Acronis vmprotect

[havran]

Hey all,

just want to warn everyone that is considering to use Acronis vmprotect in their environment. Initially we used veeam and everything was fine. After we growth we must extend our licenses and we made terrible mistake ... where we changed to Acronis vmprotect - mainly because of price. This product is not working at all (backups are failing quite often for several unknow (even to Acronis "support") reasons). Support is 1 big tragedy .... they are working for more than 1 month and doing nothing than just talking and suggestng craps ... however no solution. Of course the problem is everywhere else just not the Acronis .... vmware, backup storage .... etc. So really .. if you want to stay away from troubles with your backups go for veeam, DP, windows backup or whatever else backup solution just not the Acronis vmprotect. Try to learn from others mistakes ...   Now we have not working backups and they are refusing to return the money.

[AcronisSupport]

Hello havran,

Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences. We really appreciate your feedback, and hope to be of assistance for any questions you might have. My name is Anton and I'm writing you on behalf of Acronis Customer Central.

I'm very sorry to hear that you've experienced difficulties with our product and support, could you please provide us with your case number so that we can better understand the situation before moving forward.

Please let me know if I can assist you with anything else today.

Best regards,

Anton Deev,

Acronis Customer Central

[havran]

Anton,

you can check: 01643481 . The only thing that i can really admit is that you are always very polite ... however this is not helping our backups and i really stand behind my initial advice for every possible user of vmprotect - to stay away from it. To be honest, i have 10 year experience with enterprise level products and i solved lot of cases with vendors like Microsoft, HP, vmware .... etc however i never met apporach like yours is. And the best of best is that you are even not willing to return the money ... even you are not able to solve our problems :smileyangry: ... may for Acronis is OK to solve the case for several months but i doubt that anyone that rely on working backups can afford that. But i think this is not the first such case ... it is enough to google a bit around and there are several similar cases like ours is. Just my bad that i didin't do such research prior vmprotect purchase.

[sparrowangelste]

Appriciate you sharing your experiances havran. but did you test a trial version? Or there is no trail/ things acted up after you had everything in production?

[havran]

yep ... we ran trial for 2 weeks - more is not possible to get from Acronis even we requested this. On 1 host there was no issue during trial period ... after we deployed it in full prod the issues started to occur.

[cypherx]

Yeah its pretty buggy but it has gotten better.  vmProtect 6 was a complete disaster.  I think we only had a 10% sucess rate with our backup jobs.  vmProtect7 got a little better, then there was an updated build for vmProtect7, and now I'm beta testing vmProtect8.  I only have 3 machines that have "issues" with vmProtect8.

1.  - Random MFT corrupt warnings on a machine (but yet machine works fine, backup even restores fine).  Ignorable warning.

2.  - Random backup failures on a virtual server due to VMware failed to create a quiesced snapshot of the selected virtual machine. To back up the machine, power off the machine before the process or uninstall the Volume Shadow Copy Services Support feature of VMware Tools from the VM.  We have an ongoing ticket open since May 2012 for this machine in vmProtect 7.  Some nights it backs up, some nights it doesn't.  It's more common it does not back up though.

3.  - Solarwinds virtual appliance is impossible to backup on any version (6, 7, 8 beta).  Error code: 253
Module: 83
LineInfo: c7610e0a857bedf4
Fields:
Message: VMware error: 'Remote method call failed.'.
--------------------
Error code: 32
Module: 0
LineInfo: c7610e0a857bedf4
Fields:
Message: Awaiting task 'CreateSnapshot' has failed. Reason: fault.SystemError.summary.

--------------------

I keep hammering away at it and participate in the beta's because really the product is priced right and is simple to use.  If everything would back up consistently 100%, it would be an outstanding product due to its simplicity and price point.  However because it is not 100% consistent with good backups, we are going to budget for Veeam next year and see if the money is approved for it.  I've heard great things about Veeam.  Who knows though... as I continue to send info to Acronis, I hope that they can resolve the issues with this product.  It has a lot of potential, but it's quite not ready yet.

[havran]

I can agree that if vmprotect would work than for its price it would be awesome product ... however it is not. We came to same situation with veeam that it was quite expesnive ... however if i should count all my time spent on vmprotect get working + the price of vmprotect veeam is much more cheaper. I wrote this article just to warn other folks .... that they will not run to the same problems like we. Now we have not working backups, expesnive backup solution ... thats the reality.

Just 1 comment regarding veeam - we used it for 1 year and it is really great product ... it ran 100% good from the first installation .... with BSR 98% + .So if you are considering vmprotect or something else ... really go for something else

[cypherx]

What's BSR (you list at 98%)  ?

A big problem we had with Acronis is that it would not correctly remove the snapshot disk from itself, so VMWare could not consolidate the snapshot after the job was finished.  We had to do a V2V conversion on some machines because we ended up with more than 32+ snapshots on some machines.  VMWare only supports a maximum of 32 snapshots.  Anymore than that, its VERY tricky and time consuming to do a consolidation.  Usually V2V is required to make a whole new machine using VMWare Converter.

That really bit us in the rear... but luckily we caught it before our storage filled up.  I read some horror stories where people completely ran out of storage due to that problem and all their VM's halted.

What solved that issue :knock on wood: was an updated build from version 7 and I deployed it as a new appliance (instead of an upgrade).  I had to setup my 30+ backup jobs by hand one by one and made all new archives.  Since then we haven't had that problem.  I'm also running a small handful of machines on version 8 beta, and that has not had the same problem either.

The biggest issue is our one server (583.69 GB used storage) will not consistently back up.  I hate to have to use Symantec BackupExec on it when I SHOULD be able to do it natively in VMWare.  It sporadically refuses to quiese a snapshot.  They keep placing the blame on VMWare or VMWare tools, but you know what, I updated those tools numerous times, and its a Windows 2008 server so it's not using the legacy SYNC driver like 2000 server would.

I just checked my vmProtect 7 console and I also had a backup job for 2 other servers fail with these cryptic errors:

Error code: 114
Module: 83
LineInfo: 179fcce6ee7090f5
Fields:
Message: Failed to serialize object 'ResourcePool'.
--------------------
Error code: 116
Module: 83
LineInfo: f276f8e5fc9c748e
Fields:
Message: Failed to get the object's property 'ResourcePoolID'.
--------------------
Error code: 44
Module: 83
LineInfo: c7610e0a857bed57
Fields:
Message: Failed to obtain server object 'parent' (resgroup-9).
--------------------
Error code: 227
Module: 83
LineInfo: c7610e0a857bed59
Fields:  error : 28
Message: SOAP 1.1 fault: SOAP-ENV:Client[no subcode]
"Try Again"
Detail: get host by name failed in tcp_connect()

and for our vcenter server

Error code: 13
Module: 149
LineInfo: d1ab7fa1e56ec8b7
Fields:
Message: Failed to perform the requested operation.
--------------------
Error code: 103
Module: 83
LineInfo: a859dd78cc91de7b
Fields:
Message: Failed to open the virtual machine ([vm2-sas] vcenter/vcenter.vmx).
--------------------
Error code: 64
Module: 83
LineInfo: c7610e0a857bedda
Fields:
Message: VMware error: 'An internal error.'.
--------------------
Error code: 196
Module: 0
LineInfo: c7610e0a857bedda
Fields:
Message: Awaiting task 'CreateSnapshot' has failed. Reason: fault.Timedout.summary.
--------------------

But then nights after this, these servers work fine.  I mean what the hell would cause a backup to work fine one night then not fine the next night?  Theres no consistency, and VMWare does not agree with the method Acronis uses to back up, how it forcefully attaches snapshot disks directly to it, and stuff.

[AcronisSupport]

Hello havran and cypherx,

Thank you for your comments.

havran, a member of our Support team is working with you on the issue and we are monitoring your progress.

cypherx, could you please let us know your name in our beta forum, I believe a member of our Testing team is working with you on the problems that you reported.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thank you,

Anton

[havran]

BSR stands for backup success rate. As for the other problems ... we also have problems like some machines are failing with snapshot problem error or something similar ... according to acronis this is problem of vm and vmware ... but this is bullshit. with veeam or VDR we didn't encounter any problems with same machines. I guess they will need at least 2 - 3 more version to get the product to the phase where other products are calling it RTM.

[havran]

Anton,

it is true that your support is working on the case however in 2 months they do really nothing. vmprotect is not workign at all .... So yes ...  you can monitor the progress however i'm not sure for what as there is none Just 1 recent case from today what is the quality of your "support" .. we lost all the backup job tasks - i must redefine them all from a scratch ... because agent deleted something after what none of existing job can be saved (he said that hmm this should work but apparently it is not)... but it is really nothing ... just 2 hours that i can spend on something else. So my warning to other folks to avoid vmprotect is still valid ... even more obvious after last few days.

[jhardwood]

Did you folks ever get any resolution from Acronis on this issue (orphaned snapshots)?  We have the same problem, and it is a real paint.  Number one, we have not found a simple, consistent way to recover other than do a clone on the current VMDK files to a new machine.  There are some other suggestions out there (like powering down the Acronis Appliance, rebooting the host, then trying to create a snapshot/delete all snapshots for the effected vm...others involve running a fixdeletable.py script to correct bad flags left behind by Acronis).

Bottom line is that we now have to very closely monitor our VMs to make sure that we don't run out of storage, which is ridiculous.  I agree with Havran...while Acronis tech support is polite, their suggestions for resolution involved only two things:

Download the latest version (I swear that sometime they stall long enough for a version to come out so that they can tell us we need to download)

Delete the entire install and reinstall (and by the way recreate all of the backup jobs).

We have spent hundreds of hours with this product...and I won't say how much money.

We are not a huge install, so if I could find an easy way to recover from the orphaned VMs until Acronis can figure out a way to fix it, I might be persuaded to tough it over for a few more months with close monitoring.  Otherwise, it is just not worth our time.

jeff

[cypherx]

Its a lot better in vmProtect 8.  Also a brand new installation and creation of all backup jobs from scratch helped a lot as well.

Lately though I've had some issues where there are 2 Windows Server 2008 machines where the backup periodically freezes.  Sometimes it freezes at 5% or so and I have to cancel it. In one instance it did leave the flags dirty and we were running on snapshot disks that would not consolidate.  The fixdelete.py script resolved this.

However the rate that snapshots have been hanging out there is pretty much rare in the latest build.  I too watch things from time to time to make sure.  vmProtect 6 and 7 sure had a boatload of bugs and issues in this department but at least each version and build has been getting better and better for me.

[jhardwood]

Is VMProtect8 a replacement for ABRM 11.5?

From the website, it looks like VMProtect8 is now a separate product, with less features than ABRM 11.5, although more geared to VMWare.  

Does VMProtect8 run the same way (i.e. management server, ESX Host appliances, etc.)?

[chi201110141]

havran: we had trhe exact same problm as you: they wouldnt refund, we had issues for over 6 months.

vmprotec8 is better than 7 by a long long way.  but it looks like media bulder of v8148 doesnt work!!!!

[havran]

Don't even think to go for vmprotect ... you will save your time money and health

[havran]

yes .... as metioned here already ... still problems .... support is saying we are working on it .. oh yeaaah ... here we have new version ... install ..... some problems solved ... some not .. new problems arised .... but i must agree ... while 7 was totally unusable 8 can be used when watched over (it requires some manual interventions like rebooting of appliance, recreate backup .... etc etc ...). but anyway ... even with latest version 8 installed i would never really never suggest vmprotect to anyone .... and mine original warning stays .... STAY AWAY FROM VMPROTECT AS FAR AS YOU CAN.

[Kahonu84]

Aloha,

I have used Quest vRanger for going on 4 years now. I can count on one hand the number of problems we have had. And with those instances, problems were quickly resolved. It may be a little pricey - but we're talking backups here. It just works - no need to "monitor" (that really made me laugh). Once you tire of the runaround Acronis is giving you, I would highly reccommend looking at this product.

Bill

[planetvmuk]

I had Acronis take out our vCenter 5 appliance before - not good enough for a product that costs so much unfortunately!

[chi201110141]

Is it based on appliance type install or a windows agent?

the good thing with acronis is that it does use appliances....