Veeam Backup with VCB -> sets Windows disk offline

[tig3rclaw]

Hello

yesterday I was installing Veeam Backup 4 at a customer's location.
We enabled the VCB backup method.

Then we did a test backup job, for backing up a file server.
However somehow the backup job created a snapshot (so far so good) , but after that the drive went in "offline" modus within Windows 2003 server.

Veeam backup was keeping the disk busy somehow and didn't want to release it.
So the drive couldn't be set to online status.
After some reboots, unpresenting of disks we were luckily able to get the disk back with all the data.

Does anyone have any idea what might have gone wrong?
Did anyone encounter the same problems?

Please help me, all ideas are welcome

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Martin,

Have you tried creating and deleting the snapshot manually using Virtual Infrastructure Client? Do you see the same behaviour?

Thank you.

[tig3rclaw]

Hello vsafarov?

No I didn't try that, maybe that's a good starting point.

Normally when a snapshot is created, it shouldn't affect the disks, right?

can this be a bug? Is Veeam maybe calling a certain command (possibly with options) that triggers something?

[Vitaliy S.]

Martin,

Yes, creating the snapshot shouldn't affect the disk in the way you've described above, we are creating snapshot using MOB (Managed Object Browser), you can write to support (support@veeam.com) to get an exact instruction of how to do that.

Thank you.

[Gostev]

What drive went offline? I don't understand the issue very well.

[tig3rclaw]

What drive went offline? I don't understand the issue very well.

On the fileserver of the customer the D:\ drive went offline.
This is the drive with all the files on it

Within the "Windows Disk Management" the drive received an offline status.
And we couldn't get it online again.

Veeam Backup was locking the disk somehow. Because after killing Veeam backup, unpresenting the disk we could get the disk online again.

[Gostev]

Still not very clear... how exactly D:\ drive is used during backup?
Is it on Veeam Backup server computer?
Or is it where you store backup files?
Or is it disk of VM you are backing up?

[tig3rclaw]

We had a disk presented to the Veeam backup server, so we were able to use VCB.
The VM which was being backed up, contained the C:\ and D:\ drive of this file server.

[Gostev]

Do you have the same issue when launching VCB command line from the corresponding Veeam Backup job's log?

[tig3rclaw]

At the moment I have no direct contact to the Veeam backup server of this customer.

So I will email him the suggestions and ask for his findings.

[Gostev]

OK. It will be more effective if the customer works directly with our support on this. Support will assist in the troubleshooting and this will make resolution much faster.