Nope, the syntax is correct and if you're able to properly register the VM and bring it up then the restore was okay. Again, this is assuming the backup was okay which I've not had anyone mention issues with. There might have been something wrong with the OS that caused it to go into read-only mode. Have you tried to cleanly shutdown the OS and tried to boot it backup? You may also want to do a fsck on the disk when the OS boots up.
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
In the future you may want to enable VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE which flushes all data to disk prior to creating the snapshot, this will help get it into a consistent state prior to the backup. Other than that, I can't see any issues with the backup. Is this a general system (OS ?) or database/app server? So I go back to my initial question, have you tried to restart the system and tried to do a disk check to ensure no other issues persists in the OS? read-only filesystem usually points to other issues and I don't think it was the backup that caused it directly but perhaps something else that might have been going on.
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
If you still have your original, you may want to consider testing this before deleting the main VM and also for just verifications sake, try doing a power down backup to ensure that it isn't the system.
Take a look at this VMware KB for understanding how snapshots work and the various options that goes with taking a snapshot, including quiescing a snapshot: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015180
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
database servers are iffy....I know some users have been able to get their MS SQL but using VSS/etc. live database backups will vary based on the transactions going at the given moment/etc. You'll have to do your own testing to see if this would work as a backup solution, else you may need to script something that'll shut down the db before the backup/etc.
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
afaik, databases are the only iffy ones (again, this will be prove by doing a test, you should never implement anything into production environment until it's been fully tested). I'll say the same for the rest, but generally db's are the ones that may not be as clean and you may want to look at using database backup utilities versus backing up the VM or using quiescing the VM prior to snapshot.
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
As mentioned, I'm only aware of some users having problems backing up their databases, you'll have to further investigate to see if this solution works for you (I'm not a dba). For all other systems, I've not heard of any other type of application that has issues, again this will be vented out by doing some testing. I'm pretty confident that it should work for all your other infrastructure system backups and you should not have to take them down for a backup. I do recommend that you have the latest VMware Tools installed and enable quiesce option.
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".