Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
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DaveWatkins
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Feature Request/Bug: Don't try to backup a VM being svmotion

Post by DaveWatkins »

Hi

I'd like to request that Veeam not try to backup a VM currently being storage vmotioned. Over the weekend we had to move a fairly large VM over a WAN link, but as you can't snapshot a VM being svmotioned that backup job ended up running until the svmotion finished which took almost all the weekend. This was all happening at the same time we perform our monthly backups to tape and since that job was trying to create a snapshot against that VM for the entire time of the tape job it failed to backup any of our file server in our monthly job.

A much better solution to me would be that the backup job checked to make sure there was no svmotion going on before starting to back it up, and if there is then simply skip that VM with a warning or error. At this point I'm not even sure if backup window options would have resolved this as after the snapshot creation is attempted you cannot cancel that operation so you also can't cancel the job (I tried). The job did finally cancel after the svmotion finished, far too late to be of any use in getting our file servers to our monthly tapes

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Vitaliy S.
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Re: Feature Request/Bug: Don't try to backup a VM being svmo

Post by Vitaliy S. »

Hi Dave,
DaveWatkins wrote:but as you can't snapshot a VM being svmotioned that backup job ended up running until the svmotion finished which took almost all the weekend.
The job should have tried to do 3 attempts (by default), then fail. Can you please take a look at the job session log and check what operation took most of the time?

Thanks!
DaveWatkins
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Re: Feature Request/Bug: Don't try to backup a VM being svmo

Post by DaveWatkins »

Hi Vitaliy

I didn't explain the process that occured very well but the job didn't retry, because it never "failed".

The VM was being vmotioned, as I mentioned. Veeam asked VMWare to create a snapshot. VMWare doesn't fail this request, instead it queue's a snapshot creation job, that job stays queued until the VM finishes it's svmotion so the Veeam job stays running (for days in our case). You can't cancel the snapshot creation request in VMWare and cancelling the job in Veeam didn't complete either because, presumably it couldn't cancel the snapshot request, so you end up in a situation where you can't cancel the job at all without a complete restart of the Veeam services or waiting, what could potentially be days for the svmotion to complete.

Thanks
Dave
dellock6
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Re: Feature Request/Bug: Don't try to backup a VM being svmo

Post by dellock6 » 1 person likes this post

Thanks for the additional explanation Dave. I see two issues here:
- VMware should probably fail the operation after certain time, and never allow any request to stay in pending state for such a long time
- Veeam could maybe integrate an additional check to fail and retry a vm if snapshot is not executed in X amount of time

But for the future, as this was a planned svmotion and not a Storage DRS operation, you may want to simply add temporarely the VM to the esclusion list of the job so that it can be completed. Not the perfect solution, but surely a viable workaround to complete the backup and have your copies on tape.
Luca Dell'Oca
Principal EMEA Cloud Architect @ Veeam Software

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vExpert 2011 -> 2022
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DaveWatkins
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Re: Feature Request/Bug: Don't try to backup a VM being svmo

Post by DaveWatkins »

Yeah, that's the plan for us going forward. It doesn't happen often so is very much a corner case, but there could certainly be some minimal timeout checks built in to avoid it in future. I'm not sure what the API gives access to but as I mentioned, from the VMWare clients you can't even cancel that snapshot request once it's created, so a better solution might be to check for in progress svmotions before even attempting the snapshot and fail/retry if there is an svmotion in progress rather than even asking for a snapshot
Vitaliy S.
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Re: Feature Request/Bug: Don't try to backup a VM being svmo

Post by Vitaliy S. »

I always assumed that you cannot create a snapshot when VM is migrated, at least it doesn't work in our lab (maybe it is specific to some vSphere version).

In any case, I do agree with Luca and with you too, so to achieve goal 2, you can use Veeam ONE and its predefined alarm - maximum job duration. This should give you an option to "hard stop" a backup job when it exceeds a backup window or at least notifies you via email, so you could further apply some actions.
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