VCB and Hot-Add mode

[weka1966]

Dear VMware specialists,

currently I'm running crazy with VCB...

My situation in short: 3 ESX 3.5 hosts with local storage and iSCSC SAN with the VM files on it. I want to backup the VM from the iSCSC SAN directly to a VMFS volume of a ESX host, so in case the iSCSI storage crashes, I can start the backuped VMs from the ESX host.

I want to run a virtual VCB Proxy Server and run vcbmounter in Hot-Add mode to be able to perform Image-Level Backups of the VM from the iSCSI SAN directly to a VMFS volume of one ESX host.

As far as I understand, it is possible to store the VM files directly on the VMFS volume. I don't want to store the backupfiles on a drive inside the virtual VCB Proxy Server.

Unfortunately whatever I try, I can't manage to get the right syntax for this. I tried vcbmounter -h ATLINVC01 -u Administrator -p ******* -m hotadd -a ipaddr:10.125.3.183 -r ATLINVM00:storage2/VMBackup

Is there someone that can help me and give me the right syntax or what's wrong?

Is there a better way to backup VMs directly to a VMFS to be able to start them from there ?

Many thanks, Werner

[dconvery]

Werner

First off, welcome to the forums!

I will assume that you have the latest copy of the VM Backup Guide and you have read the section explaining hot-add mode ( http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_vm_backup.pdf) Looking at the command line, you can't direct the backup to an ESX server's VMFS. When you run the command, run it with "-L 6" at the end to produce a verbose log. *vcbmounter -h ATLINVC01 -u Administrator -p ******* -m hotadd -a ipaddr:10.125.3.183 -r ATLINVM00:storage2/VMBackup -L 6*

On the vcb proxy, check %TEMP% (usually c:\windows\temp) for the vmware logs. You can check them for errors and/or attach them to this thread for someone to take a look.

Hot-Add mode is pretty new and documentation is limited. What you DO need is a helper VM. It just need to be a blank VM so VCB can "hot-add" the vmdks for backup. The intent of hot-add mode is to eliminate the need for the "holding-tank" or staging disk space. You would need to back up to tape or disk. In this case, the disk would be an NTFS disk inside a VMDK or RDM. Recovery would involveusing VMware Converter to bring the VM on line.

What you MAY be able to do is create an NFS server to host these backups, then you could import the VMs directly.

Hope this helps.

Dave

[weka1966]

Hi Dave,

thanks for your very helpful answer, but now I found an other way doing it.

Since Update_2 it is possible to clone powered on vm's.

I created a scheduled task "Clone a virtual machine" and set as destination datastore one of the ESX local datastore (exactly what I wanted).

This works very fine and it seems to be quite fast (about 2GB/min).

Unfortunately when the scheduled task reruns, it terminates with an error, because the clone already exist.

So I created a cron job to unregister the clone (vmware-cmd -s unregister /vmfs/volumes/ATLINVM00:storage2/Clone-VM00-vicfg-rcli/Clone-VM00-vicfg-rcli.vmx)

and to delete the files (rm -r -f /vmfs/volumes/ATLINVM00:storage2/Clone-VM00-vicfg-rcli) than.

Unfortunately vmware-cmd -s unregister sets the vm in an orphaned mode but doesn't delete the vm. So the scheduled task again failes !!!

I wonder if there is a way to completely delete a virtual machine from inside cli, doing the same as "Delete from Disk" in VI client.

I tried to find a cli command, but was unsuccessful so far.

Any help ?

Best regards, Werner

[dconvery · Accepted solution]

OH Great idea!!! I didn't even think of hot clones. For the removal of the previous VM clone, you could try a scheduled powershell job using the remove-vm cmdlet. I'm kinda just figuring out powershell myself and there is probably a way with vmkfstools or vmware-cmd to do it as well.

Dave

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