Has anyone gotten the ESXi Appliance to deploy with vCenter 5.1 and ESXi 5.1?

If the error during manual appliance deployment is
Line 72: Duplicate element 'AddressOnParent'.
then it is the known bug regarding appliance and 5.1 . It will be fixed in the nearest update. One possible solution is from http://forum.acronis.com/forum/36457 , another is to edit .ovf file in "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\ESXAppliance\AcronisESXAppliance.ovf" and specify different AddressOnParent for all three occurrences (0,1 and 2).
**edited** - or you can use .ovf corrected that was, which is attached to the comment #3 - http://forum.acronis.com/forum/40341#comment-126527

> OR does Acronis "know" they are VMs and I can use my Virtual Edition license across multiple VMs on a single ESXi Host?!
Yes. One VE license if good for all VMs on the same host.

Agent for ESX(i) (for windows) also can perform agentless backup.

Hello DonChino,

Thank you for posting this question in our forum.

I want to thank Fedor Larin for supporting you.

Unfortunately, I was not able to find a chat session in our system, so it might be a problem with the connection or browser or our system. I want to apologize for the chat problem. However I forwarded your concerns about the chat problem to our management team, so that they can address this.

A new case has been created and you can find an email in your mailbox or can see it in your account at http://www.acronis.com/my and there at -> My Support Requests. The case number is 01861349.

Please create a system report of the affected machine and send it to support via email.

If there is anything else we can do for you, please let me know.

Thank you.

THANK YOU FEDOR!!!        

But next time? DO NOT BE SO LAZY… :P

It seems that Fedor has the right solution although it would have been nice if he actually had spelled out all the steps to get this working, because this post was not enough. Unfortunately, the link to solution 36457 is “garbage” (Sorry Justin) and the simplest, best solution was the alteration to the ovf file. So in order to help the others on here I will document the proper solution step-by-step.

Here goes but once again this is for leveraging the Acronis Appliance on version 11.5 build 32256 with vSphere 5.1:

1. Run the Acronis installation and install the ESXi Appliance and make sure you have the “Agent for VMware vSphere ESXi (Virtual Appliance) installed on your Acronis Management Server.
2. Now go to the folder <Acronis install>\ESXAppliance and EDIT the OVF file within the folder as there will only be ONE – AcronisESXAppliance.ovf – Feel free to use Notepad
3. Modify the OVF file by altering the THREE entries for the tag <rasd:AddressOnParent> so that each one uses a UNIQUE ID, which is what Fedor was alluding to. So use 0, 1, 2 respectively or just copy my attached file over your own OVF file.
4. Now share the folder <Acronis Install>\ESXAppliance onto your network, which can be done temporarily or just READ-ONLY if you want to leave it open for updates in the future
5. Open your vSphere client and select FILE -> Deploy OVF Template which you will then use to point to the share folder you created of the modified Acronis ESXi Appliance. Yes, although you modify the OVF to work properly Acronis will STILL not be able to auto-deploy it, ugh
6. Feel free to change the name of the Appliance to anything you want but basically use the default options to bring the ESXi Appliance into vCenter, but it actually works without all the “ugly” hacks that Justin and Kanit did. :P
7. Reference to “ugly” hacks - http://forum.acronis.com/forum/36457
8. Once the ESXi Appliance is running go to the CONSOLE tab in vSphere and configure the Appliance although you might have to reboot as the Video is all garbled. Power Reset and you may get a prompt for VIDEO which is where you can select another resolution
9. Once you select the right resolution (I did 640x480 - option "a") then you will see the interface is similar to all the other Acronis “windows” and you simply have to configure the TIMEZONE, NETWORK, and VCENTER options.
10. Now your ESXi Appliance is running but guess what? Your Acronis Management Server does not see it, so you have to ADD it like any other Machine, so you go to the MAIN MENU and select ACTIONS -> ADD A MACHINE TO AMS – this will make it visible
11. You will probably have to use IP Address as this is an Acronis Appliance that is running a Linux variant, so I did not get into the whole DNS registration thing but once it is added to the Acronis Management Console it will appear under “All machines with agents”
12. Although it is a VM it will not appear with the other VMs, but now you can go to OPTIONS and select what VMs you wish to bind the Appliance to although it will auto-bind if you do not do so manually. Make sure you add the vCenter integration if you want to be able to see all your VMs.
13. Just go to the MAIN MENU under OPTIONS -> Management Server Options -> Virtual Machines and here you can resolve BOTH the “Agent Binding” and “vCenter Integration” but that is it. You are now able to enjoy Acronis as it was meant to be.

THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE Fedor and Peter.

Anyway, I will give Acronis another chance, but you guys need to step your game up and make sure you document all steps because not everyone is an Acronis expert. Finally, I did not realize that the “Agent for VMware vSphere ESXi (Windows)” is another option for performing this backup, but that was not very clear.

I won’t go into documenting that, but I will let others know that THAT agent cannot be deployed remotely and you have to basically install that agent on the machine that is running VMware vCenter and only the Windows version. Then you do not need this whole Appliance setup as THAT machine will run the backup, so this solution is looking "cool" but they need to clean it up. :P

Where is my paycheck?

:O)

P.S.

Yes, I have to buy more Licenses now that I see that this is actually working...

Thanks for detailed steps. However installing the appliance as a separate component is required only if you can't install Management Server. If Management Server is installed, I expected that modifying .ovf of appliance files that were installed along with AMS will fix appliance auto-deployment.

that THAT agent cannot be deployed remotely and you have to basically install that agent on the machine that is running VMware vCenter and only the Windows version.

It can be installed on any machine running Windows, not necessary the same as vCenter ( as explained in http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/ABR11.5/index.html#13776.h… )

Yeah, I expected the SAME thing, but I tried auto-deploy BEFORE and AFTER the changes which is why I stated -

"Yes, although you modify the OVF to work properly Acronis will STILL not be able to auto-deploy it, ugh"

I am running 11.5 Advanced Platform Virtual Edition with ALL the addons - Server, Workstation, etc so I figured it would work after the changes but it does not, so I am hoping this helps others until you update your application. I did not bother "testing" RE-installing everything since I spent the whole day trying to get this to work but do not complain, I ended up buying 7 more licenses so I have "faith"...

:O)

As for the ESXi agent (Windows)

Yeah, I realized that afterwards so it can be ANY Windows machine, so that is useful because I noticed that it will still use the license keys per ESXi host versus Appliance. I might try this option next if I have a FREE machine since the ESXi Appliance "gobbles" up 2 vCPUs, so I can have it "gobble" CPUs from a file server or something although I wonder how performance is affected.

RESOLVED

I had this issue once. My boss just edited the .ovf file and that was it. I never knew this issue has a quick solution! Thank you.