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backup failed due to one host without license while backing up VM on other licensed hosts

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Hi, 

Due to system resources contention on our vmware clusters, we quickly added another vmware hosts and moved all our lab servers over. However, all our Acronis backup plan failed due to no license for the additional host. We do have plan to purchase new license for this new host; however, it's going to take some time to process. Two questions:

1. all of our production VMs that we want to backup are located on the Vmware hosts that we have Acronis license assigned. Why Acronis will fail to backup from these licensed hosts?

2. If this is a limitation to have all hosts licensed in same cluster, what can we do now while we are waiting for the new license to be purchased? 

Regards,

Aldous

 

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Posts: 22
Comments: 3800

Hi Aldous,

The temporary solution would be to re-configure Agents for VMware (appliances/windows agents) to connect to respective ESXi hosts (included in cluster) directly instead of connecting them to vCenter. This can be done from Settings->Agents->Details tab for corresponding agent in web console interface.

In this case there will be no licensing restrictions, however the VMs migration across the cluster may cause backup tasks to fail if the target ESXi host (where VM is migrated to) does not have agent/license assigned to it.

NOTE: avoid cases when you have _some_ agents connected directly to ESXi hosts while other agents are connected to vCenter which manages these same ESXi hosts - this would lead to invalid configuration in Acronis Management Server.

Thank you.

Hi Vasily,

we have only one vmware agent appliance in this Vmware cluster and four licensed vmware hosts. How can I connect to all four vmware hosts from one agent appliance? 

thanks,

Aldous

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Posts: 22
Comments: 3800

Hi,

In this case you'll need to have 1 agent per each host, so it would be 4 appliances required in total. A single agent can be connected either to a single vCenter or to a single ESXi host only.

Thank you.

Hi Vasily, that's very painful. As I said, we use single appliance (Agent) per cluster. If whenever we need to add new vm host to the cluster, we need to wait for new license from Acronis before we do our job. It's impacting normal operation. By any chance Acronis has plan to make it more flexible? 

Anyway, we got the new license.

Regards,

Aldous

 

frestogaslorastaswastavewroviwroclolacorashibushurutraciwrubrishabenichikucrijorejenufrilomuwrigaslowrikejawrachosleratiswurelaseriprouobrunoviswosuthitribrepakotritopislivadrauibretisetewrapenuwrapi
Posts: 22
Comments: 3800

Hi Aldous,

Thank you for the details. In such cases you can request a temporary NFR key from our sales team - this key will be time limited and can be used while the additional license purchase is in progress. I've confirmed in our QA lab that additional NFR keys (which are of "subscription" type) can be used in combination with regular "perpetual" keys properly to license additional hosts in vSphere cluster, so getting NFR keys from our sales should be the proper way to address the original problem.

Thank you.

Hi Vasily,

Thanks for the advise. I'll do that next time. However, I still hope that Acronis will make it more flexible. 

Regards,

Aldous