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#1 2020-01-29 09:29:20

lievenmoors
Member
Registered: 2018-11-21
Posts: 28

trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

Hi,

I'm trying DC version for the first time but I'm experiencing a number of hiccups.

I started of with a failed backup because I had --compression, instead of --compression=yes :

2020-01-28T08:32:25 | Error code 1293 at file xsibackup.c, line 1293
Error description: compression value cannot be evaluated as true or false, you wrote: --block-size=50m

That was easily solved.

The next backup ran for a very long time, but then experienced another error,
probably due to a leftover from the previous failed backup:

(Note: I must admit I stopped a few backups with Ctrl-C while sorting out the license)

2020-01-29T06:46:05 | Error code 333 at file dedup-in.c, line 333
Error description: can't open temp block file: /vmfs/volumes/Backup/xsit-repo/data/3745876087575088.tmp

I didn't understand why it couldn't open that file, since there shouldn't be any permission problems running as
root, but I saw that there was another *.tmp file in the same directory.

I moved that other file out of the way, and tried again. And now I got this error:

2020-01-29T09:04:34 | Error code 2786 at file common.c, line 2786
Error description: can't open lock file: /vmfs/volumes/593f.../xsit-repo/20200129090426/terra/.locked
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2020-01-29T09:04:35 | Error code 2397 at file xsibackup.c, line 2397
Error description: failed to lock the repo /vmfs/volumes/593f.../xsit-repo/20200129090426
Remove snapshot failed

In the end, the snapshot got removed anyhow...

So this is getting more messy every time.
Can you help me clean this up?

Thank you!

Greetings,

lieven

Last edited by lievenmoors (2020-02-03 13:16:58)

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#2 2020-01-29 09:44:54

lievenmoors
Member
Registered: 2018-11-21
Posts: 28

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

Now I removed the 20200129090426 directory, and tried again, with the same error:

2020-01-29T09:39:00 | Error code 2786 at file common.c, line 2786
Error description: can't open lock file: /vmfs/volumes/593f.../xsit-repo/20200129093853/terra/.locked
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2020-01-29T09:39:00 | Error code 2397 at file xsibackup.c, line 2397
Error description: failed to lock the repo /vmfs/volumes/593f.../xsit-repo/20200129093853

Last edited by lievenmoors (2020-02-03 13:17:36)

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#3 2020-01-29 10:08:17

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

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

Compression is turned on in the etc/xsibackup.conf file by default, if you want compression enabled just don't use the --compression argument.

The error can't open lock file is letting you know you have some permission issue on your datastore. Even if you are using the root user you may have some error in your NFS exports file, should the datastore be NFS.

Could also be some trivial matter like a full disk, provided that: as per your feedback, the backup run for some time and then stopped with that message that's what it looks like.

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#4 2020-01-29 11:11:19

lievenmoors
Member
Registered: 2018-11-21
Posts: 28

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

I hit the max number of inodes of vmfs-5.

But it seems that the data of the original xsi repository which was used by
the pro version with xsitools has not been reused somehow. The size of data
was 2TB, and after running the datacenter version, it nearly doubled in size.

I wish you had provided more information on your site about upgrading from pro to dc,
and if reusing the same repo is supposed to work.

Is it?

Thanks again,

lieven

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#5 2020-01-29 13:35:03

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

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

We have commented that fact in every possible place, including the manual. In any case, even if we had not commented anything, the absence of information around some fact does not imply there is some default answer. Both programs have different names, use different command line syntax and different compression algorithms.

Old (c)XSITools repositories used a big block size (10-50MB). As subsequent backups were aligned with the previous ones, still some nice degree of deduplication compression was achieved. In case of (c)XSIBackup-DC, the default block size is 1MB, thus some 150 GB of data would exceed the iNode limit in VMFS, which is around 130.000.

(c)VMWare does not clearly state whether VMFS6 allows a bigger number of iNodes. Some places it is somewhat revelaed a higher number may be present in VMFS6, but it's not clear.

We have indeed checked that limit and it seems to be in the order of millions, still VMFS-6 is very slow when compared to ext4 or XFS. This is not due to VMFS-6 not being good enough. It's due to the fact that it was designed to host a limited number of files: those comprising a virtual machine, and not to host millions of small files in a deduplicated repository.

That is why we recommend to use ext4 or XFS file systems to hold (c)XSIBackup-DC repositories.

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#6 2020-01-29 13:35:30

lievenmoors
Member
Registered: 2018-11-21
Posts: 28

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

My problem is now that I can't put my old xsi-tools repository aside, because of the inode problem.

Is there a way to make xsibackup-dc reuse the old repository?

I don't want to delete the old xsi-tools repository, before xsibackup-dc has made it's first backup.

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#7 2020-01-29 13:40:12

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

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

I'm sorry, the short answer is: no, you can't reuse some Pro (c)XSItools repository. As stated it even uses a different compression algorithm.

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#8 2020-01-29 13:46:12

lievenmoors
Member
Registered: 2018-11-21
Posts: 28

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

Sorry, I just missed your post.

Yes, I've read everything about the new default block size.
But I couldn't find anything on your website about compatibility between
xsibackup-dc and xsi-tools repositories.

I had used the same block size as was used in the xsitools repository, 50M,
but it seems xsibackup-dc is not reusing the data that was generated by xsitools,
and that's why I'm hitting the inode boundary. Otherwise I would be OK.

So my main question is now if xsibackup is supposed to be able to reuse those blocks, or not.

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#9 2020-01-29 13:47:29

lievenmoors
Member
Registered: 2018-11-21
Posts: 28

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

And now i missed your post again

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#10 2020-01-29 14:31:11

lievenmoors
Member
Registered: 2018-11-21
Posts: 28

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

Thanks for clarifying.

Greetings, lieven

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#11 2020-01-29 14:51:45

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

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

Don't worry, just as long as you can workaround the inode overflow your old (c)XSITools repository will still be valid

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#12 2021-02-24 16:10:47

Int
Member
Registered: 2017-12-05
Posts: 58

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

The man page and xsibackup --help are still showing the wrong syntax for the --compression option.

xsibackup --help says:

Examples:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
./xsibackup --backup "VMs(WIN1,E-MAIL,ERP,LIN1,LIN2,BSD1)" /vmfs/volumes/backup/XSITOOLS-TEST-REPO --compression

but should be

./xsibackup --backup "VMs(WIN1,E-MAIL,ERP,LIN1,LIN2,BSD1)" /vmfs/volumes/backup/XSITOOLS-TEST-REPO --compression=yes

Man page:

--compression: (optional) sets whether the backup will compress chunks previous to storing them ...

but should be

--compression[=yes|no]: (optional) sets whether the backup will compress chunks previous to storing them ...

Please correct this.

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#13 2021-02-24 16:47:19

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

Re: trouble with XSIBackup/ESXi backups

Thank you for your feedback. It has already been fixed in the manual and the short help (--help argument) will include the fix in the next release.

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