CopyJob VM not being backed up with no error!

[christiankelly]

I have a backup copy job, which consists of one full backup job and one particular VM from another backup job. When the copy job runs, it finishes without error. However when I looked closely (THANK GOD!) I saw that the single VM was not anywhere in the job status. I searched in the logs and couldn’t find the VM name being referenced at all.

I called Veeam support (00580286) and first the tech told me I shouldn’t mix jobs as it’s not a “best practice” which I have never heard before. And then said the issue was that one of my jobs was a “reversed incremental” and the other was an “incremental” and they weren’t compatible. Then after a brief chat with someone else the final word was “this is expected behavior” as it says in the user’s manual that you can’t mix a job with an individual server. http://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/70/v ... point.html

I think that Veeam should not allow you do add a individual VM and a full job if indeed it’s not supported, or at least through some kind of error, as unless I looked through the 50+ VM names to make sure everything was correct I would have assumed the server that I implicitly added was being copied offsite.
If you have a backup copy job with a mix of jobs and VMs you may want to take a look to make sure it’s working as expected.

Thanks,

[foggy]

Sounds confusing to me. Just to double-check - there are no restore points for the said VM on the target side, right (do you see restore points for this VM under Backups node, after expanding the corresponding backup copy job)? Were there any warnings logged in this job's session log?

Generally you should be able to add both backup jobs and individual VMs. And user guide also doesn't mention such limitation. What it does mention is that backup copy jobs do not support mix of block sizes, instead. But in this case you should see the warning.

[christiankelly]

Correct. There are no restore points for the VM on the target side, and there are NO warnings or failures of any kind in the backup copy job. I would have not had any way to know this other than a manual audit of the file. The support tech didn't' seem to think it was such a big deal that it "silently failed" and more like a "feature request" that it would, but I think it’s' a big deal anytime you add a VM to a job and it doesn't backup.

I'm glad to hear that I can mix a backup job with an individual VM as it seemed an odd limitation. Now to find out why it isn't working and worse yet why it didn't warn/fail when it ignored the VM.

Support case listed above. I would like to get this looked at ASAP if you know someone that would be able to see what's going on.

Thanks,

[foggy]

I have a backup copy job, which consists of one full backup job and one particular VM from another backup job

Christian, can you check if "one particular VM from another backup job" is added to the exclusions list of "full backup job"?

[christiankelly]

The server I'm backing up is not in the exclusion list of the backup copy job, but IS in the exclusion list of the full backup job. To make things clearer, I have a job tied to a VMWare folder, there is one large exchange server that I need to have another policy for, so it's specified in its own job, and exclude from the main job. The backup copy job references them both.

I can see how this could have been overlooked but I don’t think because a VM was excluded from a job and then referenced in a backup copy job the exclusion should hold? Sounds like a bug to me, but I guess there could be some logic behind it?

[Gostev]

This is a known issue that was fixed in Patch #4 (see sticky topic)

[christiankelly]

Yes patch #4 fixed it!

Thanks,