vmware tools quiescing

[jcofin13]

I have a job with a mix of windows and linux vms.
Veeam 12.2.

The Job itself has been throwing a warning on one vm every single time the job is run (daily) and its driving be crazy as it is preventing us from getting successful backups.

The vm it is failing on is a linux appliance which was deployed from an ova. The vendor does not support vmware tools per thier documentation.

I notice that someone has turned on "Enable VMware Tools quiescence" under job properties-->storage-->advanced-->vsphere tab.
I can only imagine this was turned on to allow for the backup of other linux vms we have.

With that said, is there any way to get this job to complete with a status of successful if this vm will never be able to quiesce since it doesn't and wont have vmware tools?

I mean im sure the backup of this vm is still crash consistent so im not too concerned there. Id like to see all our backup reports show success for the backups that are run and that is the goal with this.

[PetrM]

Hello,

Is there any chance of creating a dedicated job for this VM with VMware Tools quiescence disabled?

Thanks!

[jcofin13]

I am not sure. The VM/Appliance is ~500gb. I will have to check with a coworking to get confirmation.

My thought is if it has a way to natively backup the data then maybe i can do that to a fileshare on a file server that is already being backed up. Then exclude this vm from the backup. In the event we need to restore it....we just redeploy it and restore the native backup from the fileshare.


If i do find that its ok to move it to a new backup job with quiescing turned off, it is just that simple?

The job it is now is immutable.
If you remove a vm from a job does that vm still age out over time regardless of nothing running against the vm (because it has been removed)?

I would hate to start backing it up in a new job knowing its not going to age out properly in the old job.

I guess maybe that is a bit of a different question.

If you have a job that backs up to a Immutable Repo and is set to keep 15 restore points with an additional 5 weeklys and 3 monthlys as an example.....will that removed vm and all its restore points still be on the repo until the end of the GFS retention period of 3 months? Or will it stay there forever as some sort of orphaned data on the repo now that the job itself isnt processing that vm any more and no longer needs to track its retention because its not part of the job?

Im probably overthinking this. It probably cleans up the remove vm over time as long as it doesnt fall within the immutable time frame and the GFS stuff would expire out and clean up as well over time. It would be kind of crazy to think you would need to track every vm you removed and that you would need to go remove it form the "disk" area for instance.

[PetrM]

Hello,

It depends on the backup chain format:
- If you have a per-machine backup with separate metadata files (default format), you will need to remove the chain manually after the GFS flags are unassigned
- If you have a per-machine backup with a single metadata file (legacy format used with a repository created prior to Veeam B&R 12), the chain will be deleted automatically after the GFS flags are unassigned, as long as the retention for deleted items is enabled

But I have another idea. You mentioned that the vendor does not support VMware Tools, right? If so, maybe you can remove VMware Tools from this VM and apply this registry value:
DisableVMwareToolsNotFoundWarning
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication
REG_DWORD
Set the value to 1

There is no need to create one more job with this approach.

Thanks!

[jcofin13]

Are you saying to make this reg change on the Veeam server itself? I guess thats the only thing that makes sense. The VM is not windows based so there is no registry.

[PetrM]

Yes, the registry value must be added on the backup server.

Thanks!

[jcofin13]

This did work. Thank you.