11 Replies Latest reply on Dec 7, 2019 3:42 AM by rtwarowski

VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

TrophyWife May 17, 2019 11:19 AM

Cool backup vCenter to SMB share now in 6.7 U2!

I can't get it to work! Not sure what I am missing.

The helpful 'example' in the path shows:

protocol://server-address<:port-number>/folder/subfolder

Share I want to backup to is a Windows 2012 R2 share.

Port? I thought it would be 445.

My example:

SMB://10.1.1.1:445/hiddenshare$/subfolder

I enter my domain account that has full control on share and NTFS.

I get a "SMB location is invalid" error.

Where am I going wrong? VMware doc doesn't give examples.

Thanks!

1. Re: VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

petermie May 31, 2019 4:20 PM (in response to TrophyWife)

I would try without the port, in every other system i've used I only had to specify the port if it wasn't the default. I would also try a non-hidden share in case it has an issue with that or the $ in the name
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2. Re: VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

TrophyWife Jun 3, 2019 6:45 AM (in response to petermie)

Thank you for the tips, but I was not successful.

I dumped the hidden share and just went by IP to avoid DNS. Tried backup location format:

SMB://10.0.0.50/vcenterbu

I get "SMB location is invalid".

To keep it simple for now, I set the "Everyone" group on the share to Full Control. My account is local Admin on the server, so NTFS for my account is confirmed to have Full Control also. I confirmed the share is accessible from another Windows machine.

The example in the field has "/folder/subfolder". So I made a subfolder:

SMB://10.0.0.50/vcenterbu/bu

Same error.

I have also tried the domain account formats domain\account and account@domain.com.

Interestingly, I did another search online for this issue. This thread is the top 6 posts on Google. Nice.
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3. Re: VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

mgittelman Jun 5, 2019 11:01 AM (in response to TrophyWife)

I ran into the same thing. It seems that the SMB functionality is only compatible with SMB1. Try setting your destination to accept SMB1.

I'm personally sticking to FTP until this get's fixed as I'd rather not enable legacy SMB on my NAS for security reasons.
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4. Re: VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

TrophyWife Jun 5, 2019 11:04 AM (in response to mgittelman)

Thanks for that update.

Yeah, no way am I enabling SMB1.

Oh well. Hopefully they get it "fixed" with a less vulnerable version of the protocol.
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5. Re: VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

Raj1988 Jun 10, 2019 1:40 AM (in response to TrophyWife)

SMB://10.0.0.50/vcenterbu
Do not specify domain. Just type the account and password.

Also make sure SMB1 is enabled. VMware is working on a fix to make it work with SMB2.

Regards,
AJ
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6. Re: VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

mgittelman Jul 17, 2019 3:02 PM (in response to TrophyWife)

Solved for me in latest version released July 15th. 6.7.0.32000
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7. Re: VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

peterriederer Nov 5, 2019 1:35 AM (in response to mgittelman)

cant get this to work in Version: 6.7.0.32000 Build-Nummer 14070457

Error in method invocation module 'util.Messages' has no attribute 'ScheduleLocationDoesNotExist'

Error in Log:
2019-11-05T09:29:00.6 [2310]ERROR:backupRestoreAPI:Failed to mount the cifs share //SERVER/vCenterBackup/ at /storage/remote/backup/cifs/SERVER/kxqnbNRy/lTVZahRD; Err: rc=32, stdOut:, stdErr: mount error(112): Host is down
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)

when trying a manual mount via shell on VCSA: mount -t cifs //SERVER/vCenterBackup /storage/remote/backup/cifs/ -o username=vCenter.Backup,vers=2.0

it works without any problems. Target Server is Windows Server 2019 with no SMB1 enabled.

is there still a need to enable SMB2 on VCSA?
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8. Re: VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

sushilkm Nov 5, 2019 5:05 AM (in response to peterriederer)

Seems like a common problem with 6.7 as of now. I too tried SMB backups and could not. finally had to switch back to a FTP on windows box.
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9. Re: VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

peterriederer Nov 6, 2019 1:05 AM (in response to sushilkm)

raised a Ticket yesterday and VMware still knows there is an issue with SMB2 and only SMB1 is working at the moment.

There is also no date when this will be finally fixed :-(

pity they didnt mention this in the known issue section in the release notes of VCSA
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10. Re: VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

AhmedIbrahimVMware Nov 15, 2019 12:22 PM (in response to peterriederer)

That's correct, SMB2 isn't working perfectly with VCSA file-based backup.

We have published a KB for that, you can refer to it here:
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/70646

As mentioned in this KB, Engineering would fix this issue in a future release.
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11. Re: VCSA 6.7 U2 - New Backup Over SMB

rtwarowski Dec 7, 2019 3:42 AM (in response to TrophyWife)

I found it working when I specify administrative share, for instance: SMB://server1/e$/vcbackup.
Of course a user must have admin access to the server serving backup folder. Not a nice way, but still better than enabling SMB1.
regards
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