Surebackup - can't ping 2008 R2 guest on 2012 R2 host

[frankive]

We want to test the backup for our customer with surebackup. We are running 2012 R2 hyper-v hosts in our datacenter, but our customers is running a 2008 R2 Hyper-V cluster.
He uplaods daily his files to us through Cloud Connect and want us to run Surebackup on the files. We have his encryption password.
During the surebackup we can ping the vm until it comes to ctrl-alt-end. It then seems like the vm starts to install new hardware and probably the network card too since it stops pinging. When we log in to the surebackup vm we see that it installs new cpu etc.

Is it possible to get 2008 R2 vm (and cluster) to function at a 2012 R2 backup host without installing the hyper-v integration? If we install the 2012 R2 integration on his VM and he is running 2008 R2 cluster, will that cause any problems for his production VMs?

[frankive]

Is it possible to take the vmguest.iso file form a 2012 r2 server and install on the 2008 r2 VMS running on a 2008 R2 hyper-v host in production?

[veremin]

Hi, Frank, I believe the question regarding MS Hyper-V integration services might be better answered at MS community.

At least, no one of our customers has chimed in to share the relevant experience so far.

Thanks.

[frankive]

A solution would be for us to dedicate a 2008 R2 host server so we can run surebackup on that for our 2008 R2 customers though.

[veremin]

Of course, having a separate host running 2008 R2 would allow you to solve the problem. As to installing higher version of integration services on machine which uses older one, then, reaching MS specialist on dedicated communities might be a way to go. Thanks.

[foggy]

As to installing higher version of integration services on machine which uses older one...

I would not recommend doing so.

Haven't you tried to wait longer, until everything is set up and VM starts answering to ping again?

[frankive]

The problem is that is seems like it installs a whole new "hardware" on the vm while running surebackup which leaves the "newly hardware installed. do you wish to reboot?". It wont go any further (and the network wont work) until we manually click yes inside the vm in surebackup. That's not very automagic..

[nefes]

Frank, could you please tell me, which hardware is considered to be new in your case?
We don't see such behavior in our lab, so it is important to understand, which exact device leads to that situation.
It also may be helpful to know the list of guest OS's with such problem.

It is also possible to play with advanced SureBackup settings to make it wait for the reboot end, but that will definitely need support help, so let's try to solve the problem before trying to workaround it.

[frankive]

I will run a surebackup job and also record the session (and open the console of the vm so you can see the progress. I will set the wait time for 20 min. durint this surebackup.

[frankive]

Actually, the issue was with the customers domain controller, which naturally was the first VM in the app grp. It had a pending reboot. Did a reboot in production, took a new backup, and now it works just fine.

[nefes]

Great to hear that you've solved your issue.
If you will ever have any problem with VM booting in SureBackup in future, Troubleshooting mode could help you to solve it.
To run SureBackup in this mode, you need to open your job session, right click on failed VM and select Start menu item.
Job will boot that VM (and all previous ones) and leave it powered on, so you can open it's console and check out what happened manually.

[frankive]

Actually the same behvior happened again. I run the surebackup job 7 times and it failed 5 times.
While running it with the "Start" i see that it is the Windows firewall that won't start with error code 5. If I want 20-25 minutes then it will successed if i manually start the firewall. It will fail if I try to start in manually the first 20 min.
Definelately a Windows VM issues and not Veeam related I would guess.