VMware Cloud Community
insearchof
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

vCenter Server Appliance Backup Process

vCenter VCSA 6.7

I have an FTP site where I want to place the backup files

I setup a schedule for backup of the VCSA

pastedImage_0.png

Backup job failed to complete 

Where can I find out why this failed?

Thank you

Tom

Reply
0 Kudos
33 Replies
insearchof
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

Bewe,

sorry no change same error ever time I try

Not sure what to try now

Reply
0 Kudos
insearchof
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

Bewe

I am trying something different now

Trying to use SMB

The server is Windows 2012 R2 has SMB 1.0 installed

I setup a backup to point to the SMB share and it will not run either.

pastedImage_0.png

SMB is supported method on 6.7   the error makes no sense.

Any ideas?

Reply
0 Kudos
berndweyand
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

yes - vmware has problems with smb. you have to use an administrative share like smb://<server>/c$/vcenterbackup/...

but in my experience backup to smb killed my vcsa twice. dont know if it was the reason but 2 times vcsa got corrupted during the timespan backup to smb was running.

do you have the option to backup to scp ? just for a test  - scp worked fine in a customer environment for a long time, now ftp is running w/o problems there

Reply
0 Kudos
insearchof
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

BEWE

what do I need to setup the SCP method

Never Mind I need a Linux machine to use SCP not an option here.

The Error does not help at all  Location type 'SMB' is not supported.

I greped the log and no errors  found

Location type SMB is not supported          where ? on the vcsa or the windows server?

Any ideas

Another thought

Is there a way to back this up using Powercli?

Reply
0 Kudos
insearchof
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

Bewe,

Success...……..

I tried SCP method  I have a cent OS machine as a VM I used in conjunction with Nagios which runs on a separate Linux OS

I ssh to the cent os server and then created a folder

went to the vcsa appliance  interface and setup a backup to use SCP:\\10.10.10.10\vcsabackup       account and password and the job ran successfully.

My Linux server have a very small foot print as far as disk space goes so backing up to them is ok but not a long term solution.

Looking into getting this to work with a windows server  not sure which protocol to try on this.

Thanks

Tom

Reply
0 Kudos
insearchof
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

Bewe,

I then tried to SCP to my Windows server and it failed

First thing

From the Linux server that I ran the backup to I used scp to copy to the windows server and it worked

So if I can SCP from Linux to my windows then why can't I from the Appliance?

I get this error

  

Location 'scp://10.2.8.74/vcsabackup' does not have write permission.

the account I am using has full permission to the folder.

from the Linux

scp -r vcsabackup useradmin@10.2.8.120:e:/vcsabackup

Any ideas

Tom

Reply
0 Kudos
berndweyand
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

but now you can be sure that your vcsa is healthy and can perform backups. all other problems are related to your backup targets

Reply
0 Kudos
insearchof
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

Bewe

yes that sounds about right

I have not found any good article that show how to prepare the targets.

Only articles on how to run the backup process.   That part is simple

I would like to get the FTP function working

I have a Kemp here and I use FTP to back that up on a daily basis to the same FTP server I am trying with the appliance.

Just do not know what the appliance is looking for

I have yet to find any requirements for this setup.

Thanks

Tom

Reply
0 Kudos
berndweyand
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

https://www.altaro.com/vmware/backing-up-vcsa-6-5-natively-using-ftps/

note that the target folder has to be empty when creating an ftp-job

insearchof
Expert
Expert
Jump to solution

BEWE

Good NEWS...……..

I decided to build a New VM  Windows 2019 Server

First I installed IIS and FTP and that did not work either.

Then I downloaded Filezilla Server and had the article to show how to set up the information for the VCSA backup   and now both vcenters are backing up to my FTP site.

One other thing I think the problem with FTP all along was my command line string.

I was always doing this ftp://10.10.10.123/ftpsvcsa

when you only need this

ftp://10.10.10.123/                 di not use the name of the folder FTP site knows where to place the incoming files

Now have it setup for a weekly backup schedule.   will keep eye on this

But I think we are now good.

Thanks  for all your help we can close this out now as resolved

Reply
0 Kudos
btechit
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

SMB v1 is required.  good gawd thats's insane.  VMware please update SMB support to modern version 3.X.  1.X is so insecure and disabled, or should be disable, everywhere. 

Reply
0 Kudos
btechit
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

good gawd ftp is so insecure. 

Reply
0 Kudos
btechit
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

you probably need to backup to an insecure location...like smb 1.0 or ftp 😛

Reply
0 Kudos
MatoHP
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

My backups were working just fine. One day they started to fail. My setup: VCSA 7.0.3 19480866 (though issue was on 20395099 too). I'm using Linux/sftp as a backup server. User permissions are ok. I can actually see files being uploaded during backup, then it suddenly fails. Link to that error is useless

Logs show this:

2022-12-06T11:47:12.672 [20221206-114657-20395099] [ComponentScriptsBackup:PID-54277] [ComponentScripts::ComponentScriptsBackup:ComponentScripts.py:76] INFO: Dispatching stream.
2022-12-06T11:47:12.648 [20221206-114657-20395099] [VCDBBackup:PID-54278] [VCDB::BackupVCDB:VCDB.py:2084] ERROR: Failed to push telemetry data for backup expected str, bytes or os.PathLike object, not NoneType
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/applmgmt/backup_restore/py/vmware/appliance/backup_restore/components/VCDB.py", line 2081, in BackupVCDB
RunCmdForOutput(logger, cmd)
File "/usr/lib/applmgmt/backup_restore/py/vmware/appliance/backup_restore/util/Proc.py", line 541, in RunCmdForOutput
close_fds=close_fds)
File "/usr/lib/applmgmt/backup_restore/py/vmware/appliance/backup_restore/util/Proc.py", line 479, in ExecCmd
shell=shell, cwd=cwd, close_fds=close_fds)
File "/usr/lib/applmgmt/backup_restore/py/vmware/appliance/backup_restore/util/Proc.py", line 282, in CreateProcess
shell=shell, cwd=cwd, close_fds=close_fds, env=current_env)
File "/usr/lib/python3.7/subprocess.py", line 800, in __init__
restore_signals, start_new_session)
File "/usr/lib/python3.7/subprocess.py", line 1482, in _execute_child
restore_signals, start_new_session, preexec_fn)
TypeError: expected str, bytes or os.PathLike object, not NoneType
2022-12-06T11:47:12.684 [20221206-114657-20395099] [VCDBBackup:PID-54278] [VCDB::BackupVCDBCleanup:VCDB.py:2099] INFO: Finishing full database backup
2022-12-06T11:47:12.760 [20221206-114657-20395099] [VCDBBackup:PID-54278] [VCDB::BackupVCDBCleanup:VCDB.py:2102] INFO: Successfully cleaned up for VCDB backup.


2022-12-06T11:47:13.708 [20221206-114657-20395099] [MainProcess:PID-53941] [BackupManager::main:BackupManager.py:592] ERROR: BackupManager encountered an exception: Hit exception inside process VCDBBackup: Full backup not allowed during VM snapshot

Which led me to this KB: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/86449

remove snapshot from VC, execute:

rm /etc/vmware/backupMarker.txt

And run backup again.

Reply
0 Kudos