Vmware VCB and local lefthand snapshots

[Steven Vallarian]

Has anyone had any luck with Vmware consolidated backup and the snapshot functionality of the lefthand units?

I've been trying to get the following to work--

Setup:
One physical server, running windows 08, backup exec, and vCenter.
Three ESX servers, running ESX 4
Lefthand SAN

Using the integration package for backup exec and the latest vcb on esx 4, when the pre-backup script kicks off it fails with

Error: Cannot open disk blklst://snapshot-804[vdmk06] server4/server4.vmdk@hpcontrol.foo.local:443?xxxx/xxxx. Cannot open disk file: Error : Disk library failed (Cannot access a SAN/iSCSI LUN backing this virtual disk. Unable to open 'blklst://snapshot-804[vdmk06] server4/server4.vmdk@hpcontrol.foo.local:443'. Failed to configure disk scsi0:0.

Ok, fair enough, it can't access the LUN.
So after making sure that the automount stuff is disabled, I map the same LUN that the esx servers are using, giving the physical backup server RW access to the LUN.

I get the same message.

Ok, maybe the physical box cannot access the LUNs that are in use by ESX, so I try the same thing on a local lefthand snapshot, and get the same error message.

So maybe the iSCSI initiator doesn't see the disk, so I kick off the built-in win08 initiator, making sure NOT to pick the MPIO setting. Windows sees this disk, but I still get the same messages from vcbmounter.

What I like to do is this:
Use the lefthand CLI to give RW access to the latest snapshot of the LUN. I'm hoping this will allow VCB to be able to pull from the snapshot.

[Gauche]

VCB does not pull from the snapshot, it would not recognize a snapshot as being the exact same volume.
To use VCB you mount the volumes your ESX servers are using to the backup server with read write access directly. Any volume a VM is using that you want to back up must be mounted.
Just leave them mounted there statically.

[andre_muc]

Hi Steven,

i had exactly the same. frustrating!
the best way to do windows backup is to use the "Advanced Disk-based Backup" Option with Lefthand VSS.
This works fine, stable and quick.

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01750134/c01750134.pdf