VSS Connection-less

[rowdy]

A new feature of version 5 is:
"Network less application aware processing VSS no longer requires a direct connection from the Veeam server to the VM."

How does this work?
I can't seem to find the information in the documentation about how this is supposed to work.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello,

The way application-aware image processing worked in v4 was that we required direct connection to target Guest OS from Veeam Backup server. The direct network connection was needed to automatically deploy a small runtime coordination process when backup starts, and as soon as the backup is finised this process was automatically removed.

With v5 release, we no longer require this direct connection to deploy a small runtime process on the target Guest OS, as right now we can distribute and control this process through specialized VMware API for guest interaction.

One of the use cases is backup of VMs in DMZ or on the different network from Veeam Backup server, which was not actually possible with v4 due to direct connection requirement.

Hope it helps!

[mdiver]

[merged]

Hi.
We have problems backing up Windows 2008 R2 with application awareness (VSS) from a Veeam machine having no direct network connection to the VM beeing backed up which resides in a DMZ.
In the datasheet for V5 it clearly says this should be possible now.
From the logs I can tell that mounting the hosts adminstrative share is the reason for VSS failing. Of course this is not possible to the DMZ.
What could be done to have VSS without a network connection?

Thank you and best regards,
Michael

PS: We're using latest release 5.0.1 of course...

[Gostev]

Hi, absolutely - it is possible and works just fine.

What you are seeing in the logs is expected behavior. To maintain existing v4 workflow, our engine first attempts to establish network connection to the processed VM. This way, nothing at all changes to v4 customers after upgrade. Now, if that fails, the engine fails over to networkless operation (new v5 functionality), and this should work just fine in your case. So, the reason for failure you are seeing is not because there is no direct network connection, but something else. I would suggest that you open a support call to troubleshoot why failover does not work properly.

Thanks!

[MartinC]

[merged]

We experiencing intermittent VSS failures backing up a Windows 2008R2 Exchange 2010 VM.

The environment is as follows:

VMware Essentials Plus v4.0.0
Veeam Backup and Replication v5.0.1.198 (32-bit) running on Win 7 Pro VM.
Windows Server 2008R2 Standard
Exchange 2010 v14.01.0218.013

The Exchange VM has two network interfaces and one of them has restricted access. The VSS errors occur when the backup job tries to communicate with that interface. I would like to specify that the job uses the other interface but cannot find anywhere to do this.

It appears that the interfaces are obtained from the VM specification. In the vSphere client the "Summary" tab shows the restricted interface by default and only reveals the other when "View All" is selected.

The VSS error is as follows:

Freezing guest operating system
VSSControl: IsSnapshotInProgress failed. Transaction logs will not be truncated.
RPC function call failed. Function name: [IsSnapshotInProgress]. Target machine: [192.168.17.5].
RPC error:The RPC server is unavailable.
Code: 1722

Thank-you in advance for any advice.

Regards
Martin Crawshaw

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Martin,

There is no need to establish a direct connection to VM being backed up because of the reasons explained above. I would recommend you opening a support ticket with us to investigate your issue further.

Thanks.

[MartinC]

Hi Vitaly

Okay. Will do that.

Regards
Martin

[Gostev]

Hi Martin, you need to simply upgrade to the latest product version... the issue is documented as resolved in the release notes for version 5.0.2