VCB - mountvm cannot assign drive letter ...

[bboilet]

Hi there,

Setting up a VCB backup via Backup Exec for one of my customer, i'm experiencing a problem with mountvm with 2 particulars VMs.

Indeed, when i backing up those particulars VMs, Backup Exec is sending a warning "Unable to mount one or more virtual machine file" ... But this backup process works perfectly for others VMs (8 exactly), which tells me that the problem is from vmdk assigned to this 2 VMs.

I tried then to backup and mount vmdk files directly with vcb without any problem... vcbMounter & mountvm work perfectly. The only problem is the following error message in vcb logs: "(VmountLocator:114) Vmount2.Vmount2Device: no drive letter currently assigned"... Then, i started the debug monitor from BE, and i retrieve the exact command used by BE to mountvm ... which is: mountvm.exe -cycleId -nodl -rw -d <vmdkfile> <mountpoint>...

As BE is using VCB info about drive letter, and as VCB can't find drive letter, BE is not able to do GRT backup (Granular Recovery Technology = File Level Backup).

Those 2 VMs are original physical machines (Windows 2000 & Windows 2003) converted via VMware Converter 4.x. I suppose that informations about drive letters are stored somewhere, and those VMs lack this informations ... But i really don't know where ...

Any one having any idea about this issue ?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

Cya

[bboilet]

thread bump ... Just in case ...

[john23]

check for snapshot, when you run mountvm you should not have snapshot.

-@m!t

[bboilet]

No snapshot during mountvm ... everything work as expected ... except this error message in logs...

Cya

[mbx369]

Hi bboilet,

Are you still facing this issue? ~~~~~ To Live Is To Die ~~~~~

[bboilet]

Indeed, i still have this issue ...

At the moment, that's not a big deal, because VMs having errors don't really need a file level backup, but it can change...

Still waiting for an answer from Symantec or VMware in fact ...

Cya!

[anujmodi1]

Well when you run vcbmounter and vcbmount command directly, did you see the same error which you see in BE?

Anuj Modi,

If you found my answer to be useful, feel free to mark it as Helpful or Correct.

The latest blogs and articles on Virtulization:

http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/amodi

[bboilet]

In fact, when i use the exact same command line as BE, the error shows up ... no drive letter available, but this seems not a big deal as the -nodl parameter is given ...

If i'm not using the -nodl parameter, errors shows up, but i got letter assigned, C, D, ... (not corresponding to the true OS letter, but nevermind) ... and then file backup is available ... but as i'm not able to change the command line parameters BE is giving to mountvm, i'm not able to correct this problem myself ...

Cya!

[anujmodi1]

If -nodl parameter won't give any error message and you are able to do file level backup, then you can request for change the command script in BE from support. They will help you to change this parameters for BE.

Anuj Modi,

If you found my answer to be useful, feel free to mark it as Helpful or Correct.

The latest blogs and articles on Virtulization:

http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/amodi

[bboilet]

In fact, the error shows up whether i use the -nodl parameter or not ... But i'll try to ack Symantec a way to change the command line parameter ... Will see ... Thanks for your answer.

Cya