ADSM-L

[ADSM-L] Issues with TSM 6.2.2 Client and vmWare vStorage API Backups

2010-12-25 19:11:10
Subject: [ADSM-L] Issues with TSM 6.2.2 Client and vmWare vStorage API Backups
From: WPinegar <tsm-forum AT BACKUPCENTRAL DOT COM>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2010 19:09:57 -0500
Here is another issue that we encountered while testing the TSM 6.2.2 client 
configured to use vmWare vStorage API's for virtual machine backups. If you 
attempt to have the TSM vSphere backup proxy back itself up using the "backup 
vm 'proxyname'" TSM command (when the proxy is also a vmWare guest) the backup 
will succeed but at the end of the backup TSM will issue a series of commands 
that will remove both the hot-added disk from the proxy (which it should do) as 
well as the local hard disk from the proxy (which it should never do). This, of 
course, causes the proxy to crash and become unbootable because there is no 
local disk defined in the configuration of the host. Fortunately recovery is 
fairly simple because the disk hasn't been deleted -- it has just been removed 
from the guest config and can simply be added back to the guest. But you'll 
need to manually cleanup the snapshots that TSM left on the host.


WPinegar wrote:
> Issues with TSM 6.2.2 Client and vmWare vStorage API Backups
>
> We're delighted to see that IBM has expanded vmWare support significantly 
> with the 6.2.2 release by redesigning the TSM client to use the vmWare 
> vStorage API for full image backups directly to TSM (without using legacy VCB 
> support). We have installed the TSM 6.2.2 release for Windows (and selected 
> custom install to install the vmWare components) on a virtual machine 
> designed as a backup proxy within our vmWare vSphere 4.1 environment. The 
> backup proxy is a Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit guest configured as required 
> in the TSM 6.2.2 documentation. Our initial testing with 6.2.2 has revealed 
> that TSM is capable of backing some simple virtual machines but with other 
> "more-complicated" virtual machines the TSM client typically crashes while 
> attempting to backup an image of the machine.
>
> We have narrowed the issue down to the networking configuration within 
> vSphere. We have four (4) clusters defined in vSphere 4.1 and on every 
> cluster except for our testing cluster we have created virtual switch and 
> port groups to manage the network traffic on the hosts and virtual machines. 
> The testing cluster has the simple vmWare supplied default network 
> configuration with only a single "VM Network" connection available to virtual 
> machines. All virtual machines in this cluster can be backed up with TSM 
> 6.2.2 without issue. However on our other clusters most of the virtual 
> machine backups crash the TSM client. Though extensive troubleshooting we 
> found that we can simply delete the virtual network card from the virtual 
> machine and TSM backs up the virtual machine perfectly so we know that TSM is 
> crashing because of something related to the network configuration on the 
> guest. However as you can appreciate removing the virtual NIC card isn't an 
> acceptable solution for our pr
 
 oduction systems. We've also been able to confirm that we can take a virtual 
machine that crashes TSM and move it to the testing cluster (with the simple 
"VM Network" connection configuration) and the virtual machine backs up without 
issue.
>
> We are interested to hear what others may be experiencing with the new 
> vStorage API full image backups in TSM 6.2.2. Are there any other TSM 
> customers that are experiencing issues with the TSM client crashing while 
> attempting to backup virtual machines?


+----------------------------------------------------------------------
|This was sent by wpinegar AT stdom DOT com via Backup Central.
|Forward SPAM to abuse AT backupcentral DOT com.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------