afokkema Veeam

Powershell: Change Veeam San Snapshot Options


In the case you want to use the Storage Snapshot feature with Veeam Backup, the feature will be enabled for all the Backup jobs and will be the default option to process a backup job.
Screenshot 2016-01-22 11.53.51

We only want to enable the feature for certain jobs with a special name convention like SAN-BackupJob-01. So I created a small Powershell script to disable this feature for all the jobs without the special name convention.

The Powershell script below will return all the jobs where the job name not match the “SAN” search string. The next step is to disable the “Use storage snapshots” feature for the jobs.

Script: Disable-SanIntegrationOptions.ps1:

if((Get-PSSnapin -Name VeeamPSSnapIn -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null){
    Add-PSSnapin "VeeamPSSnapIn"
}

foreach($vbrjob in (get-vbrjob | ?{$_.Name -notmatch "SAN"})){
    Write-Output "Changing job: $($vbrjob.name).."
    $SanIntegrataionOptions = $vbrjob.GetOptions()
    $SanIntegrataionOptions.SanIntegrationOptions.UseSanSnapshots = $false

    $vbrjob.SetOptions($SanIntegrataionOptions)
}

From now on only the jobs that need the SAN Snapshot feature, can utilise this feature and all the other jobs will use the default processing mode.

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afokkema VMware

vSphere: VM “freezes” during the removal of a snapshot


If your VM is running on a NFS datastore and Changed Block Tracking (CBT) is enabled, you might experience the following symptoms:

When removing the snapshot of the virtual machine residing on the NFS storage in an ESX/ESXi 4.1 host, you may experience these symptoms:

  • The virtual machine appears to be in a hung state within the console view
  • The virtual machine stops responding to ping requests
  • The virtual machine is inaccessible via remote desktop

But why is this VM freezing? The explanation is the locking mechanism which NFS uses:

This issue may occur if you are using a backup application that utilizes Changed Block Tracking (CBT) and the ctkEnabled option for the virtual machine is set to true. The virtual machine becomes unresponsive for up to 30 seconds as NFS locks on the .ctk file are changed.

The workaround is to disable CBT:

  1. Wait for the virtual machine to become responsive and for the snapshot operation to complete.
  2. Schedule an outage window for the affected virtual machine.
  3. Shut down the virtual machine.
  4. In the Inventory pane, right-click the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
  5. Click the Options tab and click General.
  6. Click Configuration Parameters.
  7. If the ctkEnabled  parameter is not listed, click Add Row, add ctkEnabled, and set it to false.
  8. Power on the virtual machine.

This workaround can impact the backup performance because you can’t use CBT. To Disable CBT in a Veeam job, you have to edit the job and disable CBT in the Advanced Settings under the vSphere tab:

image

Or if you’re using PHD Virtual Backup you can change the CBT settings in the Options tab on the properties page of a Backup Job:

image

 

Source  
http://kb.vmware.com KB1031106
afokkema VMware

VMware: Remove Snapshot stuck at 95%


 image

This morning a woke up and grabbed my BlackBerry to see if there was any news (mail / twitter). The first e-mail I read was one from our monitoring system that one of the VM’s did not respond anymore. So I started a remote session and logged on to vCenter. There I saw a running task which was running since last night :-S.

image

These are the steps I took to solve this issue:

  1. Connect to the ESX Host via SSH.
  2. Run this command Service mgmt-vmware restart to restart the service
  3. If the VM is still okay then you don’ t have to restart the ESX Host, otherwise restart the ESX Host.
  4. Open the snapshot manager of the VM and create a new snapshot
  5. Now delete all snapshots
  6. Poweron the VM

 

I want to thank @Depping, @diederikm, @laurensdekoning and @sanderdaems for pointing me in the right direction.