Understanding guest VSS processing

[willymaykett]

Hi all,

Been trawling via posts in an attempt to understand the vss processing within a guest, and not being able to find a definitive answer. I have found that when the backup server is unable to connect to the admin share on a guest, especially due to firewall rules, that B&R is supposed to use vmtools to inject the vss agent and run the vss process. I have found some guests do not backup when it can't connect to the share, so I though it would inject intot he guest via vm tools.

My questions are:
1. How can you tell if the agent thas been SUCCESSFULLY injected into the guest and vss rule?
2. What are the requirements for the tools to be injected into the guest?
3. What version tools are required in reference to the esx version? Some of ours are out of date, will this stop the agent from being injected?
4. what entries within the logs can I check for to see what method was used, remote share connection or tools?

Thanks
Will

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Will,

1. Your backup/replication job will not fail with VSS-related errors.
2. No special requirements are needed.
3. No, that's fine.
4. By default we use direct network connection, if it's not available, then we inject runtime process through VIX API. You can find this information in the corresponding job log right before snapshot operation API call.

Thanks!

[willymaykett]

Thank you for replying.
When checking a vm that "fails" it does indeed fail, there is no ability to restore the vm, open it etc. When I look at the logs, from what I can see is that:
1. The RPC fails, cause of a firewall preventing MS access. (This won't change).
2. It appears Veeam then attempts to use the VIX API's to connect via the vcentre user id. It then fails, ultimately with a
"VIX Error: The command is not recognized by VMware Tools Code: 3025"

Not sure why it would fails to login to this vm, yet all the others in the job are ok?

[foggy]

Perhaps, the VMware Tools version on this VM is too old. This functionality was first introduced for vSphere 4, so probably some older version does not support some calls used in our implementation.

Anyway, with all technical issues it is always best to open a support case and let our technical team investigate the issue for you. Thanks!