Vmware quiescence, guest agent disabled..

[Peejay62]

I am trying to run a job with Vmware Tools quiescence enabled. Guest processing no options selected. Now, when I look in the backuplog (UI) I don't see anything informational about that. The job ends succesfully. Looking at the logfile I see that there hasn't been any quiesceing at all. It says: "Not using guest agent: quiescence and indexing are disabled". Also something about disabled indexing. This is both the case on 2008R2 and 2012 server.
So, besides enabling quiesceing, putting the freeze and thaw scripts at the proper locations, having vmware tools installed, is there anything else to be done in order to have it working?
Besides that, It would come in handy to have some information about the quiesceing in the UI joblog. At least reporting that quiesceing is enabled for the job, and some information about what happened with it. I don't know what the log says if the quiesceing is running ok, in my case, where it doesn't start, I don't see anything and have to dive into the logfile.

Thanks, Peter

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Peter,

Now, when I look in the backuplog (UI) I don't see anything informational about that.

What log entry do you have before VM shapshot is created? Do you see any lines talking about VM preparation operation?

So, besides enabling quiesceing, putting the freeze and thaw scripts at the proper locations, having vmware tools installed, is there anything else to be done in order to have it working?

In order to have it working you don't need to put any scripts. If you enable this checkbox in Veeam UI, then our backup job will initiate in-guest preparation via vmware tools automatically.

BTW, can you please tell me why you're not using "application-aware image processing" for these VMs instead of Vmware Tools quiescence? Do you have any critical apps running in these VMs?

Thanks!

[Peejay62]

Hi,

this is the actual log (start):

Code: Select all

22-6-2014 21:32:01 :: Queued for processing at 6/22/2014 9:32:01 PM
22-6-2014 21:32:02 :: Required backup infrastructure resources have been assigned
22-6-2014 21:32:04 :: VM processing started at 6/22/2014 9:32:04 PM
22-6-2014 21:32:04 :: VM size: 91.0 GB
22-6-2014 21:32:15 :: Creating VM snapshot
22-6-2014 21:36:46 :: Saving ....

.......and so on ........

end :

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22-6-2014 21:42:06 :: Finalizing
22-6-2014 21:42:07 :: Removing VM snapshot
22-6-2014 21:42:51 :: Swap file blocks skipped: 547.0 MB
22-6-2014 21:42:51 :: Busy: Source 80% > Proxy 8% > Network 33% > Target 10%
22-6-2014 21:42:51 :: Primary bottleneck: Source
22-6-2014 21:42:51 :: Network traffic verification detected no corrupted blocks
22-6-2014 21:42:51 :: Processing finished at 6/22/2014 9:42:51 PM

So no mentioning of any use of quiesceing at either start or end.

I am not using application aware because on these machines I just want to have some services stopped prior to making the snapshot. this I do by means of the the freeze and thaw scripts, I put in the stop /start for the desired services.
These machines are sharepoint servers and unfortunately we cannot use the great sharepoint integration of veeam because of the fact that the sql databases run on an external cluster.
little off topic but The closest you can get to a usefull sharepoint disaster recovery backup is taking the backup with sharepoint services down. Combined with a point in time recovery of sql you can recover from a disaster by recovering the sqldb to the time you took your snapshot (with services down). This works..

Bye, Peter

[foggy]

I don't believe something is logged in the job session in this case. Also, the "Not using guest agent: quiescence and indexing are disabled" message is caused by the fact that all settings at the Guest Processing step are disabled. If you want to make sure that VMware Tools quiescence is performed, you can contact support and ask them for assistance in locating corresponding records in the job debug log. Thanks.

[Peejay62]

So, i'd like to consider this a minor feature request, putting some kind of information about quiesceing in the UI joblogging. Just consider that I want to check the jobs every now and then if they run properly, maybe some have quiesceing enabled,hard to memorize if you have a lot of jobs. Now I cannot see any reference at all in the joblog, if it is enabled or if it was or wasn't succesfull. I cannot see if it is performed or not..
I guess it will be unworkable to contact support everytime to ask them about the queiescing..
Just a simple "vmware quiescence activated" line, and some info about the queiescence result would be fine..
I added some extra coding to my freeze and thaw script, it creates an OK-file at the end to proof the script runned. The OK-files are there, so I guess the freeze and thaw scripts run. I am now trying to discover what the freeze and thaw actually did, still looking for any kind of logfile on that part though.

Thanks, Peter

[Vitaliy S.]

if it is enabled or if it was or wasn't succesfull. I cannot see if it is performed or not..

If it is not successful, then will be a warning/error message in the job log. Thanks for the feedback!