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Question

VM backup of Access Nodes?

  • 11 September 2023
  • 8 replies
  • 121 views
G
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All,

The VM based backup of my Access nodes with VSA installed is failing with the backup trying to access the ESXi host over port 902 for NBD backup instead of Hot Add. These same Access Nodes are used to sucessfully perform backup and restores of other VM’s on the Hypervisors using Hot Add but fail their own backup using the same method. They are using same storage policy as the other VM’s and even triggering a single VM backup of one of the 2 of them fails with the same issue. Can VSA (Access Nodes) be backed up by VSA through themselves OR do I need to deploy IDA agent and back them up that way?

 

 

8 replies

Rajiv
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Hello @Glenno 

We usually do not advise to backup access node itself with hotadd or nbd as at this time if the same VM is mounting other VM’s disk for backup operation, the setup could crash.

It is not recommended to have VSA proxy VM backed up at same time with other VM in vmware.  

If you wish to backup VSA proxy VM, create a separate subclient and make sure backup runs when there are no other vmware backup job running against this proxy. 

Best,

Rajiv Singal

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Hi Rajiv,

I have tried to do a manual VSA base backup of one of the 2 Access Nodes when there is no activity, and it still goes for NBD mode and fails. I will check through the logs and find why it’s failing Hot Add mode and selecting NBD. 

 

Rajiv
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@Glenno Sure, while you are on it, please do check if automount is disabled and also try to scrub it. Steps to follow: 

  1. Open CMD > Diskpart 
  2. automount (for checking if its enabled)
  3. automount disable
  4. automount scrub
  5. exit

Please run a backup after the above steps are followed and let me know if it helps. 

Best,

Rajiv Singal

 

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@Rajiv no go, it was enabled. I disabled it for same result. Can see that SAN mode is disabled as non-eligible and NBD is selected. I created a VM group with just the 2 VSA  VM’s in and tried to change the transport mode on the group from auto to hot-add and ran into a familiar problem I get whenever I go to browse the content of a VM group or change settings “Something went wrong” :-(   Version is 11.32.13 and I have experienced this issue many times on previous versions as well. 

Rajiv
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@Glenno I think something could be wrong on the Web Console level. If you could go to commcell, and try the change of mode to hotadd, does it work?

Also, please make sure that the 2 proxies are backed up in a different sub clients since if you are trying to use hot add, it should be taking a different proxy not itself for the backup. 

If you are backing up proxy 1 using hot add, use proxy 2 as the access node for it and vice versa and make sure the backup schedules does not overlap. 

Please also make sure the hotadd considerations are met:: https://documentation.commvault.com/2023e/expert/32048_hotadd_transport_for_vmware.html

 

Best,

Rajiv Singal

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@Rajiv thanks for the reply. Forgive my ignorance but is it possible to view VM groups in the Commcell Console? This is where I was going to set the transport mode. All other VM’s backup fine through these 2 Access Nodes. 

L
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VM groups are displayed in CommCell Console as subclients.

 

Personally I think the VSA access nodes should be filtered from backup and not protected, it will not use hot add transport mode and switch to nbd:

https://documentation.commvault.com/2023e/expert/32048_hotadd_transport_for_vmware.html

  • If VSA proxies are included as subclient content, backups of the proxies use NBD transport mode instead of HotAdd mode.

    As a best practice, use separate subclients to protect VSA proxies, and schedule backups at a different time than other backups, so that the proxies are available when they need to be used to perform backups for other VMs.

G
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@Ledoesp thanks for the reply. Yes, this makes sense as these are the servers that are used to perform hot add backups and backing itself up could obviously be problematic.

 

 

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