"Job finished with warning.

[bravo444]

Hi, Team

I had taken several VMware guest OS back, but I got following error for all of them.

"Job finished with warning". I tried to find log files, but I didn't find it. Where can I get these files?
Or I can ignore with this warning message??

Regards,

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi.

You can double click a backup job to bring last session run:
- here you will see general session log with warning message
- VM list on the left side will also show which VM in question has the warning(will have an exclamation mark)
- finally, if VM is selected on the left side, general log will turn into selective per-VM log, with yet even more details on said warning message.

You can also use History view to find previous session runs with all respectful details.

/Cheers!

[bravo444]

Hi, Egor

Thank you for your feedback. Now, I found the log details and it said that "Changed block tracking cannot be enabled: one or more snapshots present". Actually, this VM machine has several snapshots. The Veeam backup can not take snapshots files?
Or the backup was taken successfully and I can ignore this warning message?

Regards,

[Egor Yakovlev]

Backup was successful, however it could have been more efficient in terms of data handling. If it's possible, have machine without snapshots for a single Veeam backup pass, so that we can start tracking changed blocks on that VM and perform faster incremental backups.

/Thanks!

[bravo444]

I tried to restore entire VM to the other VM host and it worked without any errors, but I confirmed that no snapshots were restored.
So the best way for Veeam is that take incremental backup that you mentioned.

[Egor Yakovlev]

VM Snapshots will not be backed up in any case - VM is always protected in the latest(aka when backup job triggers) state.
Anyhow, yes, it is recommended to fully-utilize incremental backup - warning you have seen expressed that we had to read entire vmdk disk to process changed blocks via Veeam proprietary methods, whereas we could have used VMware native Changed Block Tracking - that is, if VM had no snapshots on first backup run.

/Thanks!

[Samba222]

Is there a possibility to deactivate warning or disbale the check of "Changed block tracking cannot be enabled: one or more snapshots present" ? Cause we have several times snapshots in a bigger environment on different VMs and all these jobs will run into warning. Maybe it's a nice information but i don't want to have these jobs many days in state of "warning".

Thx!

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Ronald,

there is no way to rid of this warning and it is a very good idea to solve it:
- that warning says "we are going to hammer your production datastore with full disk read cycle on each job run" pretty much, and we want you to be aware of it and solve it. It could impact you environment in various ways.
- according to VMware best practices, snapshots shall not be kept for longer than 72 hours.
- CBT warning for machines with snapshots appears only for initial VM backup, where Veeam cannot start tracking changed blocks. Have a moment without snapshot, start backup and then you can continue using snapshots for w/e reason you need them afterwards - Veeam will be ok with existing snapshots.

/Thanks!

[Samba222]

Hi Egor,

thx and nope... you are not hammering an AFF
ok seriously… now to the reality:
Sometimes we need snapshots around 24-48h … full in best practice window from vmware. (thx a lot... also certified)
We have the option “Reset CBT on each AF…” enabled for a good reason. Also we do AFs once a week for a good reason.
So it often happens that a snapshot exists when we do an AF – THEN the warning will appear and my whole Job has a warning status.
I don’t need it, because the last days maybe there were also a snapshot and it wasn’t in interest of the job to alert or warning me. You understand the difference between laboratory and reality?
It doesn’t relay to a new VM – therefore I’m with you.

So what’s with this? Maybe i can adapt it? (https://www.veeam.com/kb3169)

Path: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication
Type: DWORD
Name: VMware65CbtSnapshotCheckEnabled
Data: 0

Regards,
Ronald

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Ronald,
It is best to avoid mentioned above registry key unless exact case condition is met.
You can group "problematic" VMs in a separate job and un-tick [ ] "Enable CBT for all protected VMs automatically" option under job settings - Storage - Advanced - vSphere tab. With that set, you will no longer see "VM has existing snapshots" warnings.
/Thanks!

[Samba222]

Hi Egor,
Thank you but this is not a workaround. There are no "problematic" VMs - its daily business to take snapshots and as I wrote sometimes it collides with “Reset CBT on each AF…” option.
Of course I need CBT on each VM. Maybe you don’t understand my explanation of the problem.
Without the option “Reset CBT on each AF…” enabled I would not get any warnings about existing snapshots, so imho it is not worth a warning at most a nice information.
But it is like it is – maybe you can discuss it as a “feature request” or something else.
Thx! Ronald

[Egor Yakovlev]

Sure thing - noted for internal discussion as a possible feature request.
/Cheers!

[ratkinsonuk]

+1 for suppressing this warning.

Since upgrading to v10, we've also started seeing these warning messages for any VM's with a snapshot present. In an environment with 800+ servers, it's natural to have some of them with snapshots as they're part of the normal BAU cycle. What I don't want is 20 emails every morning because of it. We have other processes where we monitor older snapshots without Veeam telling us about it too.