VMware Horizon Community
szilagyic
Hot Shot
Hot Shot
Jump to solution

New AppVol Writable native backup feature

Hello:

We recently upgraded to 2.14.2 and as part of that very much looking forward to the native backup capability in the AppVol Manager.  We set up a new datastore and here set the days to 1.  Our goal would be to have as up to date backups as possible for the user Writables.  I have noticed over the past week or so of having the backups enabled, that not all Writables are showing up on the target datastore.  According to the release notes the backups only Writable in use since the last backup.  In our case even the first backup has not completed for all volumes, and I know many have logged out and logged in since the backups were enabled and I'm still not seeing their Writables appearing on the target datastore.  However I am seeing a portion of the Writables showing up so it is working, but not for those that I thought it would be for.

I haven't been able to find much information on how these backups work or should be set up (best practices, etc).  Does anybody have more insight to this, or share how you are using it?

Thanks in advance.

Chris

Reply
0 Kudos
1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
Jump to solution

For as far as we have tested it it is not very feature rich, you can only select 1 location for backups and it can only hold 1 version so enough work to be done.

That being said, what we saw while testing it is that it only backups writables that 1 have been used, 2 are not in use.

When you look at the writable do you see that it indeed has been used? Could be that the writable is simply not being attached or is still in use even though the user claimed to have logged out.

You could also try and manually back-up one of those volumes to see if the back-up fails, might give you a good starting point.

Other than that I would suggest raising a call with VMWare or at least try and look into the logging of the manager (which could get quite large).

View solution in original post

Reply
0 Kudos
3 Replies
Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
Jump to solution

For as far as we have tested it it is not very feature rich, you can only select 1 location for backups and it can only hold 1 version so enough work to be done.

That being said, what we saw while testing it is that it only backups writables that 1 have been used, 2 are not in use.

When you look at the writable do you see that it indeed has been used? Could be that the writable is simply not being attached or is still in use even though the user claimed to have logged out.

You could also try and manually back-up one of those volumes to see if the back-up fails, might give you a good starting point.

Other than that I would suggest raising a call with VMWare or at least try and look into the logging of the manager (which could get quite large).

Reply
0 Kudos
szilagyic
Hot Shot
Hot Shot
Jump to solution

For as far as we have tested it it is not very feature rich, you can only select 1 location for backups and it can only hold 1 version so enough work to be done.

That being said, what we saw while testing it is that it only backups writables that 1 have been used, 2 are not in use.

When you look at the writable do you see that it indeed has been used? Could be that the writable is simply not being attached or is still in use even though the user claimed to have logged out.

You could also try and manually back-up one of those volumes to see if the back-up fails, might give you a good starting point.

Other than that I would suggest raising a call with VMWare or at least try and look into the logging of the manager (which could get quite large).

I had been using the AppVol Backup fling however we ran in to a lot of issues with it not working with our backup solution as well as the fact that volumes need to be manually added when provisioned, etc.  I like the idea of the backups being handled natively by the AppVol manager however it does seem in its infancy at this point but if it's functional it's better than nothing at this point.

I'm certain the Writables have been used, as one of them is mine  Smiley Happy  But, I did not know that it was the same as the fling and it couldn't back up those actively in use.  That's probably why because the Backup button on mine for example is grayed out as well.  I can't tell what the schedule is that the AppVol manager runs the backups, that I've been able to find.

Thanks for your help!

Reply
0 Kudos
Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
Jump to solution

I'm certain the Writables have been used, as one of them is mine    But, I did not know that it was the same as the fling and it couldn't back up those actively in use.  That's probably why because the Backup button on mine for example is grayed out as well.  I can't tell what the schedule is that the AppVol manager runs the backups, that I've been able to find.

I to don't really know when the actual backup is scheduled which is quite painful if it starts to backup a few thousand writables when your in the midst of a bootstorm. I'd say it's a work in progress kind of thing Smiley Happy.

And yes, it is greyed out because you are logged in. This has nothing to do with the fact that it cannot back-up the file but if you do copy a disk while it is in use you cannot restore it as the writable is corrupt then. I do believe there are some tricks to get it working again but i'd not go into that and save the hassle of it Smiley Happy.

Reply
0 Kudos