Confirmation of vMotion Behavior During Backup Processing in VBR v12.x and v13.x

[rin]

Hi,
 
I found the following forum post regarding vMotion and Veeam Backup & Replication:
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=68186&start=0
 
In this post, it is stated that:

- If a VM is already being processed by Veeam, vMotion/Storage vMotion is blocked (except for certain VMware Cloud environments).
- If vMotion is already in progress and Veeam cannot create a snapshot, Veeam will retry the operation.

Could you please confirm whether this behavior is still valid and supported in Veeam Backup & Replication v12.x and v13.x?

Additionally, if there have been any changes to this behavior in recent versions, could you please provide the current expected behavior?

If there is any official documentation or KB article describing this behavior, we would appreciate it if you could share it as well.

Thank you.
Rin

[david.domask]

Hi rin,

Yes, the behavior is still real, but I will make a more accurate statement:

"When performing backups using VDDK, part of the VDDK process is to temporarily disable vMotion during the scope of the backup, and re-enable it when completed"

It's not the backup application itself blocking it, this is part of the VDDK workflow required by VMware.

We do not document this as it's standard behavior from VMware; regrettably the VDDK documentation has been removed from public view by VMware, but if you're able to locate a copy of it you will find the necessary documentation.

And yes, if we cannot process the VM because it's participating in vMotion, we will retry it later.