©XSIBackup-Free: Free Backup Software for ©VMWare ©ESXi

Forum ©XSIBackup: ©VMWare ©ESXi Backup Software


You are not logged in.

#751 Re: General matters » error: unexpected "&" on ESXi 6.5.0 U3 » 2020-08-22 10:00:27

Update to latest Pro version, it is indeed compatible with U3

#752 Re: General matters » verbosity levels » 2020-08-20 17:49:57

Sorry about the delay, these days of the year we are not as active as usually.
Progress is completely removed in logs created from cron in 1.4.0.0, 1.3.0.2 had some little bug and that progress is not stripped in --replica actions.
You can get 1.4.0.0 from the support department via e-mail.

#753 Re: General matters » Getting backup status of vm » 2020-08-20 17:44:16

You have the --on-sucess and --on-error event handlers that will allow to add that info to a text file very easily. Please read the man page.

#754 Re: General matters » prune stuck » 2020-08-12 11:33:57

In your case you should update to 1.4.0.0 ASAP. There's a bug in block sizes over 1M. Your version 1.3.0.1 is not affected, it is not compatible with ESXi 7 though.
Contact support to get your 1.4.0.0 copy.

#755 Re: General matters » Run XSIBackup as a user different than root » 2020-08-10 12:49:52

Of course, just make sure that the user you employ has permissions to read data and create/ delete snapshots on the VMs being backed up, as well as full write permissions on the directories where you are writing to

Some people tend to think setting permissions up for this kind of taks is somewhat trivial, when it's not. (c)XSIBackup interacts with vim-cmd as well as other ESXi binaries and utilities that will require different permissions. If this is mandatory for you, instead of using root, it's the perfect excuse to delve into ESXi users and groups and how permissions interact with the system.

#756 Re: General matters » Repository or Vmdk native file » 2020-08-09 10:30:55

No worries, you don't waste our time. We can't offer much advice if we don't have some minimum input data though.

#757 Re: Rsync » Problem with rsync on incremental backup » 2020-08-06 13:59:44

The message is clear, you ran out of memory

#758 Re: General matters » Scheduled Backups » 2020-08-06 13:58:33

Our excuses, there was atypo in our previous response, the right sintax to use is

30 02 * * * /scratch/XSI/XSIBackup-Pro/jobs/001

In any case you are suppoused to know how a Linux/Unix crontab works,

#759 Re: General matters » Problem with parameter --backup-prog=Vmkfstools » 2020-08-06 13:56:10

This will only work with --backup-prog=Vmkfstools

#760 Re: General matters » Problem with snmp.gmail.com » 2020-08-06 13:55:03

Have you enabled "Less Secure Apps" for your Google account?
[url=https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps?pli=1]GMail Less Secure Apps documentation[/url]

#761 Re: General matters » Repository or Vmdk native file » 2020-08-06 13:00:29

You are just commenting your issue without providing any detail on it.
Please paste the job and output any time you request support.

Please, contact support on your issue.
If you want a straight way to perform your backups, stick to recommended procedures. If you use your own Linux distros as the backup servers other than: RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, you will need to comprehend the different pieces implied to getting it to work, namely: ciphers on each side, permissions, etc...

#762 Re: General matters » XSIBackup-DC GUI » 2020-08-04 11:30:01

[b](c)XSIBackup-Pro[/b] has a GUI, DC version has TUIs (Text User Interffaces) to fulfill some tasks as [b]--smtp-add[/b] or [b]--smtp-check[/b], it will have a GUI in a couple of weeks at most when we release version 1.4.0.0

#763 Re: General matters » Repository or Vmdk native file » 2020-07-28 17:13:22

Then you are not backing up where you believe to be doing it, as that error can only be raised when some previous backup exists in place.

#764 Re: General matters » Repository or Vmdk native file » 2020-07-27 16:14:41

This error is telling you that the remote replica checksum has changed, in regards to what the stored hash tables are. The (c)XSIBackup-DC server role tried to rebuild the hash tables but it failed to, thus you need to solve the problem manually.

The easiest way to solve it is to rename the remote replica folder at [b]/mnt/data/alessio/Etica-Erp2014[/b] and let the --replica start from scratch.

mv /mnt/data/alessio/Etica-Erp2014 /mnt/data/alessio/Etica-Erp2014.bak

If you want to know the exact reason why the remote replica can't be rebuilt, check the xsibackup.log on the server (the remote end). As the remote end is Linux the log will be at /etc/xsi/

#765 Re: General matters » Simple one-liner to purge old backups from repo » 2020-07-26 16:48:09

We have discovered a bug that affects backups with a block size bigger than default (10M, 20M, 50M). Please switch to using 1MB blocks (default) and wait until we release a fix in v. 1.4.0.0 before using bigger block sizes

[url=https://33hops.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=783]Non default --block-size bug[/url]

#766 (c)XSIBackup-Pro & DC bug tracker » Critical: Block size greater than 1M (default), may create bad backups » 2020-07-26 16:46:21

admin
Replies: 0

This bug affects only backups made with a non default block size, please stick to using the default block size until we release version 1.4.0.0 containing a fix.

This bug affects v. 1.3.0.2, if you are using a previous version your backups may be right, please check them by restoring some. If that is the case, please stick to your version until 1.4.0.0 has been released.

#767 (c)XSIBackup-Pro & DC bug tracker » --replica action accumulates huge log files » 2020-07-25 21:32:28

admin
Replies: 0

Due to \r characters not being filtered off replicas, logs can grow too much in replicas scheduled in the ESXi cron for big VMs.

It will be fixed in version 1.4.0.0

If your logs are growing too much you can use the following workaround in the job file:

Prepend [b]| sed '/\r/d' [/b] to the log redirection line.
Last line in the log would look like this for an installation in the default location (/scratch/XSI/XSIBackup-DC)

| sed '/\r.*::: detail/d' >> /scratch/XSI/XSIBackup-DC/var/log/xsibackup.log 2>&1

#768 Re: General matters » prune stuck » 2020-07-25 11:42:52

You are trying to push a camel through the eye of a needle. You are running out of RAM and CPU time and the pruning process is just sitting there iddle waiting for resources on a clogged server.

This post explains in detail how pruning works and how to calculate resources:
[url=https://33hops.com/xsibackup-datacenter-pruning-old-backups.html]Pruning inners, how to calculate needed resources[/url]

You clearly need a more powerful server to be able to prune big repos, especially in terms of RAM. Or just do as you suggest and keep two repos that you rotate, that will allow you to use that backup server.

Make the camel smaller or the needle eye bigger, that's the only way to go.

#769 Re: General matters » --uninstall-cron issue » 2020-07-24 11:41:41

You are mixing things that sound similar but are not the same:

[b]--update-cron[/b] copies the contents of your local crontab at [b]<installation-dir>/var/spool/cron/root-crontab[/b] to the ESXi crontab at [b]/var/spool/cron/crontabs/root[/b]

[b]--uninstall-cron[/b] removes the entry in [b]/etc/rc.local.d/local.sh[/b] that allows to repopulate the ESXi crontab when you reboot the host. Your output is just letting you know that there isn't any entry installed for user root. For --uninstall-cron to work, you have to previously run --install-cron

Both commands contain the string cron, but are not related. Your output is perfectly right.

#770 Re: General matters » prune stuck » 2020-07-24 11:31:29

If you try to prune over NFS you will add network latency to the issue, it will just worsen the problem.
The thing is:

1 - How big is your repo?
2 - What resources (CPU, Memory, disk) you can count on.

Pruning is a resource intensive operation, it is the most resource intensive operation by far when compared to --backup or --replica. If your NAS device is not powerful enough, it might be wiser to take a different approach.

#771 Re: General matters » Different Vm different speed. » 2020-07-20 11:40:39

That speed that you see there is an average, it includes the time it takes to do some basic checks and to take and delete snapshots. It's true that it's not spectacular to put it that way. You should take on account when and how you performed the speed tests previous to the backup: was the server iddle? are there some VM running now that you are performing backups?

Your disks seem to be thick, this may add some extra time. You don't say what backup program/method you are using, this can also affect the effective speed.

When it comes to backup disks between local storage, the fact that will affect the most is how fragmented the disks are, both from a guest perspective and from the VMFS point of view. It's not the same to have a few extents of data in a virtual disk than thousands of them. That is: it's not the same jumping over a 1GB zeroed zone than having to detect one thousand 1MB zeroed extents.

Run this command:

vmkfstools -t0 /path/to/your/disk.vmdk

And check what is the number of reported extents. It should not exceed a few hundred in case of your smaller VM or a few thousand in case of the bigger one.

In case you observe a lot of small chunks of data scattered across the virtual disk, do the fllowing:

- Make sure that the guest OS is defragmented. You don't generally have to worry about that on Linux journaled systems, but you may have to program some defragmentation schedule on Windows systems, especially if they are fragmented above 5%

- Clone the virtual disks to thin format, unless you have some very good reason to keep them thick and you know exactly why they should remain thick. This will compact extents to a lower number and make data be stored in bigger extents.

On top of the above. The way the physical layer is aligned to the logical storage layers can affect performance A LOT.
Run this command:

esxcli storage core device partition list

Check where do your storage partitions start in each disk. They should start at 2048 if the disks have been partitioned with a relatively new ESXi system. If they are not aligned to this sector number, then the hardware storage may be misaligned and this may cause an extra load on the hardware that is by no means negligible.

This post explains the issue in a very graphical and visually explicit way.
[url=https://neokobo.blogspot.com/2015/06/virtual-disk-alignment.html]Virtual disk alignment[/url]

#772 Re: General matters » --del-dir option doesn't rotate backup folder » 2020-07-12 16:34:12

The argument is printing out that it can't find any directory to delete as per the configured value.
Getting to the quick conclusion that it doesn't work is definitely the way to justify not dedicating time to check why you are receiving that message.

#773 Re: General matters » --del-dir option doesn't rotate backup folder » 2020-07-10 16:23:39

We can't debug your setup for you.
There isn't much we can say by taking a look at your job

#774 Re: General matters » Feature request: submit report data after run via other means » 2020-07-10 16:19:10

[b](c)XSIBackup-DC[/b] is already able to submit data to a Syslog server, which in turn has bindings for almost anything you can think of.

#775 Re: General matters » Simple one-liner to purge old backups from repo » 2020-07-10 16:17:34

[b](c)XSIBackup-DC[/b] already includes a [b]--prune[/b] feature. Anybody using this or any other shared code snippet does it at his own risk.

Board footer