We use Acronis vmProtect to backup our virtual machines and one of the problems I have is the ability to backup the Solarwinds Log & Event Manager virtual appliance. We get the same error from vmProtect every time we try to backup this VA. Here is the error:
Task 'SOLARWINDS LEM' failed: 'Failed to create a backup.
Additional info:
--------------------
Error code: 3
Module: 435
LineInfo: 555b5abba09501ab
Fields:
Message: Failed to create a backup.
--------------------
Error code: 32786
Module: 114
LineInfo: 28314c961de7d334
Fields:
Message: Failed to prepare for backing up.
--------------------
Error code: 353
Module: 149
LineInfo: a71592046cb2c5f6
Fields:
Message: Failed to back up the group.
--------------------
Error code: 2
Module: 218
LineInfo: 338a407ad20e0987
Fields:
Message: Error occurred while running the backup and recovery engine.
--------------------
Error code: 1080
Module: 1
LineInfo: d1ab7fa1e56ec823
Fields:
Message:
--------------------
Error code: 13
Module: 149
LineInfo: d1ab7fa1e56ec9a4
Fields:
Message: Failed to perform the requested operation.
--------------------
Error code: 103
Module: 83
LineInfo: a859dd78cc91df4b
Fields:
Message: Failed to open the virtual machine ([vm3-sas] SolarWinds Log +Jg- Event Manager/SolarWinds Log +Jg- Event Manager.vmx).
--------------------
Error code: 253
Module: 83
LineInfo: c7610e0a857bedf4
Fields:
Message: VMware error: 'Remote method call failed.'.
--------------------
Error code: 32
Module: 0
LineInfo: c7610e0a857bedf4
Fields:
Message: Awaiting task 'CreateSnapshot' has failed. Reason: fault.SystemError.summary.
--------------------'.
Acronis blames vmware and they are right because in vSphere if I try to take a snapshot with quiesce file system checked, it fails immediately. If I take a snapshot without this option checked it does work... however Acronis does not have any provision to support non-quiesced snapshots. The reason I got from them is because such snapshots are in most cases useless as they contain non-consistent data. To make it consistent there should be either pre/posts commands running inside the VM which flush the data from memory to the disks prior to snapshot, or have some guest Agent which does this job (in case of Windows there must be VSS writers handling also). We are considering adding the special handling to support non-quiesced snapshots, however it will anyway's be a workaround rather than a normal solution.
One of the issues with this appliance is that vmware tools is not installed. The console seems to have a proprietary shell so getting in there and building vmware tools doesn't seem to be an option.
I'm wondering what are you guys doing just to backup this virtual appliance? Thanks for the help!