Missing something with Surebackup..

[gbeajmn]

I've searched for ages for an answer and can't find one.
We have two hosts with just 14 vm's spread across them in vmware.

Surebackup is 100% successful when it comes to the server vm's - no problem there.
It's a linked job which runs after our tape backup, which in turn runs after the disk backup.

However the job is failing because Surebackup fails on the vCenter Server and the Virtual Lab itself. Even if I tell it not to do a heartbeat or ping test on those, it still fails on both.
Technically I don't want to test either of those anyway - they are just 'nice to have', if they failed to restore it wouldn't be the end of the world, more an inconvenience.

I can't find any information on excluding those from Surebackup.
I also don't need to use application groups as each server only depends on itself so didn't try that route.

I'd rather not remove the vCenter server from the backup completely, and isn't it nice to have the virtual lab backed up as well so I don't need to set it up again in a disaster?
Any help or advice is appreciated.

[veremin]

Can you specify the exact error you get while verifying the said VMs?

[gbeajmn]

There's not a lot to go on.

~This is all I can see in the report under Details, just these 3 lines.
04/06/2015 03:20:12 Error vCenter Server Appliance - Powering on
04/06/2015 03:43:01 Warning Virtual_Lab - Reconfiguring
04/06/2015 03:58:08 Error Virtual_Lab - Powering on

VM.name..........................Status.......Start.time.................End.time..................Heartbeat.....Ping.test.......Custom.script........Validation.test
vCenter.Server.Appliance.......Failed.......04/06/2015.02:21:45...04/06/2015.03:20:27 . Not.run........Not.run.........Disabled..............Disabled
Virtual_Lab.......................Failed.......04/06/2015.02:21:45...04/06/2015.03:58:19 . Not.run........Not.run.........Disabled..............Disabled

I left out all the lines with the actual server vm's succeeding.

[nefes]

To find the error, you can select specific VM in the top part of SureBackup window and see all steps that was performed for that specific VM.
I'm not sure what exact errors you will see for vCenter, but virtual lab fail is totally expected.
Almost all data of this VM is stored in iso file and mounted as cdrom, while backup skips cdroms automatically.
So there is no point in backing up (and checking that backup) virtual lab VM.

[gbeajmn]

Ok thanks, I'll remove the virtual lab in that case.

The vCenter failed at powering on.
"Cannot detect VM starting because of timeout".
"OS did not boot in the alotted time".

I just changed the timeout to an hour and tried again - same result. There's no way it could need longer than that.

So I take it the vCenter Appliance 'should' boot using Surebackup?
Is there something special I have to do to allow that?