VMWare Server 2.0 and Veeam 4.0

[manny]

Im currently receiving errors in trying to use veeam to backup vmware 2.0. I realize that support is experimental.

This is the error im receiving on 98% of the vm's on the host:
Retrieving VM files information Failed to retrieve "SCSI (0:0) Hard Disk 1" disk information. Check VM virtual hardware configuration. File "xxxx.vmdk" is not a disk descriptor.

Anyone have any ideas?

Regards,
Emmanuel

[Gostev]

Emmanuel, please send us all logs - we will investigate. I am not seeing this issue backing up my VMs running on VMware Server 2.0, so it must be specific to some VM configuration. What disk type are you using for failed VMs, flat or thin? Mine are all flat, so I wonder if this could be the reason.

Basically Veeam Backup works fine with VMware Server 2.0, but only for VMs with flat disk. Processing VMs with other disk configurations (like growable disks) will likely fail.

[cmajewski]

I was experimenting with Veeam 4.0 and Vmware Server 2.0 today.
I am getting a slightly different error:

Retrieving VM disks information...
Failed to retrieve "SCSI (0:1) Hard Disk 1" disk information. Check VM virtual hardware configuration.
Wrong number of extents - 5, descriptorFile "nfc://conn:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx,nfchost:ha-host,stg:Datastore-1@esva1/ESVA2-var.vmdk"

Here are the contents of that descriptor file:

Code: Select all

# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=d7f258c5
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="twoGbMaxExtentSparse"

# Extent description
RW 4192256 SPARSE "ESVA2-var-s001.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "ESVA2-var-s002.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "ESVA2-var-s003.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "ESVA2-var-s004.vmdk"
RW 8192 SPARSE "ESVA2-var-s005.vmdk"

# The Disk Data Base 
#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "1044"
ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 96 ca d8 9f c9-94 1a d5 3d dd 91 bf 4c"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "7"
ddb.toolsVersion = "7456"
ddb.encoding = "windows-1252

[Gostev]

Chris, this looks to be due to using the VM disk option that splits virtual disks in 2GB chunks. This option does not exist in VMware ESX(i), and so is not supported by Veeam Backup engine today.

[cmajewski]

I suspected as much but was hoping there might be a work around. The VM I was trying to backup is a pre built appliance that was set up that way.

Thanks for the quick reply!

[cmajewski]

I have done a little bit more experimentation with this. I converted the vmdk's into single file growable disks and I get the same error as the original poster. I then converted them into flat thick vmdk's and the backup worked great.

So if one wants to use the product with server 2.0 you must create or convert your virtual disks as preallocated flat vmdk's.

[manny]

cmajewski, Thank you for the info ill test if out on some of our test servers