Backup VCSA with VMWare Quiescence

[redhorse]

Hello,

I am struggling with my Veeam-Backup of the vCenter-Appliance because I regularly receive error messages from my vCenter like "alarm.HostConnectionStateAlarm changed status from Green to Red" during the snapshot. In addition, other backups were cancelled because they got a timeout with the vCSA.

I opened a ticket at VMWare and they recommend to use the file based backup which is configured in the vCenter admin interface or to disable quiescence for the appliance. From their point of view, this is a normal behavior when quiescence is used.

However, what's the best way to backup the vCSA?

I already read the KB https://www.veeam.com/kb2328 where quiescence is recommended, but perhaps there is another approach? If not, is it possible to disable quiescence for this particular VM?

Thanks

[DeadEyedJacks]

Yep, you'll need to disable VMware Quiescence (Job setting) and Guest Application processing (Job / Per VM setting) for the VCSA VM.

[redhorse]

Is this official best practice? Before I've changed to VMWare Quiescence I had much more issues with the vCSA backup because I had timeouts each backup while the snapshot was removed.

[wishr]

Hi RH,

Could you please let us know your B&R and VCSA versions?

Thanks

[redhorse]

Yes, sure:

B&R: 9.5.4.2753 (9.5 Update 4a)
VCSA: 6.7.0 Build 13010631 (6.7 Update 2)

[AuGL]

I have the same question in regards to backing up VCSA with Veeam.

What is the best practice for the settings in the backup job?

B&R: 9.5.4.2753 (9.5 Update 4a)
VCSA: 6.7.0 Build 13643870 (6.7 Update 2a)

[wishr]

Hello gentlemen,

We can officially confirm that VMware Tools Quiescence usage is not recommended when backing up a VCSA. AAIP should be disabled either. We'll update the KB soon, as of now please refer to that whitepaper - it's still actual.

Thanks

[redhorse]

Hi wishr,

how can I disable VMWare Quiescence for this paticular VM? Do I have to create a separate job to backup VCSA?

[wishr]

Hi RH,

As mentioned in the documentation VMware Tools Quiescence can only be disabled on the job level - for all VMs added to the job. Thus, if you currently have VMW Tools Quiescence enabled and disabling it is not an option you'll probably need to create a separate dedicated job for VCSA.

Thanks

[danswartz]

So this is interesting. I had never seen this recommendation before. I am running vmware tools quiescence routinely for jobs containing my 6.7 VCSA and it seems to work fine. Is this a gotcha that just doesn't hit me so far?

[gmajestix]

Hello,
we are also using VMware Tools quiescence in the backup job for VCSA. We noticed that this freezes the VCSA for a couple of seconds and because we monitor it with Nagios we get an alert that its unresponsive.

[wishr]

Hello gentlemen,

Please refer to the updated KB (we've just changed the point regarding VMware Tools Quiescence) and comments above. VMware Tools Quiescence usage is not recommended based on our own experience backing up our lab servers as well as based on information from our friends at VMware.

Please keep sharing your experiences with us!

Thanks

[danswartz]

Please add per-VM disabling of VMWARE quiescence, then?

[wishr]

Hi Dan,

Thank you for the suggestion. We'll explore if it's technically possible.

Here is a thread regarding per-VM quiescence.

Thanks

[myFist]

We've running multiple vCenter HA instances. Is it now supported to backup / restore active + passive with veeam and snapshots?

Because VMware did not support snapshots in 6.5 and for 6.7 i dont find any information: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2148003

Are snapshots, cloning, and Fault Tolerance supported on VCHA nodes?

No. It is currently not supported to use these operations on any of the VCHA nodes.

[wishr]

Hi myFirst,

I'd suggest you contact VMWare support in this regard. Please share your findings with us.

Thanks

[RubinCompServ]

For some of our VCSAs, the only way we've been able to get them to backup without a freeze is by using Backup from Storage Snapshot.

[dmveron]

Hello,
Do any of the recommendations change with VCSA 7 and Veeam B&R 10? I do see that the Linux agent now backs up Postgres, so will that feature trickle down to VM jobs, such as backing up a VCSA?
Thanks.

[RubinCompServ]

To be honest, I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be with creating an application-aware job for a VCSA, even if it does handle Postgres.

[jmmarton]

Keep in mind that VMware has deprecated image-level backups of the VCSA in vSphere 7. It's still supported at the moment, but in some future release VMware won't support it at all. So even if at some point down the line we add Postgres AAIP to VM backups it will be irrelevant for VCSA.

Joe

[soncscy]

Hi Joe,

Interesting statement; got a citation?

I'm not challenging you, I know Veeam has been very good about sticking to the standard whenever possible, but if I'm going to tell clients "you don't need this", I need a source Is there a VMware document you have handy to back your statement? Else it just ends up being Veeam vs VMware...

I'll search around later this week when I get time, but maybe you have such a document handy.

[jmmarton]

There was a VMware article about this when 7.0 was released but I can't find it at the moment. So instead I'll post this blog link which discusses the deprecation of VMware supporting image-level backup of VCSA.

https://veducate.co.uk/vcenter-7-0-imag ... -versions/

Joe

[jmke79]

I've received same information from our VMWare consultant when setting up new VCSA instances; image level backups (ala VEEAM) are not a supported backup solution.
their only supported VCSA backup is through the build in backup functionality of the appliance.

quick fix for us was to configure SMB share on veeam server with access rights only for this VCSA and have it write its backup data there.
not ideal, but since we don't have unlimited amount of VCSA appliances, this ensures we have a VMWare supported "backup" of the appliance, next to the image level backup;
don't enable application processing on your VCSA, unless you want VMware support to drop your case if they learn about this, as that is definitely not a supported feature afaik

[saintdle]

Hi,

Veeam image backups for vCenter 7.0 are supported.

We have announced deprecation of this support, which means in a future version we will no longer support this method. We announce this deprecation so that customers have time to move their backups to the native vCenter backup.

Note: I work for VMware and wrote the above article.