VCenter (or lack thereof) and Appliance mode

[mxx]

Hi,

Yesterday I tried out Veeam B&R for the very first time and it's been great!

I had big problems with getting appliance mode to work though and solving that was very very annoying because once a job (forced into using appliance mode) was started + it was going to fail anyway, it wouldn't stop after pressing "stop" for 15-25 minutes
The setup is 2 esxi 5.5 U2 hosts with vmware essentials (not plus).

The error was: "VDDK error: 13.You do not have access rights to this file"
I found some info about that permissions issue on vmware but it was supposedly fixed sometimes in 5.1 already.
ssh is enabled on both hosts, the root password works, there is no lockdown mode or anything else configured.

The solution was to access the hosts through VCenter Server and not standalone.

I'd really like to get this to work without the need for VCenter Server.
The reasons for that is that we can't use VMotion anyway and that the VCenter Server -at least at the moment- is located at a remote location and rarely powered on.
I chose to ignore the "VCenter recommended" message when adding the standalone hosts because the only reason given was VMotion awareness.

Has anyone else experienced this behaviour?

Thank you!

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi,

Do you have proxy servers on the each ESXi host? Do you use root account as a connection account to your hosts? BTW, what job performance do you see with network and virtual appliance modes?

Thank you!

[mxx]

Thanks for your quick reply Vitaliy.
Yes I have 1 proxy server / host and yes I'm using the root account. I definitely know that root access -at least via ssh- is working.
Is there anything else I could check when I login as root?
I don't recall configuring anything regarding access rights, so this should be pretty much the defaults of a 5.5 U2 installation except that ssh is enabled.

[Vitaliy S.]

It seems like you are no the only one with this error message, see this topic for additional details > new install of Veeam - hotadd issues

The case I've referenced has been closed to no response of the poster, so It would be useful to open a case with our technical team.

Finally, I have done a quick search on the error you observe, and it seems like has fixed than in their recent VDDK update

[mxx]

Oh, that's great, thanks!
So I only have to wait for a new patch release?

Although they only mention this as a general issue for 5.1 compiled software with 5.5. If it was like that, shouldn't hotadd always fail on esxi 5.5?

[mxx]

So? Does it mean I just have to wait for a patch?

Thank you!

[Vitaliy S.]

You'd better open a support case with our technical team and let them review the log files.

BTW, please be aware that even if don't have vMotion licensed, every time you move VM from one host to another (without vCenter Server present in the backup console), you will have to do full backup due to VM ID changes.

[mxx]

Thank you Vitaliy. That's bad. In this case I need to move the VCenter Server anyway and so this whole mess is no longer an issue.

[Vitaliy S.]

You're welcome. Yes, running jobs through vCenter Server is the recommended way not only due to vMotion usage, but for the reasons I stated above.