vSphere 5.5 support
Hi!
EDIT: the latest 10007 build of Acronis Backup for VMware (former vmProtect 9) contains full support for vSphere 5.5. Please download it from updates section under your account on our website.
!!The below information is related to 9767 build of Acronis vmProtect 9 only:
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There were many questions about support for vSphere 5.5 in Acronis vmProtect 9 and I would like to summarize what we have right now:
Short version: Acronis vmProtect 9 has been tested and works on vSphere 5.5 with the only exception: "Bare Metal Recovery of ESXi hosts" ("ESXi configuration backup" button in GUI) feature doesn't work on vSphere 5.5.
Long version: The released version of Acronis vmProtect 9 (build 9767) works properly on vSphere 5.5. However the "Bare Metal Recovery of ESXi hosts" ("ESXi configuration backup" button in GUI) doesn't work on this new vSphere version. We will add support for vSphere 5.5 into this feature in the nearest update for Acronis vmProtect 9 which we plan to release in the end of this or beginning of the next year (Dec. 2013 - Jan 2014). We have confirmed in our QA lab that backup/restore/replication/application-aware backup/etc. features are working properly, so you can use Acronis vmProtect 9 with vSphere 5.5 safely, with the above-mentioned exception.
Due to obvious reasons ("Bare Metal Recovery of ESXi hosts" doesn't work) we cannot state officially that Acronis vmProtect 9 supports vSphere 5.5, so this post main purpose is to make it clear on where we stand right now.
P.S. if you have any questions regarding this announcement please leave a comment to this thread.
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Thank you.
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Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager
Hi,
We've tested backup/restore and replication of VMs with >2TB disks attached to them (the replication target was of course also the 5.5 host). These tests went Ok so far. Basically even in theory these tests should've passed, since the vStorage API is not dependent on the disks sizes here, so as long as the snapshot of the VM can be done by ESX(i) host- it can be backed up (no matter how large its' disks are).
Thank you.
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Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager
Vasily,
I was told my a Acronis sales person, that their would be a patch in Dec-Jan for the "Bare Metal Recovery of ESXi hosts" item. DO you know if this will require having to redeploy a new Acronis Virtual Appliance, or will the VM appliance's internal linux operating system complete the patch itself. I ask because I do not want to have to deploy it a 2nd time. From reading the manual it sounds like that's what you have to do when you have an outdated AcronisVM protect 9 Virtual Appliance. We are close to buying AVMP 9, but need confirmation before we can purchase.. Thanks
Ash
Hi Ashley,
This functionality will be added into an update for vmProtect 9, which means that a new build will be published. The update process will look as follows:
1) Download the new installation file (.exe)
2) Run it and choose to deploy a virtual appliance from the main menu
3) After logging into ESXi host/vCenter on the next step choose the option to update existing appliance and pick up your running appliance from the list
4) Finish
As the result your existing appliance will get updated and all the backup tasks/settings will be of course preserved. This process takes no more than 5 minutes and you won't need to re-configure anything afterwards.
Thank you.
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Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager
Vasily - Thanks so very much for the detailed explanation. We will move forward with the project now.
Ash
Hi Vasily,
Sorry for being a late comer to this thread but was treated to coming across this experiance today as we installed the VM9 product.
The last posts on the matter stated that a Dec-Jan patch would be issued and here we are at the conclusion of January. Any further updates on a possible date realese for this patch??
Cher bro.
Hi!
In fact the build itself is already prepared from technical perspective (implementation + testing is finished already), but we had to delay its release due to pending website changes (this build cannot be published yet :( ). If you have any specific issue related to vSphere 5.5 with the current build of vmProtect (9767/9802) you can let me know in a private message here on forum - depending on the problem we may give out the new build (if we are sure that it addresses your issue).
Thank you.
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Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager
Hi Vasily,
I'm about to upgrade to Vsphere 5.5 within a week. By any chance you have the new release date, yet? I understand that the one item not working with 5.5 is ESXi server configuration backup. Am I right?
Thanks,
Aldous
Hi Aldous,
While I can't say the exact date right now, I can say that this will happen really soon. The first pack of languages (en-EU + de-DE + ru-RU builds of Acronis vmProtect 9) is planned to be published during the next week and the rest of locales will become available slightly later.
Thank you.
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Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager
Vasily - Thanks so very much for the detailed explanation. We will move forward with the project now.
Ash
Hi Ash, if you were able to finish this project, can you please share the steps if possible? 
Hi!
JFYI: the update which supports ESXi 5.5 configuration backup/recovery has been released last week, so it's now available for download (build #10007).
Thank you.
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Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis Backup for VMware Program Manager
Vasily and gents -
So glad to hear the update has been released. However due to SAN factors we are not able to move to 5.5 just yet. We are working with 5.1 for the moment. I hope everyone the best of luck with AVMP9 with 5.5!
Ash,
Hi
Vmware Essentials is our product.
In a test environment with a NT4 Guest we had Acronis work perfect.
Now we are running the same guest live under Vsphere 5.5 upd 2 and low and behold the guest will not Snapshot so Acronis will not work.
However if we power the guest off it works perfect.
Does Acronis have a system or a script to power down the guest, complete the backup then power backup
Hi Malcolm,
It depends on how exactly the VMware snapshot fails for powered On VM. Likely disabling quiescing in the VM properties would allow snapshot to be created properly. I'd first of all tried setting "disk.enableUUID"=false in VM parameters as described in http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cm… . Even though this article is applicable to Win2k8 or higher guests likely the disk.EnableUUID is also set for this VM. Otherwise you should take a look at the exact error VMware gives in return to attempt to create quiesced snapshot of this VM (quiesced=on, memory=off parameters) and start the investigation from there.
Thank you.
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Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis Virtualization Program Manager
Hi Vasily
Dead right I checked the hostd log for the time of failure and the quiescent=true.
When I power down the quiescent=false (So snapshot works)
Many thanks I thought I would try the script route first as it might be quicker than fault finding