VDR: new job starts immediately (outside of backup window)?

[jpodhorez]

I'm just getting started with VDR and configured my 2nd backup job and when I hit "finish" on the wizard it started backing up the machines right then and there - outside the backup window, during business hours!

Did I miss something? I verified the time is correct on both the VDR "Configuration" tab and also on the appliance itself (I logged in and issued the 'date' command), as well as the client and hosts.

One thought: yesterday I had created a backup job w/ a few test vms and tested it by using the "bring to compliance" option. Today I just added additional vms to that job, so is "bring to compliance" a permanant flag such that any additional machines added to the job are immediately brought to compliance?

Another backup window oddity: I also had a few vms during the test that "couldn't create a quiesced snapshot" - I saw the other articles on them but the funny thing is that those machines where also still trying to backup this morning after the backup window expired.

[RParker]

- outside the backup window, during business hours!

Actually part of the design for VCB and VM snapshots is that you CAN backup during business hours. The ONLY reason this WAS an issue is because of the agents inside typical machines that need to run backups. Backup jobs take LOTS of CPU, and that is primarly why you backup 'off hours'. Thus this is a non-issue with VM/ESX servers because there are no backup agents in the VM/Guests.

Again another reason that traditional thinking needs to be changed when dealing with VM's. If your ESX environment is setup correctly it should not matter WHEN you backup your VM's, the impact should NOT affect any of your guest VM's or performance.

The other problem is that when you setup a job there is an option at the end to start it.. Did you uncheck the box so that it would NOT start the job? It's usually a good idea to test it (since you are getting started) to ensure that it is working properly....

Another backup window oddity: I also had a few vms during the test that "couldn't create a quiesced snapshot"

This happens, usually I have to reboot the appliance (once a day which is REALLY annoying) to fix it...

[admin]

Explicitly choosing Bring to compliance will cause a backup job to run outside the backup window

[admin]

I went ahead and added a new VM to an existing backup job. Since the backup had run today, the newly added VM immediately showed up as out of compliance. However, the job did respect the backup window and is in 'Waiting" status. Only after I explicitly choose Bring to compliance did the job override the backup window and began backing up the newly added VM. Running VDR 1.0.1

[jpodhorez]

I was just leary of having our larger vms (like Exchange, specifically) snapshotted during production use (per vmware kb 5962168).

In this case I was editing an existing job (the test job) so there was not a box to start it right away. It actually turns out that after I set the timezone on the virtual appliance (which I since read I shouldn't have done) I needed to restart it before that timezone would take effect. So basically times were off by my timezone offset and when I edited the job I was still within what the appliance thought was the backup window.

Thanks for the feedback.