DR: Nothing but problems!

[pbsenv]

I’ll start by saying that I currently have my data recovery backups in the most stable state than any other time in the 3 months that I have hacked at it. But I know its short term. This product is truly great and at one point after I lost a SAN it helped me recover 7 lost servers in a few hours (amazing). But I have nothing but problems with Data Recovery and it breaks all the time. I have to spend so much time massaging it to work. I use the small bui plus vmware lic so we only have 3 virtual hosts and a total of about 15 virtual machines. They vary between app servers, domain controllers, exchange, sql, and NAS servers. I try my best to back all 15 of these to 4 different 450 gig partitions (destinations) which usually leave a lot of space free on all of them.

I have to pretty much rebuild it all about every week between all the obvious problems… specifically things such as:

1) Integrity / reclaiming hanging.

2) Finding the DR VM popping out errors and stopped (reboot required)

3) Having 8 jobs fire up at one time when 1 or 2 is fixed only to cause another #2

4) Odd Destination errors… some of which refuse to mount or dismount when there’s nothing associated with them

5) Inability to manually schedule when the backups happen which lead to 3 again.

6) Odd and often times backups that get corrupted for unknown reason.

7) Etc..etc..etc

I really feel like this product can be a complete revolution for me with backups but I really feel like I’m a beta tester. I just cannot rely on it yet.

Other then this, the entire vpshere cloud works flawlessly

So the question is, I haven’t seen any updates to this product since I installed it, are we due for one, will it have more customization?

[RParker]

But I have nothing but problems with Data Recovery and it breaks all the time

Join the club, or better yet start your own twitter about it. The rest of this message is just yadda yadda yadda. It's been said before, we know DR has problems, and VM Ware is apparently "looking" (rather than fixing) the problem.

So good luck, but don't expect much help with this. We ALL are in the same boat.

I really feel like this product can be a complete revolution for me with backups but I really feel like I’m a beta tester. I just cannot rely on it yet.

Well said, and that's a really good way to put it.

I haven’t seen any updates to this product since I installed it, are we due for one

Of course if you ask VM Ware they will say "it's on our path, but due to NDA we are unable to discuss future plans with this product". Keep checking, I know I do, but after a while, you just have to deal with it, and move on. It won't get better until they come out with a viable product.

I keep wondering how this product is considered 1.0. It's more like .0093431. Not even CLOSE! It's a pre-conceptual artist rendition of a drawing before the idea Alpha.

[AntonVZhbankov]

>But I have nothing but problems with Data Recovery and it breaks all the time

Try Veeam Backup. They have Essentials package for SMB with great discount.

Yeah, it looks like an advertisement, but actually you can either keep "massaging" VDR or thry 3rd party solution. It looks like VDR team still has a lot to do.

---

MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[penelopeb]

I was logging in today to post this exact same message. To the letter.

Thank you for saving me the time.

This product is TERRIBLE. I wish they'd actually NOT released it rather than led us to believe they had a product that was ready for any type of use at all.

[candal02]

I've read many posts on this topic. In fairness, the product is great for a small company, around 20 VM's or less who want a no frillls emergency VM imaging solution. Keep in mind that it's also designed to 'enhance' your current backup solution, not replace it. And before anyone asks, no I'm not a VMware rep. LOL.

Quite honestly I can't see VMware releasing a full featured product for FREE that directly competes with their large partners such as Veeam. I'm pretty much only using it in my enterprise network to 'test' the virtues of imaging VM's, then use that as an argument to management that we really should spend the money on a full featured product like Veeam or something else.

Having said that, it still is buggy, and work does need to be done on VDR before even a small company can rely on it. Just my 2 cents.

[penelopeb]

I've 10 VMs. Certainly not a ton.

[candal02]

LOL classic foot in mouth scenario. As soon as I posted my last comment, I ran into my first problem with VDR. Now I've lost all my restore points and have to rebuild. Guess I shouldn't have said anything at all huh? Oh well, glad this is only a test environment...

[RParker]

Quite honestly I can't see VMware releasing a full featured product for FREE that directly competes with their large partners such as Veeam

That's one way to look at it... OR Microsoft is eating their lunch, and VM Ware needs to have a competitive advantage, so they pretty much HAVE to add more features for "FREE". There are many companies breathing down the proverbial VM Ware back, and VM Ware needs to keep adding, enhancing and updating their features. So yes on the one side you can say that they added this for FREE and we get what we pay for, but like everyone else has said (myself included) why add it AT ALL if the product clearly isn't ready. That's one thing. Also another thing to consider is that VM Ware BOUGHT YES BOUGHT this product from another company.

I think someone at VM Ware is laughing because their "cousin" made a lot of money, and the VM Ware sales, rep, executive, enron wannabe made a nice little kick back. I don't know of another explanation how something so immature, so lacking, and so buggy can be considered ready for production, UNLESS some very influential person "approved" it. It certainly was NOT a technical guy, because they wouldn't have considered it.

So to say they "threw" in this product, doesn't tell the whole story. They need a return on their investment, and bolster future earnings by including a backup product, because other virtualization platforms have similar backups as well (even though they are basic, but at least theirs works). So yes maybe you can say that Veeam, Vizioncore et. al could feel slighted if VM Ware released something that would cut into their bottom line... But they didn't ask the customer what we wanted, and they would have been better off BUYING a different company (like Veeam or Vizioncore) or at least partner.. and just simply make it an add-on license. It would be worth another $100 or $200 for a VM Ware license IF this product were a bit more useful, by adding it as FREE, it makes VM Ware look like they wanted to rush this out so they could say.. Includes Backup!

But that is going to backfire.. Because many customers are upset they didn't buy something else (and therefore no budget to replace it) and now the supposed "included VDR" doesn't work half the time.

I agree, its good for small companies, and simple backup, and it does work. It just needs a HUGE overhaul to make it more stable and useful.

[candal02]

All very good points RParker. VMware probably would have been better off not releasing the product at all. The absolute best-case scenario is that they pissed off a lot of customers. I just didn't want to bash the product from the standpoint of, "I need the product because I have no way of backing up my VM's and I can't afford a proper solution." I'm coming from a different angle. I already have solid backups, and was hoping this would enhance them. It turns out that after testing the product, it's pretty much useless to me, and now I am starting to experience some of the same bugs that others are experiencing. I just wanted to make the point that people should know what they are getting into with this product. It is free, and VMware was open about the fact that it shouldn't be a backup solution replacement. That right there told me to be careful with it right from the start.

In the end, it was still a horrible decision on VMware's part to release it. And I apologise, as I'm not offering support to the original poster. But I don't think there is much you can do to fix your problem, other than to vent, and go out and buy another backup solution. Or hope VMware releases a more solid update.

[pbsenv]

Technically its not free, it was included in the small buisness + license.

But I agree with what everyone is saying here. Although Im now going on about 10 days trouble free (cross fingers)

[RParker]

In the end, it was still a horrible decision on VMware's part to release it. And I apologise, as I'm not offering support to the original poster. But I don't think there is much you can do to fix your problem, other than to vent, and go out and buy another backup solution

Yes, vent is their only option it seems. The only thing to do is keep complaining, but to who? VM Ware is apparently turning the other cheek on this product. Even tech support you can almost hear them getting frustrated on the phone.. Because they don't have any answers either. So we can hope that maybe VM Ware will eventually fix it.. or maybe that's the problem, even the engineers that are working with this product can't find a solution.

[candal02]

Then all one can do is continue to use the product and hope it works out, or move on to another solution that costs money. It's obvious that our complaining isn't going to do anything. The market, and profits/losses, will now dictate how VMware responds. Sad state for a company I've long respected. They definitely dropped the ball.

[bemobile]

I explicitly bought the advanced edition because it included backup software.

Nowhere on the site does it state that:

a) its not a reliable solution

b) its a beta product..

So please no more comments on how we should have a secondary backup solution.

For us, vmware data recovery, as listed on the feature sheet, is the product we need. All i'll ever need is a snapshot (preferably the most recent one) of our VM's. Which vmware DR does. Or should be doing, for that matter.

I have exactly the same (exhausting) errors as the OP. (Manual) Integrity checks have to run almost every 2 days, to clear a most recent restore point, because the backup location is yet again corrupt.

I wish I would at least know when a new update is scheduled to be released. If it would just fix one of the problems listed by the OP, i'd already be a lot happier..

We're all in the same boat indeed, but if it's taking too much water, I'll be looking for another one..

[penelopeb]

I've solved almost all of the problems noted above with one simple fix.

After looking at everything for a while, I realized that what was happening was some type of process race condition or contention which then cascaded into a series of crap.

I solved the issue by moving my vCenter VM and the Windows Server VM providing CIFS space to VDR to the local storage of one of my ESX boxes and stopped using VDR to backup the CIFS server and it's disks. After doing that, everything started working beautifully. I've had over a month of solid backups, with no errors in a heavily utilized production environment.

It's not ideal, I've had to use SCP to make backups of the VMDKS which hold the CIFS server to an off-server storage (to prevent me from losing the store, just in case i lose the ESX host it's living on) and also, if the vCenter goes down, you have to connect the VDR appliance to the ESX server you want to restore it to locally and do a restore, but after that it's all fine. And it's usually not a big deal to lose the vCenter for a few hours since we're not doing VDI or anything, so whatever.

I hope this helps. it's made my life much less stressful!

[candal02]

Really glad to hear you got things going! I know what it feels like to not have solid backups, believe me. And thanks for sharing how you got it to work. Cheers!

[pbsenv]

Thanks all. Heres my follow up. I took some peoples advise here and scrapped Data Recovery and got a good deal on a Veeam bundle that went with my essentials version of VMware. It took a few hours to set up and its been backing up all 18 servers flawlessly. Couldnt ask for a better peice of software.

[gettigold]

6/1/2010 10:45:10 AM: Executing Integrity Check

6/1/2010 10:45:10 AM: To Backup Set /SCSI-0:1/...

6/1/2010 11:11:31 AM: Deleted restore point 5/27/2010 6:00:16 PM for virtual machine vm-prd-vocabs

6/1/2010 11:11:31 AM: Starting full integrity check

6/1/2010 3:27:10 PM: Integrity check failed for the restore point created on 5/27/2010 6:00:16 PM for vm-prd-vocabs

6/1/2010 3:28:34 PM: Backup Set "/SCSI-0:1/" will be locked until the restore point with errors are deleted and integrity check succeeds.

So what was deleted if it failed!!!!!

VMware!! Get your guts together or pull this product off!! We upgraded to Enterprise license just to be treated up like this??

[marcelgr]

I just know this post is going to jinx my VDR installation, but here goes...

After losing all backups twice, and having to set it up from scratch 5 times, the following has been keeping it up and running for a few months:

Don't ever reset the VDR appliance.

Check the reports every day. If it seems that a backup is hanging, reboot the VDR appliance from the web interface. It will take more than 15 minutes to reboot. You can check the progress on the console. Alternatively, log on to the console and run /etc/init.d/datarecovery stop, wait for 15 minutes until it stops, and run /etc/init.d/datarecovery start.

Be patient. Integrity check, recatalog and reclaiming tasks can seem to be hanging, but they're not. It may take many hours to complete.

The product is far from perfect. In one case the snapshot of a particular VM that used a physical RDM always failed. I never found a solution to this. Another VM's backup sometimes hangs at a certain point. Restarting VDR and the VM doesn't resolve the problem. Doing a Storage vMotion resolves it, at least until the next time it hangs, at that same point.

[admin]

VDR 1.2 was release today. It should be a significant improvement in terms of stability compared to 1.1. More information here

http://blogs.vmware.com/uptime/2010/06/new-vdr-release-out-today.html

Thanks

[KiloMike]

I downloaded the new 1.2 version of VDR and I have to admit, it is head and shoulders above what version 1.1 was. I've been running it for two weeks and there have been no problems, hangups, issues, etc. You gotta love the dedupe. 500GB LUN for my backups. Dedup size is 101 GB and non-dedup is 1.27TB.

I'm impressed - this fix was a long time coming.