Running Replication Backup - Error

[Triley]

I setup Network Replication job between Two standalone ESX 3.5 Servers across WAN for the same VM Image - The job was executed twice -

Report from first job:
13 of 13 files processed
Total VM size: 16.00 GB
Processed size: 16.00 GB
Avg. performance rate: 3 MB/s
Backup mode: service console agent
Start time: 23/07/2009 10:03:06
End time: 23/07/2009 11:21:15

Report from second job:
13 of 13 files processed

Total VM size: 16.00 GB
Processed size: 16.00 GB
Avg. performance rate: 8 MB/s
Backup mode: service console agent

Start time: 23/07/2009 11:27:24
End time: 23/07/2009 12:03:17

Completing current object backup process
Agents failed to start, server "esx1.domain.com", client "localhost"
Failed to validate command "OpenPortIn for firewall port 2501" feedback
/usr/sbin/esxcfg-firewall -o 2501,tcp,in,veeamAgent returned non-zero code
- 25012009-07-23 12:04:36 (11853) ERROR: Unable to lock config file /etc/vmware/esx.conf. Try again later
2009-07-23 12:04:36 (11853) ERROR: Panic! Stack trace follows:
2009-07-23 12:04:36 (11853) ERROR: VMware::Panic VMware::Panic::DumpStackTrace in /usr/lib/vmware/esx-perl/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/VMware/Panic.pm line 59
2009-07-23 12:04:36 (11853) ERROR: main VMware::Panic::Panic in /usr/sbin/esxcfg-firewall line 1072
2009-07-23 12:04:36 (11853) ERROR: main main::LockConfigFile in /usr/sbin/esxcfg-firewall line 1310
2009-07-23 12:04:36 (11853) ERROR: Getopt::Long main::OpenPort in /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/Getopt/Long.pm line 478
2009-07-23 12:04:36 (11853) ERROR: Getopt::Long (eval) in /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/Getopt/Long.pm line 477
2009-07-23 12:04:36 (11853) ERROR: main Getopt::Long::GetOptions in /usr/sbin/esxcfg-firewall line 1778
2009-07-23 12:04:36 (11853) ERROR: Making panic callbacks...
2009-07-23 12:04:36 (11853) ERROR: Done, exiting with code -18. Goodbye!

Can anyone here let me know what could cause the problem and why

Thanks,
Triley

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Triley,

It looks like we were unable to install our agents due to Firwall Issues on the esx1.domain.com domain host, can you please verify that all necessary ports are open on the source and target ESX hosts?

All the info about the ports can be found at our User's Guide:

http://www.veeam.com/veeam_backup_user_guide_pg.pdf (page 15)

Thank you!

[Vitaliy S.]

Triley,

Can you also send us the logs from Help->Support Information to investigate? also could you please tell us whether this error happens all the time you run the job or it happened just once.

[Gostev]

I don't believe the issue is with ESX firewall here. The required source and target ESX hosts ports should be opened automatically by Veeam agent, which is exactly the operation that fails according to the logs. Triley, please send us full logs and we will take this to development. I don't believe I've seen this error before. This could be a conflict with some other 3rd party tool too.

[Triley]

I am sorry for the delay in getting back to you...

Just to let you know I gave up on Veeam as a backup solution for our ESX Server images.

Couple of reasons:
Lack of individual backup files when the backup is created on Resource Pool level - big minus (if the file become corrupted all of the images backup is lost)
If there was an individual backup file per image as the vRanger is doing the risk is limited to one image only.

Inconsistent file size (compression) - I was under impression that the image backup is compressed - was I wrong?
During the Veeam backup some of the images did not get compressed at all - the actual disk size was the size of the image disk
Some did get compressed but when compared to the same images compressed by vRanger there is a very noticeable difference.

That’s the end of our adventure with Veeam - Thanks.

Treiley

[Gostev]

Treiley, default compression level is optimized for least load (it is also used by service console agent that runs in ESX service console). This compression level shows good results only when your virtual disks has white space. You can always change compression level to Best and you will get better compression results than with vRanger. Check out this blog post for instance: http://breathalize.wordpress.com/2009/0 ... 4-smaller/

We will have ability to backup VMs to individual files in the upcoming release as well.

Thank you for the feedback!

[Triley]

Thanks for the response!

If thats the cae I might be back and try new release - when is the new release out?

Triley

[Gostev]

Triley, we are planning to release it around the end of Q3.