replica VM -> normal VM

[sofatime]

Hi,

I have here the following setup:
ESX1 and ESX2 with local storage (no SAN)
VM1 on ESX1, replicated with Veeam Backup 2.0 to ESX2

Recently I had a problem on ESX1 and had to failover VM1 to ESX2. This worked perfectly.
Now I would like to make the replica VM1 on ESX2 to be a normal VM again, not a replica (I don't want to do a "undo failover" because of the changes that happened in the VM since the failover). What is the correct way to do this? I cannot find such a command in Veeam Backup. I could of course just let VM1 run on ESX2, but there are a few things I don't like:
- the restore point files *.vrb, which are not used anymore (and replica.vbk)
- the replica VM still shows in Veeam Backup under "Replicas"
- the VM is in the directory VeeamBackup
- there is a snapshot on the VM called "veeam backup running snapshot" with the note "do not delete"

So what's the best way to handle this? Should I just delete the *.vrb files and replica.vbk and also delete the snapshot? Can I leave the VM in the directory "VeeamBackup"?

Thanks for help
Daniel

[Gostev]

Hello Daniel, here's another thread discussing this scenario
http://www.veeam.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1909

Please review it, and if you have any additional questions - let me know.

[sofatime]

Thank you. I checked the other threads but somehow overlooked this one. I will try with that information and get back if I run into problems.

Speaking of file backup support: We are also very interested in ext3 support (and even more in zfs support, but that's probably not top on your list).

Daniel

[sofatime]

I have now successfully cloned the VM. Everything ok.

Thanks
Daniel

[Gostev]

Glad to hear everything is well.

By ZFS, do you mean the SUN Solaris file system? If yes, do you happen to know any Linux implementations which are stable enough for production use? I've talked to our Linux developer about 2 weeks ago about this one, and he said he could not find a stable version.

[sofatime]

Yes, I mean the new Solaris file system. AFAIK there is not yet a Linux implementation, apparently this is a license problem, according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zfs#Linux

Daniel

[sofatime]

Just as a side note to this: After finishing the tasks described above I had another problem, which has technically nothing to do with it, but I still would like to share it. Maybe it is of help for someone else.

In one Veeam Backup job I got the following error message after adding an additional VM to the job:

An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host

This happened after the VMs were fully backed up but apparently the job could not be finished properly. When I restarted the job the backup data of that new VM was deleted and backed up again with the same error message. I did then some research and found that also for normal file copies between those two hosts the performance was very bad, but only in one direction. Finally I found the cause of the problem: The service "pegasus" (CIMOM) in the ESX service console of one of the hosts was consuming 100% CPU (i.e. one core). After restarting pegasus everything worked normally again.

Daniel

[ssimakov]

Daniel,

Thank you for this information. Basically it means that your ESX was heavily loaded and left no computing resources for Backup.

[sofatime]

Yes. To be more precise: In my case only the service console was heavily loaded. It consumed 100% of the CPU core assigned to it. The other 7 cores were more or less idle, that's why the cause of the problem was not immediately clear to me.
But of course this problem is not the fault of Veeam Backup. I just wanted to share it in case someone else runs into the same problem.

[Paardekooper]

Dear Gostev,

you've posted a link to another thread but the link does not work.
http://www.veeam.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1909

Could you give me an new link to this topic?

Thanx

[Gostev]

Here is it:
http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=510