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Recovery to New Virtual Machine. Having to have the Acronis Appliance on to start VM.

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So I had huge HUGE issues recovering from 12.5. After talking with Acronis I guess there is no way to use the bootable media to restore from a backup to a ESXi host/vm. After hours of trying. So I recovered to VM to a different host which worked fine. And only took minutes (I wish they gave me this option when on the phone with support 4 hours because my VM wouldnt boot after a boot media recovery.

 

After I was able to free up space and repair the original ESXi Host. I ran a full backup of the VM that was running from the vm restore. I then shutdown the VM. and ran a restore to a NEW VM. This took a couple hours but it was successful and I was able to boot up the VM. GREAT! I actually though wow this is the first time 12.x has worked for me. 

 

**************The Actual Issue**************

The issue I have now is that is the virtual appliance that acronis makes on the host, if thats offline I cannot start the recovered VM. This scares the **** out of me. What if I have to update the appliance? Do I have to shutdown the recovered VM? Thats not ideal. I want the VM to run separately and independantly from the Appliance. Help how can I accomplish this??

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Posts: 22
Comments: 3800

Hi,

Normally the recovered VMs must be independent from the appliance which performed recovery, so it's not required to have appliance running in order to continue working with the recovered VM. The exception from this rule is if you perform "Run VM from backup" instead of running the actual VM recovery. E.g. selected "Run as VM" option:

RunASVM1.PNG

The VMs produced by "Run VM from backup" feature are dependent on the backup agent (appliance) which is mounting this VM and to get rid from this dependency you need to run "Finalization" over this mounted machine: select this mounted machine from Devices list and choose "Finalize" option to migrate it to production datastore, thus removing dependencies (note the icon which can be used to identify that this machine is mounted):

Finalize111.PNG

If you see different symptoms and do not use "Run VM from backup" feature, then the issue could be in recovered virtual disks which remain attached to appliance in theory (though I've not seen such problems before). Please post the actual error message you get when trying to power on the recovered VM while the appliance is offline. Also please check the settings of the appliance VM from vSphere client: how many virtual disks are there? Normally there should be only 2 disks: 1GB and 5GB in appliance configuration.

Thank you.

So I took a forced/manual backup of a VM that was created by "Run as VM". I am pretty sure I ran the backup on the VM itself. I then used this backup to recover to another ESXi host with: Recover Entire Machine and then to a New VM. Maybe this is why it still has dependancies? If so how do I remove them?

 

The error: I do not have the error anymore but it stated that the disk was missing and referenced the acronis appliance.

 

I do see only 2 disks the 1gb and 5gb. 

 

Is this possible to fix without running another restore of some sort?

 

 

 

frestogaslorastaswastavewroviwroclolacorashibushurutraciwrubrishabenichikucrijorejenufrilomuwrigaslowrikejawrachosleratiswurelaseriprouobrunoviswosuthitribrepakotritopislivadrauibretisetewrapenuwrapi
Posts: 22
Comments: 3800

It makes sense to check the restored VM configuration in vSphere, e.g. to check if it has any references to Acronis appliance. Since it's not possible to capture backup of "mounted" VM in agent-less mode (there is no Backup button in backup console for such machines), I assume that the backup was taken by agent installed inside this VM, and thus recovery from such backup into new VM should've got rid from all the dependencies, but still it's unclear what exactly happened, so checking the restored VM configuration (.vmx file possibly) + error message would help a lot.

Thank you.

Below is the Vmware config file (some of it). It does have mentions of acronisTag. Would this have anything to do with it?

 

disk.EnableUUID = "TRUE"
uuid.bios = "56 4d dc 05 aa dd 08 a6-28 bd b5 ec bd 3f 43 36"
uuid.location = "56 4d dc 05 aa dd 08 a6-28 bd b5 ec bd 3f 43 36"
vc.uuid = "52 65 d0 21 47 cf 22 70-ae 66 e6 8c 3c 69 a0 59"
CPUs = "1"
Memory = "3220176896"
Name = "MainDC"
acronisTag.hostname = "MainDC"
acronisTag.os.servicepack = "0"
acronisTag.os.sid = "S-1-5-21-2046758158-1263526646-3420339424"
acronisTag.os.type = "otherGuest"

virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
sched.swap.derivedName = "/vmfs/volumes/5434bdf6-669b0b36-8941-c81f66cdd25c/Main DC New/Main DC New-50f0bae2.vswp"
replay.supported = "FALSE"
replay.filename = ""
migrate.hostlog = "./Main DC New-50f0bae2.hlog"
 

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Posts: 22
Comments: 3800

These tags are unlikely to cause issues - need to check what's below that, e.g. references to virtual disks paths (scsiX:Y.fileName entries)- that's the only reason I can think of why it may not start. There could be references to wrong disks.

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

I will have to get the actual error code and post it back here. I do not see any reference to that virtual appliance in the vm file. 

So just to update this topic. I just had the window of opportunity to power down the server. I was able to power down the recovered VM and then shutdown the Acronis Appliance. I then powered up my recovered VM with no issues. It seems to have fixed itself after the first bootup after it was recovered. Maybe it needed the Acronis Appliance during its first restart after the recovery? 

 

I am not sure but it is working as it should be now. 

frestogaslorastaswastavewroviwroclolacorashibushurutraciwrubrishabenichikucrijorejenufrilomuwrigaslowrikejawrachosleratiswurelaseriprouobrunoviswosuthitribrepakotritopislivadrauibretisetewrapenuwrapi
Posts: 22
Comments: 3800

Hi,

Powercycling the VMs in some cases allows to reload the VM configuration in vSphere and thus remove the cached links which were blocking it before, though it's just a theory (I can only guess what happened).

Thank you.