Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
Post Reply
gollem
Enthusiast
Posts: 33
Liked: 7 times
Joined: Jun 16, 2012 7:26 pm
Full Name: Erik E.
Contact:

Accidentally powered on replica instead of production server

Post by gollem »

On one our locations we've got the following setup: ESXi Production host + ESXi Failback host (both servers are identical, its not a cluster, no shared storage is used)

The production host has a continues protection and replicates all of its data to the failback host in a infinitive loop. If the Production hosts stops working we can simply fail over to the failback host and the users won't notice any delays (besides the short downtime). Besides the replication we are also doing backups to rotating harddrives.

So, yesterday I was doing maintenance on one of our servers, I've disabled the veeam jobs and updated ESXi on the failback host, that went fine. So I went on to the production host, shutdown the running VM's and updated ESXi. All went fine. It might have been that it was getting late (or that I had a beer ;) ) but I've accidentally powered on the replica.

To any possible replication issues and unwanted dataloss, i've caried out the following steps to get the replica server back to normal
- Shutdown the accidentally powered on VM's
- Removed all snapshots on the replica
- Deleted the replication data from \\server\share\Replicas\jobname*random chars*\
- Deleted the existing replica information from the configuration from the veeam console
- Mapped the replica's back to the job and set the seeds
- Initiated a new replica

The running veeam job just recalculated the disk digests of the replica's and both where in sync again.

So my thoughts where better safe then sorry. :)


The question is: If I have a replication job for a simple fileserver and I boot up the replica while the production server is still running, I starting to change or delete files, then shutdown the replica again. and initiate a replication job. Does veeam know that the replica has been changed and will it correct it or does it ignore changes made to the replica?

Thanks!




ps. I'm running the latest version of Veeam (9.5u1)
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: Accidentally powered on replica instead of production se

Post by foggy »

Hi Erik, I'm glad you're up and running fine now, however, actually you do not need to do anything in cases like that. All disk changes performed while replica VM was running go into the new snapshot file and are discarded during the next job run, so nothing to worry about here.
gollem
Enthusiast
Posts: 33
Liked: 7 times
Joined: Jun 16, 2012 7:26 pm
Full Name: Erik E.
Contact:

Re: Accidentally powered on replica instead of production se

Post by gollem »

Thanks, that is good to know! I should have read the FAQ :shock:
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 74 guests