Auto-Modify Virtual Machine Device Protection

[ajames]

Hi all,

I recently created my protection groups and configured protection for about 35 VMs. Ever since then, I get the task called "Auto-Modify Virtual Machine Device Protection" in vCenter every minute, relating to all the configured VMs. Is this normal behaviour?

Thanks

Adrian

[galday]

No answers to this question?

I get the same tasks for some protected VMs, but not for all of them.

Any ideas?

[NevinS]

I also am getting these events, and they are running as my username, which is not ideal given I installed the service for SRM as a seperate service account and never entered my credentials anywhere during the setup.

There also appears to be a "Recompute Datastore Groups" task running every so often, also as my username.

[galday]

I discovered the only VMs these tasks are running for are the ones who have an snapshot created ....

Still no idea what the task means.

[Smoggy]

Once SRM is installed it will keep an eye "big brother" style on all the VM objects in that VC inventory. device protection / recompute datastore groups are all tasks designed to help SRM keep an eye on the VM states/device changes etc so that any VM's that happen to be protected (or not) can be checked for validity i.e are they protectable? You will see things like "Recompute Datastore groups" kick off whenever you do anything that might alter/impact the virtual machine device (disk) configuration in any way.

[jamieorth]

So Smoggy - if it only has this behavour when a modification is done of some sort, is that why it uses the users credentials? SRM is not storing these credentials anywhere is it?

Regards...

Jamie

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[NevinS]

I'm worried why these tasks are running as the user account which installed SRM and not the service account. Sometimes I will flick back to my VI Client and see that the tasks were run as my credentials, even though I wasn't doing anything in VI altogether, much less SRM.

Obviously my greatest concern is when I change my password will that affect the functionality of SRM?

[dmedvitz]

The tasks are running in the context of the service account. vCenter will show the task's initiator as whoever set up the protection group. Your user credentials are not imbedded in any way.

Dave

[NevinS]

Dave,

Do you know that for certain, or is that an educated guess?

The reason I ask is we have 7 protection groups in total, one of them was setup by one user, who was also the user who installed SRM - let's call him Bob, and the other 6 were setup by another user - let's call him Nick.

I am getting "Auto-Modify Virtual Machine Device Protection" tasks running as Bob for VMs in protection groups created by Nick, in fact nothing runs as Nick, these automated tasks for SRM are only ever initiated by Bob.

[dmedvitz]

Do I know this for certain? No. This is the way a vm engineer explained it to me - or at least how i recall it being explained.

I do know for certain that no user credentials are used for this. The names that it uses in the task list is 'initiated by' and this description is accurate. How SRM determines who 'initiated' the task, was, I thought by who created the protection group. It may be by who created the last protection group, or something else altogether.

Dave

[sssstew]

We have this task come up regularly for one VM inparticular, any idea why that would be?

We have tried removing its protection then re-protecting it but no luck

[mal_michael]

Is there something special in this VM's configuration? Snapshot?

[sssstew]

I did a complete review of the servers config and it all looked normal, but then found an old snap, so removed this and its cleaned it up. Also noted a new server which was snapped this morning has started doing this task each hour, so thats what it is, its because of a snap.

Thanks for the pointer.