Guest indexing zip not created reliably for backups of large VMs

[Mgamerz]

Case # 03633236

I have a very large VM (file count wise, several millions of files) that takes several hours to index. I have added exclusions to not index some directories (like System Volume information - something I don't think should be indexed by default) which significantly has cut down on the time to index (6 => 2 hours or so). I have noticed enterprise manager cannot find "the file" when trying to restore data from this VM specifically. In some instances it can, in others, even though indexing succeeded, the guest indexing zip file is not created properly and is only 1KB. The ones that are successful are 77MB or so.

The error message specifically when opening the VM's restore point (or just picking the VM, as the newest restore point is chosen) shows Warning: Unable to find the specified file. It happens even after the job has completed too. Note this is not trying to restore data, but simply view the restore point file tree. It fails immediately upon selecting the VM.

This is just a post in case someone sees this issue.

[PTide]

Hi,

The error message specifically when opening the VM's restore point (or just picking the VM, as the newest restore point is chosen) shows Warning: Unable to find the specified file. It happens even after the job has completed too.

Do you open the restore point on EM or on VBR?

Thanks!

[Mgamerz]

I open it on EM. I'm not sure how you would use the guest catalog in VBR since the only option I have seen is to mount the FLR. Unless I am missing something.

I had to do a restore today on that server, and I had to poke through about 6 or 7 restorepoints before I found a catalog that actually existed. It's pretty annoying.

[wishr]

Hi Mgamerz,

Have you had a chance to give a try to the solution provided by our support engineer?

Thanks

[Mgamerz]

This VM is very large - 10s of TBs of data (also deduplicated in the VM itself). It will take a long time to run contig tool, but I'm not sure if doing it on a deduplicated volume is a good idea (taken from Microsoft threads like this: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Fo ... server8gen).

I am going on vacation for a week so I won't be able to try it until after since I don't want to make any large changes before I leave.