Backup VM's in Windows Failover Cluster

[johannesk]

Hi,
Anyone here using Veeam agent to backup windows VM's setup as Windows Failover cluster?
We are trying this out. We configure a protection group with the cluster node name and a backup that then detects the vm's for it.
Then run the backup to backup entire computer and it's successful. If we then restore the entire passive node the vm does not get the correct scsi configuration. The vm has got vmware paravirtual SCSI adapter with scsi bus sharing as virtual. But when restored it comes with the LSI Logic SAS scsi controller.
How do you go about doing a DR restore of the vm's? Will it be possible to use the backup to rebuild the cluster? or can the backup only be used to restore files?

Regards,
Jóhannes

[Dima P.]

Hello Jóhannes,

If we then restore the entire passive node the vm does not get the correct scsi configuration.

Can you clarify how the restore is performed?

Will it be possible to use the backup to rebuild the cluster? or can the backup only be used to restore files?

The Veeam Agent for Windows recovery option supports Bare Metal Recovery for a node; however, cluster configuration is not preserved and must be rebuilt manually.

[johannesk]

I have created support case #07844406 for this.

The restore performed is straight forward. I start instant recovery of the passive node (the vm with only drive C:) from the source backup job to Mware vSphere. Configure the destination to the same host,path and datastore as the VM was running with when backed up. I configure the network to be connected (also tried not connected). Restore with same BIOS UUID. Then the instant restore is started. On that VM that gets created in vmware it gets LSI Logic SAS SCSI adapter instead of VMware paravirtual SCSI adapter. Then I make it migrate to the datastore. The end result is a restored VM without VMware Paravirtual SCSI adapter.

So I guess this has nothing to do with the fact that the VM is part of a cluster. But it does have the vmware paravirtual SCSI adapter because it's a part of a cluster.

[johannesk]

I received information from Veeam support on my case on this topic #07844406.

The logic is that the agent is running on the OS itself, not interfering with the VM manager. Therefore Instant Recovery requires further manual adjustments as the agent backup main goal is to backup the OS.

So according to that we will need to manually reconfigure the SCSI adapters on restored cluster node.

[johannesk]

I'm now testing restore of the cluster volumes of a failover cluster that is made of vm's in vmware backed up with Veeam Agent.
I have read the prerequisites here.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

We can restore the volumes to the nodes if the volumes exist already in vmware and on the cluster nodes, but not if the volumes don't exist.

So in case I delete both cluster nodes and the shared volumes. I can restore the nodes with the system volume C:. But I'm not able to restore the shared volumes. The disk mapping / restore layout does not show in the restore process if the volumes have been deleted in vmware, but it's fine if the volumes exist in vmware. Thus we are not able to do volume restore to the restored cluster node.

Is this expected or should we be able to restore the volumes to the restored cluster node when both nodes were deleted along with it's volumes in vmware?

regards,
Jóhannes