trying to upgrade my VDP 6.1 appliance to 6.1.1. The iso is not being detected when mounted so I was going to run the hotfix. However, I cannot upload the hotfix files to my appliance via ssh. I am able to log in to the vdp-configure web portal and the vmware console using the root account. When I try to log in using putty or winscp it is saying access denied.

 

Also, all the potential solutions I'm finding via google appear to be broken. I get this error when trying to access the vmware kb articles:  1$deletedMessageForViewDocumentPage

 

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

VDP - selecting single disk restores whole VM

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HI there,

 

I'm fairly new to vDP, but my new employer has VDP 6.1. configured and it mostly seems to work fine. However we have an issue in trying to restore a single disk. Although  we can step through the restore wizard and select the disk,  a new destination etc. and can see in the summary screen that says restore 1 virtual disc and create 1 virtual machine , when the restore job runs, it actually creates all 5 discs and looks like it will try to restore them (it fails since some of the discs are  large (100's of  GB ) and non of the available data-stores have enough free space - we only want to restore 1 of the small (40GB drives) .

 

Why when we have selected a single disc is it trying to restore all of them?  Am I missing something

 

Jon

How many VMs can you backup through one vCenter server?

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Hi all,

 

we have a fairly large vSphere 5.0 environment with 2x vCenter servers, each with ca. 2000 VMs using about 600 TB of FC-attached SAN storage.

The majority (~90%) of these VMs are backed up with Symantec NetBackup 7.5 via the vStorage API (doing VMware snapshots through vCenter).

 

While the environment was growing the backup environment also grew by adding more and more media servers to it. But we are still using only one vCenter server per location.

Since a while we are having trouble with a growing number of backup job failures: It looks like the backup servers' connections to vCenter sometimes fail or time out in the middle of a job.

And the vCenter servers (VMs with 8 vCPUs and 32 GB RAM) appear to be heavily loaded (esp. CPU, but also RAM).

 

My question here is: Does this happen, because we have reached an architectural limit of such kind of backup setup? Or in other words: Do we need to add additional vCenter servers and spread hosts and VMs among them?

We expect further growth of this environment and need to take a decision quickly. I cannot provide any details about how the backups are done right now. I'd just like to hear some opinions from people who run comparable environments and also use snapshot based backups. Should one vCenter server be able to handle backups of more than 2000 VMs? Is it worth trying to scale up the one vCenter server?

 

Thanks for any comments!

Andreas


VDP - backup status

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Is there a way to see what the status of each running job in VDP is? I know you can see percent complete of the overall job but is there a way to see which machine is being backed up, which have already been backed up and which proxy it is currently using?

 

I have 6 jobs that back up about 100 virtual machines and the jobs just seem to sit at the same percentage for a long time. They also seem to take an incredibly long time to run.

VDP License?

I need your thoughts on ESXi business continuity

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Currently we use ShadowProtect, which works with Oracle's virtual box to do that and it works great, especially for physical machines.  However, I'm looking for something that works with VMware so snapshots can be saved to another location, and that location brought up to a certain point in time if there is a failure or malware, under VMware.  Then they can fire up the other machine to a point of 15 minutes ago or 4 hours ago and continue from there.  With ShadowProtect, if the backups have been altered, it will not replicate them.  The end game is to have a standby environment that cannot be corrupted.  The backups move one way to the backup environment, and are not accepted if they have been altered.  We will then replicate off-site in the local area, which we provide as a service now.

 

Thanks!

Após atualização do VDP para 6.1, appliance não aparece para gerenciá-lo

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Olá,

Atualizamos a versão do VDP para a 6.1, porem não é possível selecionar o novo appliance no drop-down do VDP para gerenciá-lo (aparece somente o nome da VM do appliance antigo);

 

Verificamos que existia um alerta de consistência no novo VDP, iniciando então o processo de verificação de integridade para verificar se este é o motivo da VM não estar na lista de appliances válidos no VDP, porem não obtivemos sucesso.

 

Acompanhamos a verificação pelo web client e também executando o comando "avmaint hfscheckstatus --ava" no ssh. O campo status estava como "completed" e o result deve estar como "OK";

 

Iniciamos o serviço de manutenção com o comando "dpnctl start maint". A partir deste momento, o alerta referente à integridade de checkpoints desapareceu, porem ainda não aparece o novo appliance no drop-down do VDP para gerenciá-lo.

 

---

Histórico de todo procedimento feito

 

-Inicialmente, foi perdido o vCenter, que estava na versão 5.5, instalado em servidor Windows;

-Foi criado um novo vCenter (VCSA), um novo datacenter e novo cluster, adicionando os mesmos hosts que estavam no vCenter anterior. Este novo vCenter, na versão 6.5;

-Após a criação do novo vCenter, verificamos que não existia compatibilidade entre o VDP 5.8 e o novo vCenter (plugin do VDP não aparecia no vCenter web client);

-Realizada tentativa de atualização do VDP 5.8 para 6.0.5 sem sucesso. Ocorreu problema por falta de espaço em um datastore. Abortamos a atualização;

-Com o problema de falta de espaço, tivemos que excluir o snapshot do VDP original;

-Para acelerar o processo, decidimos importar os discos de dados do VDP 5.8 em um novo appliance na versão 6.1 e recriar os jobs de backup. Procedimento finalizado com sucesso;

-A partir da importação e configuração do novo appliance e dos discos do appliance antigo, o plugin do VDP voltou a aparecer no web client;

-Não é possível selecionar o novo appliance no drop-down do VDP para gerenciá-lo (aparece somente o nome da VM do appliance antigo);

-Verifiquei que existia um alerta de consistência no novo VDP, iniciando então o processo de verificação de integridade para verificar se este é o motivo da VM não estar na lista de appliances válidos no VDP.

Recovering "inaccessible" VMs on datastore

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In short, I am looking for help recovering "inaccessible" VMs.

 

Background:

My operating theory is that during maintenance on the UPS connected to our SAN rack, I accidentally tripped the power on one of three fiber channel switches. When this happened, roughly 30 VMs were in vMotion through that switch, and as a result of the power loss several datastores hosted on the SAN were disconnected and listed as inaccessible. The datastores did not reconnect to effected hosts as expected (FC connections are redundant, there was always a path from host to storage array). The roughly 30 VMs previously mentioned were unresponsive. Attempting to open VMRC for any of the affected VMs failed with error: "Unable to connect to the MKS: Could not connect to pipe \\.\pipe\vmware-authpipe within retry period." These VMs reported vmtools not running, 0 bytes allocated storage, but with static CPU load (seemed stuck at whatever the last recorded load was). No commands to the affected VMs completed successfully, most timed out or continued to run indefinitely.

 

I migrated off unaffected VMs to unaffected hosts. This process completed without issue. Afterwards, all affected hosts were restarted and successfully reconnected to the datastores. At this point, I expected the inaccessible VMs would be identified on the datastores and return to normal operation. This did not happen, and the VMs are still listed as inaccessible.

 

Brief Version/Config Info:

ESXi 5.5.0 update 3 (VMKernel Release Build 3248547)

vCenter Server Appliance 5.5.0.30500 Build 4180648

All hosts are part of a single cluster which has vSphere DRS enabled (automated)

All datastores are part of a single datastore cluster with Storage DRS enabled (automated) and Storage I/O Control, VMFS5

 

Steps Taken:

  1. Checked logs, noted "nvram write failed" and datastore timeout errors on affected hosts (read Powering on a virtual machine fails with the error: NVRAM write failure (2097213) | VMware KB but was unable to power off/on the affected VMs to allow creation of a new .nvram file)
  2. Verified files still present on datastore, noted presence of *.vmx.lck file for affected VMs (tried steps listed here: can't register/add to inventory a vm because of locked file)
  3. A colleague attempted removing the lock file, but was unsuccessful, I believe they followed this: Investigating virtual machine file locks on ESXi (10051) | VMware KB
  4. Attempted removing affected VM from inventory and re-registering with vSphere (tried steps listed here: How to register/add a VM to the Inventory in vCenter Server (1006160) | VMware KB)
  5. Attempted created new VM and attaching .vmdk from an affected VM, this process was not successful

 

Questions:

  • What other actions can I take to restore these VMs? The files exist on the datastore, but something is stopping me at every step. I am not against retrying all steps taken previously to record more specific info on why they failed if this would help.
  • None of these were backed up--this was a failure in our deployment that I intended to correct later this year. What is the recommended method to backup VMs? I have researched several third-party products but I'm leaning towards VDP (really appreciated this paper: https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere/vmware-vsphere-data-protection-overview.pdf ),

 

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this. I was fortunate that the failed VMs were not critical, but one of them is important and I would like to understand why I cannot restore it from the datastore.

 

- Oliver

VDP 6.0.2 - Missing gear icon for adding Data Domain

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Hi all.

 

We have deployed a VDP 6,0.2 over a vSphere 5.5 on which we will integrate a Data Domain as storage for backups.

 

However, after going to the storage tab there is no "gear icon" to get action list such as "Add Data Domain".

 

We are running vCenter Server / ESXi hosts 5.5,

We have and up to date Adobe Flash Player Plugin installed

We have tested from different browers above the release requested in the documentation:

 

Microsoft Internet Explorer 10.0.19 and later.
Mozilla Firefox 34 and later.
Google Chrome 39 and later.

 

We don't know what can be failing, but at the end as we cannot see the icon to add Data Domain, this integration cannot be done.

 

Do you have any suggestion/idea what can we do?

 

Thanks in advance.

vdp disk space?

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In vmware-data-protection-administration-guide-61

I can find the configurations:

I don‘t understand it.

VMs need 30T disk space to backup.

How should I configure it in VDP?

Does VDP need separate datastore?


VDP Installation Issues - Configuration not completing, vCenter not Integrating?

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I am installing the VDP 6.1.2 Appliance .OVA file on vCenter 6.5 via the Deploy OVF/OVA tool. VDP installs fine, and I configure VDP through the configuration server after installation and confirm its network settings, test the connection to vCenter, choose the datastore, create the backup disks, etc. The server then reboots. A "task" for this installation in the vCenter dashboard seems to stop at 70% for the VDP install. Regardless, I have tried restarting the vCenter instance as well, logging out and back in, etc. yet I do not see a VDP icon/option. When I access the VDP configuration URL after what I thought was a successful configuration, I am prompted to enter/confirm all my details again as though VDP never finished installing - from what I read in the documentation I am supposed to see some kind of status information.

 

What am I doing wrong here? Everything *seems* to install properly. The appliance reboots. I log out and back into vCenter. I get no VDP icon / option. It seems to never get past the configuration and vCenter integration stage. I have installed it FOUR times now with the same situation.

 

What's going on here?

 

Thanks in advance!

Selecting a backup solution

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hi,

hope you can advice me selecting a backup solution, 

 

We  need to buy Essentials Kit, these do not include data protection so we will need to search for a alternative to backups VMs (powered on).

i would like to use veeam but the licences required increase price too much (1 licence for each socket) so im looking for an alternative, what you could recommend?

 

until now the cheaper i found was cloudbacko, but searching on forums there are many negative opinions.

Join a Linked Mode Group After Installation vCetner 6

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Hi,

Can I joined two vCSA 6 in linked mode after vCenter been installed, the use case is vMotion cross vCenter

Recovery from a Lost (non-recoverable) delta vmdk file

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I am looking for help with trying to restore/receover a VM with a corrupt (not recoverable) delta.vmdk file, the file was partially written over with other data.

 

No backups exist (a mistake during the attempt of a backup operation caused the corruption)

 

Background Info:

The VM has had snapshots taken in the past

The VM was shutdown normally to perform a cli manual backup operation on the file system. 

VM has 2 disks inside of it

Esxi host is Vsphere 5.5

VM guest OS is windows 2008R2

 

It appears the corrupted delta file belongs to the first disk (the OS)  FILE-Primary-000001-delta.vmdk

 

I understand I have lost some of the data from the disk "FILE-Primary.vmdk", I hope only from the time of the last snapshot being taken,  around the May 09 time frame. 

 

My hope is to be able to get the system restored with the FILE-Primary.vmdk having the data from the May 9th time frame and then the other disk "FILE-Primary_3.vmdk"  up to the time the system was shutdown July 8th.

 

As an accidental VM admin,  and the inability to get to Dell/VM support until probably tomorrow morning I am hoping to gain some insights from this forum.

 

Attachment contains the non-flat and non-delta files from the directory.

 

Thank you  in advance of any insights and support provided.

 

John D

 

 

Error message during start up

**************

An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM FILE-Primary.

Failed to start the virtual machine.

Module DiskEarly power on failed.

Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/6ac399c6-b1733377/FILE-Primary/FILE-Primary-000001.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

One of the parameters supplied is invalid

**************

 

***************

 

List of files in directory

************

-rw-------. 1 root root     384624640 Jul  8 18:27 FILE-Primary-000001-delta.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           327 Jun 15 13:39 FILE-Primary-000001.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root    8810139648 Jul  8 11:54 FILE-Primary_3-000001-delta.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           333 Jun 15 13:39 FILE-Primary_3-000001.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root 1099511627776 May  9 02:29 FILE-Primary_3-flat.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           554 May  9 01:58 FILE-Primary_3.vmdk

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root            73 Jun 14 10:29 FILE-Primary-4dae1ab3.hlog

-rw-------. 1 root root   42949672960 May  9 02:29 FILE-Primary-flat.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root          8684 Jul  8 11:54 FILE-Primary.nvram

-rw-------. 1 root root         29079 May  9 02:32 FILE-Primary-Snapshot2.vmsn

-rw-------. 1 root root           550 May  9 01:58 FILE-Primary.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           568 May  9 02:32 FILE-Primary.vmsd

-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root          3555 Jun 15 13:38 FILE-Primary.vmx

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root          4372 Jun 15 15:31 FILE-Primary.vmxf

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        396546 May  8 13:24 vmware-11.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        393369 May  9 02:30 vmware-12.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        281798 Jun 14 10:29 vmware-13.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        150976 Jun 14 10:29 vmware-14.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        279941 Jul  8 11:54 vmware-15.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root         88918 Jul  9 04:19 vmware-16.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root         88835 Jul  9 04:36 vmware.log

 

************

Mount s.v00 file

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I have an ESXi 5.5 host stuck with all my hardware in passthrough mode, so it cannot find the datastore. The ESXi OS boots up and in the ESXi GUI client from my Windows machine, I can disable passthrough, but upon reboot it all goes back to passthrough again. So I tried to edit the esx.conf file that is in the ESX host OS image using SSH, set it all to "vmkernel" instead of "passthrough" but the same thing happens: It all goes back to passthrough after reboot.

 

So the last resort I have is to grab the s.v00 image from the 250MB FAT partition where the ESX OS image resides, mount the image on another machine, edit the esx.conf file offline and then let it boot.

 

I can't find any info on opening/mounting the s.v00 image file. Any ideas?

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