We have had several backups fail, but worse, we have had some restores bomb
out (like 300mb away from the end of a 15gb restore), and even worse yet, we
have had some restores work, but the .vmdk came back corrupted and vmware
couldn't even mount it.  We are planning on using this method to do DR
recovery of our AD environment, so a reliable backup/restore is *fairly*
important.

We have seen this in the dsmerror.log on the vmhost after a failed restore:
06/24/04 14:21:44 The 299579424th code was found to be out of sequence.
The code (424) was greater than (262), the next available slot in the string
table.
06/24/04 14:21:44 The 299579425th code was found to be out of sequence.
The code (288) was greater than (263), the next available slot in the string
table.
06/24/04 14:21:44 The 299579446th code was found to be out of sequence.
The code (384) was greater than (267), the next available slot in the string
table.

We have a call in to Tivoli, but nothing in the way of a concrete fix yet...


-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Stapleton, Mark
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 11:32 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Vmware guest "hot" backups

From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Steve Schaub
>My team & I would be interested in speaking with anyone who has been
>successful in using TSM to backup/restore what the database folks would
>call a "hot" backup of VMWare guest machines (i.e. backing up the .vmdk
>files while the guest is in redo mode).
>
>We have run several test backup/restores, some less successful than
>others.
>We are using ESX 2.5 currently.
>
>If you have gotten this to work consistantly and would be willing to
>share your experience, please email me directly: steve_schaub AT bcbst DOT com
><mailto:steve_schaub AT bcbst DOT com>

Yep, as long as we're talking VMWare ESX. The GSX documentation explicitly
says that the only supported backups of VM occur only when the VM is shut
down prior to backup.

The ESX software allows for a "freeze" of a VM (with the use of a REDO
log) as you describe; while the VM is frozen, the .vmdk file can be backed
up reliably. Once the backup is complete, the log is committed, and you're
done.

What problems are you having?

--
Mark Stapleton (stapleton AT berbee DOT com)
IBM Certified Advanced Deployment Professional
  Tivoli Storage Management Solutions 2005 IBM Certified Advanced Technical
Expert (CATE) AIX Office 262.521.5627


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