B&R 10 Virtual Appliance Deletes VMDK files.
We have just updated to B&R10 build 11345. We are running an ESX 3.5 environment and have used the Virtual Center intergration with the new Acronis version. After deploying the Virtual appliance to an ESX host i performed a test full backup. The job failed streight away with the following acronis error :
Type: Error
Date and time: 5/01/2010 4:25:40 PM
Backup plan: Nightly Full Backup
Task: HT Server - Daily backup
Managed entity type: Virtual machine
Managed entity: HT Server
Machine: esx1.***.local-VA
Code: 5,439,591(0x530067)
Module: 83
Owner: ***@***
Message:
Failed to open the virtual machine ([esx1:Storage1] HT Server/HT Server.vmx).
Additional info:
--------------------
Error code: 103
Module: 83
LineInfo: a859dd78cc91dcb0
Fields:
Message: Failed to open the virtual machine ([esx1:Storage1] HT Server/HT Server.vmx).
--------------------
Error code: 64
Module: 83
LineInfo: c7610e0a857bed8d
Fields:
Message: Awaiting task 'CreateSnapshot' has failed. Reason: A general system error occurred: .
There was an error also generated in the ESX virtual infrastructure log "A General System Error Occurred" The HT Server then crashed to a power off state. We were unable to restart the machine, and generated an ESX error "A file was not found." We discovered that all of the .vmdk descriptor files for the virtual machines hard drives had been deleted. All of the -flat.vmdk raw disk files were still ok, so I recreated the .vmdk files and was able to power on the Virtual machine again.
It seems that as soon as the acronis virtual appliance initiates a snapshot of the target machine, the vmdk files are deleted, the server crashes into an unrecoveralbe state, without some seriouse intervention. Is anyone albe to shed some light on what might be going wrong here. Needless to say i have shut down the acronis virtual appliance and reverting to guest based agents for the time being.
Hello Heath,
Thank you for posting your question, I will be happy to help. Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.
The issue was caused by the ESX malfunction.
Reinstalling VMware tools and rebooting the virtual machine should resolve the issue. Please see the following articles:
- VMware Knowledge Base Article 1009073
- VMware Knowledge Base Article 5962168
- VMware Knowledge Base Article 1007696
Also please try to search for a solution using the key words: A general system error occurred.
Actually, the vmdk files were not deleted. During the backup process the .vmdk files are mounted to Acronis Virtual Appliance (VA) and after the backup finishes they are unmounted from the VA. In your case it seems like they did not get unmounted properly due to failure occurred on the ESX side.
If the provided information is not clear or if you have any other question do not hesitate to post them and we will be glad to answer.
Thank you.
Hello,
We are experiencing identical symptoms to Heath's issue, which started to appear, when we first applied the Virtual Centre Integration option. We decided to apply VC integration after we had intermitent connection issues directly to our ESX hosts.....and soon wished we hadn't.
We are in the process of rebuilding the machines that were damaged during this process.
We have managed to locate the source of the problem and we have managed to reinstate most of the virtual machines to their original state.
It would seem that a hardware switch had an outage during the backup cycle and that the effected machines failed to detach. It was not immediately obvious that we had a problem, as the backups started, but produced various duplication errors.
We have since rebuilt the virtual machines by reconstructing the CID chains, as metioned in the attached article:
http://redshift10.blogspot.com/2008/04/vmdk-snapshots-and-importance-of…