Hi Peter,
Let me start from your last question, if you please:
PeterCox wrote:Which leads one to believe that Veeam VSS integration might be nothing more than VMware Tools quiescence by another name? And if so, then why are user credentials required in the - Backup Consistency – Enable Veeam VSS intergration – dialogue of the wizard?
Actually, no. Veeam Backup & Replication 4.1 provides two different technics for creating transactionally consistent backup images — the Enable VMware tools quiescence and Enable Veeam VSS integration options.
Please review the links below for the difference between those two technics:
http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... SYNC#p3003
http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... SYNC#p1834
PeterCox wrote:When a job with Veeam VSS intergration enabled, and VMware Tools quiescence disabled, finds a VM Guest with out of date tools installed it returns the following in the job log –
Creating snapshot
Failed to perform Veeam VSS freeze: VMware tools status is "Old"
Yes, that's correct. You should update the VMware tools to get Veeam VSS work. There is nothing to do with VMware Tools quiescence in this case. Because we need VMware Tools updated (installed) to determine what kind of Operating System is installed in your VM. This will give instructions to our VSS driver of how to properly freeze your VM so that every application inside this VM is in consistent state
PeterCox wrote:Since two overlapping VSS freezes is not likely to be something you want one would conclude that only ONE of these two options should be enabled on any given backup job?
Please note that when you select both VSS integration and VMware tools quiescence options for a job at the same time, the VSS module will only be used for processing backed up and replicated VMs. However, if you use both VSS and VMware tools quiescence options and select the
Continue backup even if Veeam VSS quiescence fails option for backup jobs or the
Continue replication even if Veeam VSS quiescence fails option for replication jobs, all your VMs will be processed with VSS first, and in case of VSS failure (e.g., Linux VMs), VMs will be processed with the VMware tools quiescence option enabled.
This can be very useful when you have both Windows- and Linux-based VMs in one job.
Hope it helps!