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#1 2019-08-14 22:09:53

Rasmus
Member
Registered: 2019-06-24
Posts: 11

Unable to enumerate all disks

Hi.
After struggling with xsibackup for a while, it finally appears to be running ok even when using cronservice to schedule my backups.
During quite a few failed attemps, xsibackup created several snapshots and files that I dont know what to do with. The backups I am creating are a combination of mirroring with onediff to a backup exsi server, and local backups using vmkfstools to create historical backups.
I just attempted to start up one of the local backup copies, and it will not start. The error is unable to enumerate all disks. One of the disks in this virtual machine is already in use by a virtual machine or by a snapshot. When I look at the snapshot manager, I see a snapshot called xsibackupdiff.
I dont know what to do with the snapshots, and I am really afraid to mess up the original VM`s. Also the backups that are created are only about half the size of the original VM.
What do I need do about this?

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#2 2019-08-15 21:24:23

Rasmus
Member
Registered: 2019-06-24
Posts: 11

Re: Unable to enumerate all disks

I am still trying to figure out what to do here.
My backup scenario is like this:
4 vm`s on server A (HP Proliant ml350g9 ) with esxi 6.7
I am using onediff to mirror these vm`s over to server B (also a HP Proliant ml350g9 ) with esxi 6.7
On server A, I am also using vmkfstools to make historical backups to a local folder twice a week.
I am now unable to start any of the local backups on server A, due to snapshots in use by another disk, unable to enumerate all disks.
I just discovered that onediff creates a new snapshot for every run it does to mirror over to server B, and the original VM`s seems to run on these snapshots. Making a backup with vmkfstools to a local data store may not be a good idea after all, because the snapshots are preventing the backups to start. Is this a correct assumption? Is it not possible to use onediff and vmkfstools to backup the same VM`s to different locations, and if so, what would be the best way to back up vm`s to different locations?

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#3 2019-08-19 14:40:43

admin
Administrator
Registered: 2017-04-21
Posts: 2,055

Re: Unable to enumerate all disks

Just a quick advice: if you use HP servers, don't forget to turn your controller cache on, it comes off by default.

Don't use Vmkfstools to make historical backups, unless you have plenty of room and time to do it. (c)XSITools was conceived just to do that, it will use deduplication and is zero aware, so it will multiply the amount of available space by many times.

Yes, (c)Onediff uses a snapshot to hold the differential data between backups. If you backup the result of a Onediff mirror, you should get a regular working VM, as the resulting mirrored image is consolidated into a single -flat.vmdk file per disk.

XSIBackup tries to handle most of the situations and tweak the paths, so that the resulting VMs are directly usable. In any case, depending on what is the layout of your original VM and what might have happened during the backup, you might have a .vmx file that is not pointing to a bootable disk. Just as long as your main -flat.vmdk files and the descriptor files (plain .vmdk) are there, you can easily fix that situation by editing the .vmx file.

(c)XSIBackup: snapshots, errors and solutions

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#4 2019-08-26 11:01:30

Rasmus
Member
Registered: 2019-06-24
Posts: 11

Re: Unable to enumerate all disks

Hi.
I had a look at the disk controllers on the severs, and you were (of course) right about the controller cache set to off.
I turned it on, and there is a substantional increase in performance and speed. Thank you.

Sincerely
Rasmus Børresen

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#5 2019-08-26 16:31:21

admin
Administrator
Registered: 2017-04-21
Posts: 2,055

Re: Unable to enumerate all disks

This is one of those annoying things that HP does (apart from rejecting their own ink cartridges).
In many HP servers the disk controller has a cache that, for some obscure reason comes turned off. Unfortunately many people never realize and end up using their servers at a fraction of the disk speed they are able to achieve.

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