Restore Veeam server

[bishoptf]

Small setup with 2 esxi servers, one with the primary VM's running on it and one for replication. Well I assumed all was well but wen I was doing some updates I noticed my backup vm was not up and working, it appears to have gotten corrupted and will not boot. This vm on the backup esxi box was running my replications and backup jobs, so I need to re-install veeam, I assume I need to go through the same steps, install the software and configure my jobs. Not to many jobs to setup, but what I am curious about is can I leave the backups in place and when I run them the first time will they start over or pick up where they left off? Thanks!



It also made me realize that I need to replicate my backup vm so that I have a copy to restore next time, something I was going to do and never setup...oh well live and learn....

[foggy]

Not to many jobs to setup, but what I am curious about is can I leave the backups in place and when I run them the first time will they start over or pick up where they left off? Thanks!

Tom, you need to map the new jobs to the existing backup files.

It also made me realize that I need to replicate my backup vm so that I have a copy to restore next time, something I was going to do and never setup...oh well live and learn....

Another useful topic for you regarding the protection of the Veeam backup server, please take a look: What is the best way of protecting the Veeam Backup server?

[bishoptf]

Tom, you need to map the new jobs to the existing backup files.
Another useful topic for you regarding the protection of the Veeam backup server, please take a look: What is the best way of protecting the Veeam Backup server?

Thanks foggy, but it appears to not be as bad as I thought, I booted up the ISO and ran repair and it found out the bootloader was the reason, booted up and I am running as we speak. WHOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!

However I do have a couple of more questions, I somehow need to monitor this VM and somehow get notified when it is not online and working, any suggestions? VeeamOne, would that have anything that would help?

The other question is that I need to replicate it to the other esxi host that I have, I have a license that I can use to do this but what concerns me is that it is always replicating the other vm's to the backup esxi server. I have 2 jobs a with a mix of window vms and linux and they replicate every couple of hours, if I set the other windows and install veeam and have it backup and replicate the one doing the work how do I not get them to step over each other??

Thanks in advance...

[Vitaliy S.]

VeeamOne, would that have anything that would help?

Definitely! Veeam ONE has a predefined alarm that monitors VM power state. By default this alarm is disabled, but please enable this alarm and assign it on your Veeam server. In this case you will be notified when something goes wrong with this VM.

The other question is that I need to replicate it to the other esxi host that I have, I have a license that I can use to do this but what concerns me is that it is always replicating the other vm's to the backup esxi server. I have 2 jobs a with a mix of window vms and linux and they replicate every couple of hours, if I set the other windows and install veeam and have it backup and replicate the one doing the work how do I not get them to step over each other??

You can use the other Veeam Backup server to replicate your main one while it is running backup/replication jobs of your production VMs. I do not expect any issues in this scenario.

[bishoptf]

Thanks Vitaly, so I am running 6.0 on the other esxi host and I need to install veeam on my other esxi host and it appears that only 6.1 is available, do bot versions that i am running need to be the same? If so I guess I need to find out how bad it is to upgrade to 6.1 on my other host...thanks.

[Vitaliy S.]

Not at all, you can use 6.0 and 6.1 versions in the same environment. Also please be aware that Veeam B&R version 6.5 is coming out soon, so I would recommend to upgrade Veeam B&R v6.0/6.1 right to v6.5 after it GAs.

BTW - v6.5 will make Veeam B&R protection much easier, so stay tuned!

[bishoptf]

Thanks for the response, I loaded up Veeam One last night to allow me some more visibility when VM's are not up properly. I will probably go to 6.5 after the initial push, since I support this after hours and things are running smoothly I don't want to push my luck and have any new problems, I have my hands full at the moment.

[bishoptf]

I installed veeam on the other an another windows server on the other ESXi host and set things up to replicate/backup the other host on the other machine, that appears to be working well. But now the problem I have is that on the original server I started getting warnings that the replication jobs were not able to Hot add the disk and were failing over to Network mode, for every device. All of that was working properly before I installed the other veeam server, I thought it might have to do with the fact that I installed the software on the device that I was using as a proxy which I still am.

It appeared to not be able to use the newer 6.1 as a proxy so I upgraded the software on the original veeam server and now everything is sitting @ 6.1. Even though I did that and rebooted all of the boxes none of my original replication jobs are working with Hot Add anymore, the warning messages are gone now in the new version but not sure what to do to get Hot Add back and working. Any one have any suggestions?

[Vitaliy S.]

It's hard to say why your original backup jobs stopped using HotAdd mode to backup existing VMs without taking a closer look at the debug logs. Also I do not believe that this behavior was casued by the secondary backup server deployment. Could you please tell me what proxy server is used to backup these VMs?

[bishoptf]

It's hard to say why your original backup jobs stopped using HotAdd mode to backup existing VMs without taking a closer look at the debug logs. Also I do not believe that this behavior was casued by the secondary backup server deployment. Could you please tell me what proxy server is used to backup these VMs?

Well I have two win vm's on each one of the esxi hosts, so when i loaded veeam on the other esxhi host it was already setup to be a proxy for the other veeam server, so I have 2 proxies and 2 veeam servers and they reference each other for proxies. Hotadd does not appear to be working at all for any of my jobs, however they complete failing over to network mode.. I've tried to manually force it to each proxy and it will say hotadd but when it starts to read the disk it fails over to network mode.

10/18/2012 6:07:58 PM :: Using source proxy VMware Backup Proxy [nbd]
10/18/2012 6:07:59 PM :: Using target proxy VMware Backup Proxy [hotadd]
10/18/2012 6:07:59 PM :: Discovering replica VM
10/18/2012 6:07:59 PM :: Preparing replica VM
10/18/2012 6:08:05 PM :: Creating snapshot
10/18/2012 6:08:12 PM :: Processing configuration
10/18/2012 6:08:17 PM :: Creating helper snapshot
10/18/2012 6:08:20 PM :: Hard Disk 1 (20.0 GB)
10/18/2012 6:08:24 PM :: Hot add is not supported for this disk, failing over to network mode...
10/18/2012 6:08:26 PM :: Deleting helper snapshot

[foggy]

Tom, remember, that virtual proxy cannot backup itself using hotadd and always fails over to network mode.

[bishoptf]

Yup I get that but that is not the case here, hey all have stopped doing hotadd and the proxy that is backing them up is not one the machines...So on the DR esxihost he is responsible for backing up all of the devices on the main esxi host and the DR server is the proxy. All of these were backing up using hotadd just fine till I installed the other veeam server on the primary esxi host to backup the DR esxi host server. The jobs process and it uses the correct proxy and says hot add but when it gets to the disk it fails over and says it cant do it for that disk...all of the jobs which I have 5 vm's are doing this now...they back up but do it over network.

[foggy]

I recommend to ask our technical team for assistance, they could review your setup closely via webex session and find the possible reason of failover.