Backups in a Dynamic Envirnoment Not Realistically Possible?

[jks_45]

We just purchased Veeam Backup 3.0.1...and...

Our virtual environment is DYNAMIC. Veeam Backup seems to want a STATIC only environment for continuous successful backups. Example, we have 3 ESX servers in a VI3, so VMotion, DRS..etc, this is what I mean by "Dynamic". Our VMs can and do move around all 3 ESX Servers, especially when doing maintenance.

When scheduling a re-occurring Job on an individual VM, the first is successful, but then the rest fail since the VM(s) have moved. So, I'm guessing we will have to move up from the individual VM to the ESX Server...., but wait if I schedule a backup of the ESX Server, if the backup failed for the individual VM when it moved, then won't the same thing happen here? If a VM was on the ESX Server, but is no longer there, or if a new VM that wasn't in the previous backup is now on the ESX Server.. The job will fail? If we took it even higher...It doesn't seem to keep track of movement, so will the whole backup fail because 1 VM moved from 1 server to another? According to what I've seen so far, I would say yes...

If this is the case, then scheduled jobs are pretty much useless in a dynamic environment. We would have to create a new job everyday for every VM and could never get increments unless we forced all of our VMs to stay statically in place. Now doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of VMware's Virtual Infrastructure, with VMotion, DRS...etc?

I'm hoping somebody can through me a bone here... Does anybody have a similar environment? Or a work around?

Thanks for any help!

J

[Gostev]

Hello J, Veeam Backup is fully VMotion-aware since version 1.0.
I suggest that you open support case to see why your jobs are failing, because VMotion could not be the issue.
Thank you.

[jks_45]

Hello Gostev,

Thanks for the quick response.

I've double checked, and I will open a ticket, but it seems to be spelling it out in plain English.

I created 22 Jobs (1 for each VM = 1 full backup and 14 daily increments). The full backup ran successfully on all of them. On the second run (1st increment), 14 out of the 22 failed. The other 8 completed successfully.

All 14 failed with the same following error below (minus the X's and myservername). I looked at all of them and they are no longer on those servers that it is trying to read.

Analyzing object "myservername" (12X), host "10.X.X.154"
Object "myservername" (ref "12X") was not found in hierarchy
There are no objects to backup

This example shows Veeam Backup failing to find "myservername" on host 10.X.X.154. That is because "myservername" is now on 10.X.X.153.

The other 8 that completed successfully were all still on the same servers they were on when the jobs were created.

[Gostev]

Did you populate the Veeam Backup servers tree by adding Virtual Center, or by adding your ESX hosts individually?

[jks_45]

That's actually what I was going to ask.

It was by individual ESX Server. So my guess is that I need to select the VMs after adding the VCMS as a host. Makes sense. I previously had FastSCP setup, so I didn't have to add any additional servers after installing Veeam Backup. I will test this first.

Thanks.

[Gostev]

By the way, you get benefits by adding vCenter instead of individual hosts even with FastSCP, since doing this enables direct ESX(i) to ESX(i) copies via vCenter copy task that FastSCP leverages when possible.