unmount VeeamBackup NFS Datastore in vCenter

[dinger76]

Hi,

We've been experiencing a couple of issues recently with one of our hosts showing up as 'Not Responding' in vCenter. We've currently working through the issue with VMware support but one of the items they mentioned that could be an issue is with storage problems.
Further investigation has shown one of our hosts losing connection to the 'VeeamBackup' nfs datastores used by Instant Recovery. The connection is restored again, sometimes within a couple of seconds and sometimes within a few minutes.

To avoid the investigations focusing on the VeeamBackup datastores, I wondered if it is okay to remove the VeeamBackup datastores from vCenter, and what the best method would be to do this?

Thanks in advance for any assistance with this.

Chris

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Chris,

Yes, you can unmount Veeam B&R NFS datastores from the hosts via vSphere Client, but this datastore will be mounted again when you start an instant recovery task etc.

Thanks.

[mephisto]

Gent's

I'm testing the instant restore and noticed sometimes when I finish the session the NFS store keeps mounted on my ESXi host, even if I restart veeam server it always comes back up. There is no instant restore job open or anything so I was wondering what could be the problem, if there is a way to manually unmount this NFS store on Veeam so my ESXI host doesn't keep picking it up.

Thanks!

[chrisdearden]

I believe this is by design - it will make subsequent restores faster. You can unmount it from the VI client if you really want to but you dont have to.

[foggy]

Chris is spot on, vPower NFS datastore is left mounted to the host in order to save time on mounting it again during the next vPower task.

[Miguel capa4]

Hi
I enabled the option of vPower NFS Server in Veeam Backup&Recovery 7.0
I made a backup and i run a job of instant recovery, then this creates a datastore in vmware, after of migrate the machine that previously deployed with the instant recovery, the datastore that was created, do not erased it automatically, this is normal?
The datastore that created the instant recovery always be there?

[foggy]

Miguel, yes, this is expected. Please refer to the topic above for details. Thanks.

[jdavidson_waters]

After using vPower NFS functionality (Surebackup, Instant VM Recovery, etc) the NFS datastore always remains mounted to the ESX host. I understand that this is by design, probably because having to mount the NFS datastore each time would add some time to the process.

However, it would still be useful to have the option as a tickbox somewhere in the interface that said "unmount NFS datastore when process is terminated" or similar.

If the server is rebooted that is serving the NFS datastore then you will receive a vCenter alert regarding "lost access to datastore" which can send some IT admins into panic.
Admittedly, changes could be made to vCenter alerting to ensure this alert wasnt generated for the NFS datastore but I still think it would be cleaner to have the option to cleanly unmount the datastore when you're no longer using it.

[AGS]

Hi,
I see that a NFS share is mounted on 3 of 4 ESXi servers of my cluster.
It points to my Veeam server /VeeamBackup_xx.xx.xx.xx folder.
There is no running backup.
Why is this NFS share still mounted ? and why not mounted on all ESXi ?
Should I open a support case ?

[Vitaliy S.]

This datastore is mounted on all hosts where you've targeted SureBackup/Instant VM Recovery jobs to. No need to open a support case, as this is expected behavior. Please look through this thread for more info.

[AGS]

Thanks but I wonder if I can unmount it if it contains a .vSphere-HA folder ?

[Vitaliy S.]

You can unmount these datastores, no worries.

[dellock6]

That folder exists because vSphere HA and its datastore heartbeat is selecting automatically at least 3 datastores to saved those data. Upon unmounting the vPower NFS, HA will simply pick another datastore.

[crazylefty]

Hi all,
I've got two datastores in vCenter that don't have any VMs and weren't created by me or my team.
They are both prefixed with "VeeamBackup_" and then the name of a server used as a Veeam backup and Veeam repo server. These servers both have iSCSI disks attached from our NAS that we use to dump backups and copies to.
Does Veeam create these as placeholders to assist in backing up these servers? I know Veeam can't backup the iSCSI disks, so not too sure about what's going on here.
The reason I bring it up is vCenter is sending alarms that path redundancy is down for both of these datastores and I'm trying to get to the bottom of it.
Thanks for any advice in advance!

[HannesK]

Hello,
I merged your question to the existing thread. What you see is the NFS datastores used for instant VM recovery

Best regards,
Hannes

[admsys]

Is it possible to add the unmount datastore option after restoring entire vm ?
https://community.veeam.com/discussion- ... -esxi-1375
Unless you're constantly restoring, this state of keeping the datastore mounted is totally useless, or even, according to the forum link, can cause problems.

Veeam doc :
« The vPower NFS datastore stays mounted to the ESXi host. Each time you start an operation from the list, Veeam Backup & Replication checks whether vPower NFS datastore is mounted to the host. If you manually unmounted the datastore or the datastore was unmounted by other causes, Veeam Backup & Replication remounts the datastore. »
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

[HannesK]

Hello,
I merged your request to one of the existing threads. There are scripts that do the unmount if it really causes issues.

Best regards,
Hannes

[admsys]

Hello,
Thanks, I've seen the scripts but it would be nice at least to have the option to unmount when restoring. I don't think it's a major dev.
Regards