Storage vMotion fails.

[Lunddahl]

Hi!

I have seen this on a number of customer sites recently, not sure it's Veeam related though.

As a part of the vSphere 5 upgrade, some customers choose to upgrade the datastores to the new VMFS 5.54 with the unified block size of 1 MB, this involves storage vMotion all VM's off the datastore and then recreating it, before moving the VM's back.

I have seen two strange things for machines that has been Storage vMmotioned.

1. Veeam Backup reports using CBT, no error or warnings, but seems to read every byte from the vmdk files anyway, this could be the same thing that happens when upgrading, something that is fixed with a patch now.

2. Some VM's fails the storage vMotion, with an error like:
The method is disabled by 'vm-xxx', Call "VirtualMachine.Relocate" for object "vmName" on vCenter Server "ServerName" failed.

I have only seen this on customers using Veeam Backup, and running another backup seems to make the machines able to Storage Vmotion again.

Removing the VM from inventory and adding it again also solves this, but as we all know, Veeam then sees this VM as different VM, and while it can be "fixed" or the job can be updated, is't not really a nice situation, especially not when you have to explain what happened to the audit team...

The reason i think this could be Veeam related is this KB from VMware: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2008957

Any comments on the above observations.

[Gostev]

Hi,

1. Yes, this looks like the upgrade issue that v6 Patch 1 addresses.

2. The link you have provided won't open. Disabling Storage VMotion prior to backup, and enabling it back after backup is a VMware requirement, and this is something our job does every time the VM is backed up. Please send the job logs to our support (for job that processes one of the VMs having the issue). It could be that for whatever reason VMware fails to process the corresponding API calls occasionally. Please let me know the support case number.

Thanks!

[pinkerton]

What is v6 Patch 1 and where can I get it?

/edit: Found it http://www.veeam.com/kb_articles.html/KB1442

[ynguldyn]

I'm having the same problem with svMotion "method disabled". There's one VM that we built just a few days ago, and ran a single backup of, which shows this error now. Another VM did the same earlier, but is not doing it after another backup.

I'm going to open a case with support, but wanted to chime in and confirm that this is not a unique occurrence.

[Vladimirf]

Any news on this - i face same problem with storage vmotion, some guest just fail the action with no further explanation.

[foggy]

Vladimir, no news as nobody in the thread haven't provided their support IDs. Please open a case and work with our technical guys on this, I suppose they might have more information about this. Thanks.

[Ben Milligan]

Hey guys - this is the same behavior described here: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=2008957

The main culprit is this method in vCenter: VPX_DISABLED_METHODS - it isn't removed properly by VMware post backup job completion. Effects any current vStorage API leveraging backup products intermittently.

[robincm]

Any updates on this?
The VMware KB doesn't say it's been fixed, but perhaps there's some work going on behind the scenes?
Cant really believe this would not have been fixed after such a long time.

[Ben Milligan]

Actually the most recent updates are on the KB itself. It was recently updated (March 26th by VMware). There are updated workarounds listed, but VMware has not yet fully fixed the behavior. The simplest way to fix this is to run another backup if possible. Typically when I've seen this however, there is a backup failure of some kind preceding it. We should troubleshoot that if it is the same in your case.

[robincm]

OK, no prob. Was just interested if there had been any progress on a technical fix. Thanks for the advice about the backup failures though.