Creating Plans to Protect Data › How to Create a Host-Based Virtual Machine Backup Plan › Troubleshooting › Backup Job Fails for a VMware Virtual Machine

Backup Job Fails for a VMware Virtual Machine

Valid for VMware VM

Symptom

When I back up a VMware virtual machine, the backup job fails with either of the following error messages in the activity log:

Abort backup because backup job has been configured to use the "Microsoft VSS inside VM" snapshot method. However, only the "VMware Tools" snapshot method is applicable because Host-based VM Backup failed to deploy the necessary tools into the VM.

Or

Abort backup because backup job has been configured to use the "VMware Tools" snapshot method. However, only the "Microsoft VSS inside the VM" snapshot method is applicable because Host-based VM Backup failed to undeploy tools from inside VM.

Solution

The first error can occur because of multiple reasons. You have selected the Microsoft VSS inside VM option but:

• You did not update the VM with the required credentials
• The credentials are not correct
• VMware Tools are not installed or updated.

In this case, Arcserve UDP cannot deploy necessary tools to the virtual machine to use the new snapshot method.

To resolve this error, update the virtual machine with correct credentials. Verify that VMware Tools are updated and running in the virtual machine. After the verification, resubmit the backup job.

Solution

The second error may occur in the following scenario. You have used the Microsoft VSS inside VM option in the previous backup jobs. Now, you want to use the VMware Tools option but the credentials of the virtual machine have changed (for example, you have changed the password of the guest OS but you did not update the virtual machine node in Console), or VMware Tools is not running for some reason. In such cases, Arcserve UDP cannot undeploy the tools (which were deployed by the previous backup job) from the virtual machine to use the new snapshot method.

To resolve this error, perform one of the following steps:

• Update the virtual machine with correct credentials. Verify that VMware Tools are updated and running in the virtual machine guest OS. After the verification, resubmit the backup job.
• Manually undeploy the tools from the virtual machine:
  1. Log in to the virtual machine.
  2. Navigate to the following folder:

     C:\Program Files\ARCServe\ASVMOperationTools\custom-freeze-vmware-snapshot\auto-deploy

  3. Right-click the auto-undeploy.bat batch file and select Run as administrator.
  4. Delete the following folders:

     C:\Program Files\ARCServe\as-hbbu-vmwarebackup

     C:\Program Files\ARCServe\ASVMOperationTools

  5. Resubmit the backup job.