SureBackup fails with VMware Tools "Unmanaged"

[RGlintmeijer]

Hi,

On some Ubuntu VM's VMware Tools was installed using apt-get with the vmware repository (http://www.vmware.com/download/packages.html). This sets the status of VMware Tools to "unmanaged" (instead of "OK" or "Not Running"), since updates can be installed with apt-get.

When running SureBackup with such a VM, it fails because of "No VMware Tools". Is this expected behaviour or can it be solved?

Code: Select all

Getting virtual lab configuration 
Starting virtual lab routing engine 
UbuntuVM: Publishing 
UbuntuVM: Publishing (Backup creation point: 19-7-2011 21:05:58, type: full) 
UbuntuVM: Registering 
Error UbuntuVM: Powering on (no VMware tools) 
Error UbuntuVM: Heartbeat test (Skipped: no VMware Tools) 
Error UbuntuVM: Pinging (skipped: no VMware tools) 
UbuntuVM: Application initialization 
Fail UbuntuVM: Running test scripts 
Custom script failed 
Fail Web Server script, path VmConnectionTester.exe, ErrCode 2 
UbuntuVM: Powering off 
UbuntuVM: Unregistering 
UbuntuVM: Cleaning up redo logs 
UbuntuVM: Unpublishing 

[Gostev]

Robert, please check what vCenter reports on VMware Tools status for this VM?

[RGlintmeijer]

Well, that's what vCenter displays for the VMware Tools status:

VMware Tools: Unmanaged

In my opinion this should be handled the same as status "OK". It even has a heartbeat, when checking the Performance Tab - System.

[Vitaliy S.]

Robert, you need to have a proper reporting status ("OK") for VMware Tools in order to run a SB job.

[RGlintmeijer]

Ok, but are there any plans to support this state? Since this state to VMware means that VMware Tools upgrades/maintenance is performed from within the Guest Operating System (instead through the vSphere Client). See the link i posted in the OP.

VMware Tools is installed and running. So SB should be succesfull.

[tsightler]

This definitely needs to be addressed. VMware tools, when installed and managed via native OS package management, reports "Unmanaged" as the status. This is a completely valid status and simply means that the VMware tools installed on that OS are not managed by the vCenter installation. This allows VMware tools versions to be independent of the version of ESX/vCenter that is running and for all package management to use the standard OS toolkit. This is quickly becoming the preferred way to manage VMware tools on most Linux systems.

http://www.vmware.com/download/packages.html

Are the OSP tools deficient in some way where they can't be used with Surebackup? If not, then Surebackup needs to be modified to accept "Unmanaged" status as acceptable. If for some reason OSP cannot be used with Surebackup, then this needs to be documented as a product limitation.

[Gostev]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, we will adress this in v6.

[JoshF]

V6 hotfix 2 is out and this still seems to be the behaviour - any timeframe for this being addressed?

[Gostev]

This was addressed in v6 (even listed in the What's New document) - you should open a support case. Thanks.