Question about free esxi 5 and Restore job failed Error

[kief75]

I have a free esxi server and when restoring a vm get the error Restore job failed Error: Parameter count mismatch. After some looking around I see that the free version is not supported which really makes me angry since nowhere on the info and download page does it tell you that nor when you make the backup does it give you an error, only upon restoring. I also saw posts saying it works with esxi 5 on the forums but not sure why it didnt work for me maybe I have a patched version?

So here is the question. Once I failed the restore it had already deleted my original files and replaced them with the backup. Now it cant start the machine. Is there any way to recover the machine either before or after the backup? I assume I can get the files by mounting the drive file in another vm? Is there any way to fix the restored but not working vm?

Thanks ahead of time =)

[Gostev]

Information on ESXi feature set is provided by ESXi vendor (VMware). If you look up how different ESXi versions compare to each other, you will see that the free one does not support Data Protection APIs. It's not Veeam that does not support free ESXi (we do not distinguish hosts based on licensing), it is VMware that blocks certain functionality based on the host license.

Besides, this seems to be changing every major release (free ESXi 3 worked, free ESXi 4 did not, free ESXi 5.0 works partially), so we'd rather let VMware explain and document different ESXi version's capabilities to their customers.

As far as restoring the VM, I recommend restoring all VM files locally to backup server through the corresponding Veeam wizard, and then use Files tab in Veeam to upload the restored files to the required datastore. Then, double click VMX to register the VM, and should be good to go.

[mikedd969]

Thanks Gostev!! I was having the exact same issue.

[DashDave]

Information on ESXi feature set is provided by ESXi vendor (VMware). If you look up how different ESXi versions compare to each other, you will see that the free one does not support Data Protection APIs. It's not Veeam that does not support free ESXi (we do not distinguish hosts based on licensing), it is VMware that blocks certain functionality based on the host license.

Besides, this seems to be changing every major release (free ESXi 3 worked, free ESXi 4 did not, free ESXi 5.0 works partially), so we'd rather let VMware explain and document different ESXi version's capabilities to their customers.

As far as restoring the VM, I recommend restoring all VM files locally to backup server through the corresponding Veeam wizard, and then use Files tab in Veeam to upload the restored files to the required datastore. Then, double click VMX to register the VM, and should be good to go.

A better error message would have made our lives a lot easier! And why not just TELL US it wont work with the free version. Lots of people use the free version for testing and development. I could have saved my self 2 days by knowing that your Free software would NOT work. Its a great product, but its not helpful.

[tsightler]

A better error message would have made our lives a lot easier! And why not just TELL US it wont work with the free version. Lots of people use the free version for testing and development. I could have saved my self 2 days by knowing that your Free software would NOT work. Its a great product, but its not helpful.

I'll never argue against a better error message, as that's always nice, although in this case it might be more difficult than it appears since it's the underlying VMware API that simply fails the call, but regarding the question "why not just TELL US", in the users guide, page 60, which is the very first page of the "Planning and Preparation" section, under "System Requirements" it specifically says the following:

Free ESXi is not supported

This seems to be the appropriate place to list such things, although I will admit that I noticed this line was missing from the 6.5 release notes "System Requirements" section.