TDP4VE Hyper-V How to take backup of a VM When there is a storage LUN assigned and clustered VM's

[RajeshR]

Hello All,

We have TDP4VE Hyper-V running in our environment. (8.1.0) on W2k12 R2.
We have couple of VM's configured as cluster VM's and Drives assigned to these VM's from Storage LUN's not from CSV's, however OS mounted from CSV's.
We need to take VM Snapshot backup for these VM's.
Is that possible?
Note: Storage LUN's assigned through SAN FC switches not through iscsi.
is there any away by excluding those drives? i can run backup for only OS.
When i try to run backup, i am getting following error, No issues with VSS writers, they are stable and other VM's backups happening fine even after this error.
Whenever i am running backup for SAN LUNs attached vm's i amgetting follwoing error.

Error:
03/19/2017 12:34:34 ANS8060E Error validating file '\HQ-FS-04\WINDOWS SERVER 2016_DISK_1.VHDX'
03/19/2017 12:34:35 ANS5250E An unexpected error was encountered.
IBM Spectrum Protect function name : BackupComplete()
IBM Spectrum Protect function : 'BackupComplete() failed with error VSS_E_BAD_STATE.
0X80042301'
IBM Spectrum Protect return code : -2147212543
IBM Spectrum Protect file : ..\..\common\vm\HyperV\vsssnap.cpp (1785)
03/19/2017 12:34:35 ANS1228E Sending of object 'HQ-FS-04' failed.
03/19/2017 12:34:35 ANS5226E The virtual machine backup operation failed.

suggestions please.

Thank you.

 

[RajeshR]

Answering to my own question

It is simply a snapshot limitation as documented by Microsoft :

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn798286.aspx

"There are two basic options for backing up virtual machines.[...]
A. From the host. recommend that use this method. This type of backup includes:

- Virtual machine configuration information
- Checkpoints/snapshots
- Virtual hard disks

B. From in the virtual machine . This method is similar to backing up a physical machine. Use this method when need to back up data from storage that is not supported by the Hyper-V VSS writer, like:

- Physical disks that are directly attached to the virtual machine.These are also known as pass-through disks.
- Fibre channel connected storage
- Guest-initiated iSCSI connected storage
- Clustered virtual machines that use a shared .vhdx"
>> in short when any of above 4 statemnts are in effect, Hyperv Guest VM snapshot backup to TSM will not possible.

 

[RecoveryOne]

If you want to capture a backup of the machine with tdp4ve and ignore the pass-though drives you should be able to use the EXCLUDE.VMDISK option.
We have a few machines in VMWare that we use that option for. Then we come in with a normal client and backup the directly assigned disk while ignoring everything else. Perhaps not the most elegant solution, but works well.

 

[RajeshR]

Yes for VMWare it works but on Hyper-V it won't work, I have tried EXCLUDE.VMDISK option before and got same error.

 

[RecoveryOne]

Bah, my apologies. Made the assumption it would work the same for Hyper-V (Read the docs, mentions VMWare only). Sadly, we dont have any deployments of Hyper-V for me to test on.

 

[RajeshR]

Yes, even i thought the same initially and then got to know it only works for VMWare.