Is it possible to exclude VM(s) from SureBackup job?

[RumataRus]

Hi!
We have some VMs in a backup job, but we want to do SureBackup verification not for all VMs in this job.
Is it possible?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Dmitry,

Yes, it is possible, but in order to do this you have to use Application groups only (no need to link a backup job). Just add corresponding VMs from a backup to the application group VM pool and specify roles you want to verify in the SureBackup job.

Thanks!

[RumataRus]

Thank you!

[zoltank]

Is there a way to exclude specific VMs in a linked backup job in SureBackup from being booted and checked? In other words, I don't want to have SureBackup check all the VMs in a linked backup job.

[zoltank]

I'd like to revisit this since it's an issue again.

The problem with adding them to the Application Group is all VMs in the Application Group are started together. If you're checking a larger backup (containing 20+ VMs) there simply aren't enough resources to do that. Also, it's the larger backups where you might need to exclude a VM from SureBackup processing.

[Vitaliy S.]

As a workaround, I would also suggest creating multiple Application Groups to balance the load on your vPower NFS server.

[flavor4real]

I understand that a SureBackup Job is linked to a Veeam Backup Job which typically holds more than one VM. How could I select only to verify one specific VM out of a Veeam backup job?

[lobo519]

If I use an application group, aren't I going to have to add every new VM to the application group?? That's not very efficient and easy to forget. It would be great if there was an exclude option just like you can change the verification settings per VM if needed.

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, every new VM should be added manually to the application group. Thanks for the feedback anyway!

[tsightler]

I understand what you are saying, but it's not currently possible. For now you could have two backup jobs, one for those that get verified, and one for those that don't, then link the Surebackup only to the job with the VMs that should be verified. Sure, that requires some manual administration too, but you'd have to manually exclude VMs anyway.

[lobo519]

That sounds a bit more elegant..Thanks for the suggestion!

This wouldn't be necessary if I can figure this out.. http://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-re ... 20457.html

[v.tom]

Hi,

I have waited for this feature a long time, and I assumed it would be in v9.
But there is still no elegant way to exclude a VM from a SureBackup job which is linked to a job.

Using a application group just isn't flexible enough.

Designing backup jobs is hard enough without having to think about which VM's you want to verify with SureBackup and which one not.
In my opinion you have to design jobs on retention, schedule and dedup primarily.
Verification of VM's shouldn't be part of the job design.

[crackocain]

Hi

In SureBackup linked jobs settings have simutaneously VM limitation. This is good because I'm configuring application group only contains domain controller. Then linked another VM's EXC or etc. And i set simultaneously limit is 1. So Surebackup always Domain controller Up and another VM's opening and closing one by one. This is perfect because minimal effect on production host and backup storage.

But if all vm's in the same backup job i cannot use linkjob because there is no options. And i can not use exclusions. I can not select one or more VM. All VM's must be adding automatically. This is bad.

Did you consider add this feature?

[foggy]

Mehmet, please see above for the tips on how you can achieve that.

[crackocain]

Yeah but its not the same. Because if one app group vm can not start then all application group vms gone failed.

So i test 150 vm in a one application group?! And all 150 vm must be opened at surebackup cycle. Small organizations like 5-10 vm's use app group is useable.

Splitting backup jobs is the option but i dont like that because we are adding the vcenter backup job at the top. So if new vm created automatically backup.

[foggy]

I see the case, thanks for explanation.

[crackocain]

Hi

Is there any chance Surebackup Exclusion at 9.5? It is very simple feature but i dont understand why it cant. Application Groups useful but not automated. We are servicing hundreds of customers. So we want Surebackup and other services can be autonumous.

Why is important?

We are adding backup job ESX host. Some of unnecessary VM's excluded. So if customer delete VM or add VM Veeam backup automatically. We are relaxed because customer protected.
Then we are setting Surebackup but some Linux VM's or some of Windows VM's even VmwareTools is installed can not pass ping test.
So we want to exclude this VM's but it can't happen.
So i have to add application group all this VM's. One by one or grouping. It doesn't matter because all autonomous structure is broken.

Please consider this feature coming releases...

Thanks

[foggy]

Not in v9.5.

We prioritize features based on the number of requests and value to the product, as opposed to submission date or [perceived] simplicity.

But thanks for the feedback, anyway.

[JoshuaPostSAMC]

I have a SureBackup job that I'm running with a linked job. In the job are a handful of 2008 R2 servers with the VMXNET3 adapters without the hotfix that causes the NIC to be identified as a new adapter and no longer have a static IP assigned. When I install the hotfix, it causes the production VM to lose it's static IP, so the solution is worse than the fix.

I want to just skip these VMs as they always fail the IP check and are also failing the heartbeat check, which causes my job to always result in a fail.

It appears that I can't just exclude them or set the boot time to 0 seconds since there is a 60 sec minimum. Any powershell stuff that could help?

[JoshuaPostSAMC]

So Foggy, since my post was merged into this one, does that count as an additional request?

Ultimately, having known failures results in people ignoring all failures, assuming they are of the same nature and a legitimate concern will ultimately be missed.

[crackocain]

Hi Joshua

Did you try E1000 ethernet adapter? E1000 ethernet adapter perfecly fine.

Also if IPV6 disabled in Network Connections at 2008 R2 also cause this problem. Yeah interesting but true

[JoshuaPostSAMC]

@crackocain
I haven't changed to E1000 as it would still involve changing the static IP and causing a downtime. If only the heartbeat would work properly then it would be less of a problem, as I can watch these machines boot in SureBackup, but they never register.

I know this is apparently by design according to Veeam, but I see it as a bug that a VM that we uncheck heartbeat and ping tests still fails because it thinks it fails to boot because it doesn't have a heartbeat or a ping...

[JoshuaPostSAMC]

Also if IPV6 disabled in Network Connections at 2008 R2 also cause this problem. Yeah interesting but true

What, what?!@ I just checked a server that failed to detect heartbeat and IPv6 was not enabled, and I checked another server that was successful and it was enabled...

That should be a huge sticky on this forum, or a bug to be squashed! I'll try enabling it on a server that is failing and see if it starts coming up.

[JoshuaPostSAMC]

Enabling IPv6 on a 2008 R2 server with VMXNET3 didn't allow Surebackup to detect the heartbeat, although I have VMware Tools 10.0.9 installed. (Note: I enabled IPv6 on the production server, but have not rebooted it yet, just allowed another backup to run) When SureBackup creates this VM, it still gets the "new" NIC and is looking for DHCP since the static IP is assigned to the other NIC instance, but as I'm trying to simulate our production environment, this network does not have DHCP, so it gets a 169. address along with an IPv6 address. Even after assigning a valid IP to the new NIC and restarting VMware tools service, it still does not detect the VM has booted.

Any other thoughts? Veeam support had mentioned setting VMware Tools service to Automatic (Delayed Start) which I'm in the middle of testing.

[foggy]

So Foggy, since my post was merged into this one, does that count as an additional request?

Yes, that's among the reasons of why we merge similar topics/requests into a single thread - to see the demand for the feature.

[crackocain]

I'm pretty sure changing the network adapter to E1000 solves the problem. Yeah cause downtime

[StephanF]

Hi there,

I want to add +1 for this feature request. Maybe it can be designed more elegant than just an exclusion of some VMs.

Suggestion:
Let a Surebackup job link to different objects. They could be:
- Backup jobs (possible now, but enhance it with exclusions of VMs)
- Single VMs (so you could just throw a bunch of VMs inside that will be processed in parallel)
- Application groups (so you could define a group of VMs, that will be processed in parallel)

This all is meant additionally to the Application Group you can define now and that is started first to fire up all required infrastructure VMs.

Why it is important for us:
We have want to use Surebackup to verify our VMs. These VMs have different prerequisites to work. Some just need a DC online, some need a database server too, some need several different VMs to be available.
At the moment we have 2 ways to achieve this:
1. Just use Application Groups for every single case and don't link the Surebackup job to backup jobs. This works but has the drawback of being slow because all VMs are started one after another without any parallel processing.
2. Design our backup jobs by grouping VMs that have the same prerequisites, put these prerequisites in Application Groups and link the Surebackup job to the right App Group and to the backup job.
This would be faster because of parallel processing but this way we have to design our backup jobs according to Surebackup needs. This is not nice because their design is according to frequency of backup, OS, etc.

With our suggestion we would be able to group the VMs according to Surebackup needs without changing the design of the backup jobs. This would add much more flexebility.

I hope I was able to explain our demand.

Greetings
Stephan

[JoshuaPostSAMC]

I want to +1 the request to have a way to exclude a VM from SureBackup, or just make it so if we set an advanced option and uncheck both heartbeat and ping test, that the VM should be an unconditional success, rather than still failing when it Veeam fails to detect a successful boot.

I have some VMs that have RDMs, that I know will not boot successfully in SureBackup, but they are part of a job that I want to verify with SureBackup, so being able to exclude them, or have an unconditional success is critical to being able to have a job being shown as a success, rather than the entire job always showing a failure due to a known issue with one VM in the job. I'll start ignoring failures of that job and could miss an important failure of another VM that isn't a known issue.

[JoshuaPostSAMC]

This is really needed. I don't understand how SureBackup determines a success vs fail when no tests are selected

VM1: No VMware Tools, Network not mapped in Virtual Lab. Heartbeat and Ping test not enabled. After waiting the entire Bootup time, it reports that the VM booted successfully and the status is Success

VM2: VMware Tools installed, Network mapped but the first IP returned in non-routable and a second is accessible. Heartbeat and Ping tests not enabled. SureBackup detects the non-routable IP and reports No destination network for the non-routable and the status is Failed

VM3: VMware tools installed, Network mapped, but due to RDM dependencies, OS will not boot with a failed fsck and we are OK with this as we have a documented plan. Heartbest and Ping tests not enabled. SureBackup reports it did not boot and the status is Failed.

On all 3 of these, I am aware that they will not fully be bootable/testable in SureBackup, which is why I have disabled every test and set a short boot time as I don't want to waste time for them to boot if I can't verify it. My SureBackup job is based on a Linked job. This is my example of just a few situations where either we need to be able to exclude a VM from Surebackup entirely, or just allow a VM that has no tests enable to always show as a success. If I'm not asking SureBackup to test anything, then why would it ever show me a failure? Even more confusing when some instance it still shows a success and others a fail.

[foggy]

I appreciate such a detailed and reasonable feedback, thanks for that!