Storage and management

[yuvalcohen]

We have 3 dell server 3 runing vmserver 5.0.
We have at two of them 1 TB of storage runing few vm servers win2003,win2008, etc.
One is a replica server which has 2 disks one of which is 1 TB and the other 600G; the person who did the replica choose to use legacy replica.
Everything was working great, till recently. 2 of our server needed to increase the disk size, so we edited server storage size, and after that we used diskpart and it worked well, but the backup jobs kept failing with the following message:

Error #1:

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Client error: The backup storage [nfc://stg:4e982726-4f2b58b0-ebdd-0026b94f866a,nfchost:ha-host,conn:192.168.1.84@VeeamBackup/StoreNext(11)/2012-12-19T150028.vrb] was copied to the NFC datastore but it was not converted to disk. Failed to backup text locally. Backup: [veeamfs:0:/summary.xml@nfc://conn:192.168.1.84,nfchost:ha-host,stg:4e982726-4f2b58b0-ebdd-0026b94f866a@VeeamBackup/StoreNext(11)/2012-12-19T150028.vrbVBK: 'veeamfs:0:/summary.xml@nfc://conn:192.168.1.84,nfchost:ha-host,stg:4e982726-4f2

Error #2:

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Client error: An attempt was made to access the data beyond the end of the virtual disk. Size of the disk: [107438607360]. End of the requested region: [107439194112]. Failed to write [1048576] bytes to the disk [[datastore1] VeeamBackup/Dimex(20)/Dimex-flat.vmdk] starting from offset [107438145536]. Failed to flush sparse-block content. Block: [102461]. 

What shall i do now?
i think
to but 4-8 tera of disk (my t410 of dell can support 12 tera ) reinstall the vmware exsi 5?
and recreate the replica jobs from the start.

I did not found out what is a legacy replica and what are the difference between it and Veeam replica?
And if i do vm replica what will be the need of enabling application image procesing?
Hope to hear your advice soon.

[veremin]

I want you to notice that this isn’t a support forum, so, in order to address your issues you should open a support ticket and provide log-files required for further investigation.

The difference between replica in VB&R v5 (legacy one) and v6 lies in how VB&R replication stores its restore points.
In case of legacy replication, restore points were represented by .vrb-files; .vrb-files couldn't be recognized by VMware and, thus, you weren’t able at that time to move back and forth between restore points, using native VMware tools (the only option was VB&R console).

Today the situation is slightly different - Veeam Backup & Replication utilizes VMware ESX snapshot capabilities to create and manage replica restore points. Thus, you can select any restore point you want either in VB&R console or by utilizing native VMware tools. Futhermore, even in case of the Veeam Backup server becoming unavailable, you can fail over to any existing replica restore point outside Veeam Backup & Replication (via vSphere Client or using a PowerCLI script).

As to the error#2, it’s a well-known issue intrinsic to VB&R v5. The only option available for your in VB&R v5 after having extended a drive is to delete your target VM replica and start your replication job from the scratch.

Regarding application-aware image processing, you need this option enabled while backing up or replicating VM running VSS-aware applications (such as Active Directory, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint), since this functionality guarantees backup transactional consistency of such VMs.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[yuvalcohen]

thank you for your answer
the last thing that you wrote if i make a vmreplica of domain controler or server with sql it do not replicate the server with all the applications users inside it
if i donot use this option

[veremin]

The only thing that can be achieved by backing up VM running VSS-aware applications with AAIMP being disabled is crash consistent backup. This means that data in the backup is “crash-consistent”, it is the same as it would be after a system failure or power outage. And it, in its turn, may have deplorable consequences for further recovery process.

For instance, recovery of Active Directory domain controller from non-VSS (AAIMP disabled) snapshot will be nothing but a headache task, unless you have specific knowledge and/or experience of thoughtful AD administration and manual recovery. Some problems also might be related to Exchange server recovery (long boot up, etc.). The only exception is SQL-server – its base can be recovered from such backup in 99% of cases.

So, based on all aforesaid points, it’s strongly recommended to backup or replicate such VMs with this option.

Thanks.