8.0 - Disable VMware Tools not found warning

[lrosa]

In Veeam B&R 8.0 I have a backup job with misc linux VMs.

One (and only one) of the VMs is aa firewall appliance and I cannot install VMWare Tools into that VM.

Veeam 8 complains that "Cannot use VMware Tools quiescence because VMware Tools are not found." and the job exits with a warning instead of success.

Is there a way to acknowledge that status once and for all for that job other than create a dedicated job with Tools quiescence disabled?

Thanks in advance.

ciao,
luigi

[veremin]

VMware Tools Quiescence is specified on job level, rather than on VM one. Thus, I can't think of any way to prevent job from showing warning, apart from creating a dedicated job. Thanks.

[captainflannel]

We have some linux appliances which we cant install VMTools but of course need backed up. Since v8 were getting daily warning emails about this backup job "Cannot use VMware Tools quiescence because VMware Tools are not found."

Is there a way I can disable this warning, but still get emailed if the Job failed or something else were to happen?

[foggy]

You can place those appliances into a separate job and disable VMware Tools quiescence on it.

[GregorS]

A new backup job means a new full backup + incremental chain, I don't want that. Please change this specific warning (yellow) to informational (green) and bring back v7.0 behaviour. Thanks!

Kind regards
Gregor

[dellock6]

That's fun because one of the reason the behaviour was changed is exactly because the other way was considered a problem by many users in v7. I'm pretty sure, if we change it in v8, then people will start complain again and we will never end flipping between the two ways to notify the status.

for many reasons having up-to-date vmware tools or just them installed is recommended for backups since VADP libraries interact with vmware tools a lot, for example in networkless AAIP processing, or the scripting pre and post job, so in my very personal opinion this is correct to be a warning. Maybe we can think about introducing a general setting to offer users to choose if the vmtools status should be a warning or not...

[GregorS]

Thanks Luca, I understand. Maybe I’ve got even a better proposal: similar to having the Applications button at Enable application-aware processing checkbox, where one can set exceptions to the general rule, the Enable VMware Tools quiescence checkbox may also get such a button… ?

[dellock6]

Maybe, but this however would complicate the interface and require users to flag-unflag any VMs, and what about dynamic containers like datastores or resource pools? you will then need to add specific Vms to the exclusion list. We tend to keep the interface as clean as possible, and surface configuration options if they really make sense. Let's see first what other think about "keeping all as is now" vs "general setting" vs "setting per VM".

Thanks for the suggestion nonetheless.

[zuerom]

Hello,
We've got the same problem....
i don't want to create a new Job for this appliances...
Well you can disable this check, if the admin change the Application-Aware Processing Options on this VM in Applications --> Disable application processing!
Because if i disable application processing i don't have to use VMWare Tools!
Right?

Please fix this issue in the upcoming Patch2!?

Thank you very much!
Roman.

[veremin]

Because if i disable application processing i don't have to use VMWare Tools! Right?

No. What you have to disable VMware Tools quiescence (job settings -> Storage -> Advanced -> vSphere). Thanks.

[zuerom]

No. What you have to disable VMware Tools quiescence (job settings -> Storage -> Advanced -> vSphere). Thanks.

Yes i know, but there i can only change it for the whole job!
But only to understand, when i Check Disable application processing in one VM VEEM should not use the vmware tools?!
just in my opinion.... DISABLE APPLICATION PROCESSING mean that VMTools quiescence is redundant.
roman

[veremin]

When i Check Disable application processing in one VM VEEM should not use the vmware tools?!

No, it will mean that Application Aware Image Processing will be disabled for that VM. Instead, VMware Tools Quiescence will be used to freeze this VM.

[foggy]

But only to understand, when i Check Disable application processing in one VM VEEM should not use the vmware tools?!

It's actually, the opposite. If you enable AAIP, it will be used regardless of the VMware Tools quiescence setting.

[captainflannel]

Would there be some way of adding a registry key or job specific configuration manually? Without having to change the interface, a "for advance user only" type of adjustment for those of us who wish to go back to v7 job warning reporting.

[veremin]

As far as I'm concerned, there is no regkey to revert the behaviour. Thanks.

[topgunx11]

Same problem, or better, same warning after upgrade to v8
Any solution for drop this warning (without separate job)
Thanks

[Vitaliy S.]

Currently this is the only solution for these notifications.

[srogala]

I just wanted to add my opinion that I much preferred the Veeam 7 method of handling this. The warnings are annoying. I have a Linux-based appliance that I need to back up along with my Exchange server, so they need to stay in the same job. I cannot put VMWare tools on this appliance. Getting warnings for my Exchange job is annoying and potentially will cause a real issue to be missed.

[stanley.tweedle]

For us, the new behaviour in v8 is a major drawback. We have a container job configured for each VMWare host with lots of VMs, some of which are third party appliances where VMWare Tools just can't be installed.

Creating jobs for non-quiescing VMs, on the one hand, would double the number of jobs we have to run and, on the other hand, for each VM one of my users creates, I'd have to investigate if it contains VMWare tools or not, and assign it to the respective backup job. Before, it was just automatically backed up.

I'd fancy some kind of setting where you can assign a "log level" to the statusses, defining which event will cause warnings and which not.

Until then, I have to control each job every morning, if there are warnings other than caused by missing VMWare tools. Very annoying.

Best wishes,
Peter

[Vitaliy S.]

I'm not sure it would work for you, but if you could configure your jobs to use Tags, that would partially solve the problem. Please be aware that in Veeam ONE (part of Availability Suite) you can automatically assign vSphere Tags based on the object properties (such Guest OS, location etc.). So given that you configure this rule and assign tags to group all VMs that do not have VMware tools installed, that would help you to re-group your jobs without changing VMs location. Just my 2 cents.

[GregorS]

VBR 8.0 Update 2 (formerly Patch #2) will be released soon. Can we expect a solution for this issue in it, for instance via registry value?

VMToolsNotFound = "Success" (or "Warning")


Regards
Gregor

[Gostev]

Hi, Gregor. I don't believe this generated any significant amount of support cases to be considered for "fixing"... patch contents is determined solely based on support statistics. I will double check on this next week though. Thanks!

[mechanised]

I've sort of got round this by not setting the 'notify on warning' option under email settings. Also worth setting jobs to retry a few times and set 'suppress notifications until the last retry' so you'll only get emails if a job has really failed.

It's worse if you're using Red Hat as when kernel updates are pushed out it always breaks the vmware tools so we have to manually fix.

[topgunx11]

Hello,
any news with the new Patch 2?

[foggy]

As far as I know, this was not included in Veeam B&R v8 Update 2.

[tbtb]

Same problem here.
I vote for the solution to be able to exclude certain VM's from vmware tools quiescense the same way you can exclude them from application processing. (you can integrate the choice in the same dialog as where you set the application processing settings for certain VM's or containers. Just give an extra choice "disalbe application processing and VMWare Tools quiescense").

If this is too much of a change for a patch update, a global option to disable warnings on missing vmware tools would be a good first start

As it seems choose your improvements by the numer of support cases, i opened a support case to ask for this improvement: #00911844

[foggy]

Thanks, Tom, your voice is heard.

[GregorS]

Adding count: #00913413. Thanks!

[JohnnyW]

And another one: #00916746.

[serg38]

And another #00962352. A new registry setting to suppress the warning could be a quick fix.