Got questions about SMVI?

[mlisa]

Our team is very interested in the questions posted on SMVI functionality, configuration, and automation … thanks for taking the time to share.  And please keep the questions and feedback on your experiences working with SMVI, good or bad, coming.  Good feedback makes for a good day, bad feedback makes for a better product J.

I also wanted to let you know that NetApp is hosting an SMVI/SRM Webcast on February 19 focusing on data protection in a VMware environment: NetApp SMVI for backup/restore and VMware SRM for disaster recovery. SDDPC Sys Admin Rick Scherer - who designed and maintains a 25 host VMware ESX 3.5 farm with well over 300 Virtual Machines, plus writes a great blog (http://vmwaretips.com/wp/) - will be joining us to describe how his team uses SMVI. There will also be a panel of folks, including best practices authors and reference architects, to address questions submitted via chat.

Webcast: http://communications.netapp.com/p/Network_Appliance/20090219140000WL?REF_SOURCE=communities

Lisa Haut-Mikkelsen

SMVI Product Manager

[tyrone_owen_1]

Thanks for posting back to clarify - that's sorted the confusion out in my mind!

[nhammes]

Hi all, I am just starting to work with SMVI SFR and I have run into an issue - I set up an initial SFR session which mounted an additional harddisk to my recovery VM, however, the email stuff was not set up properly yet, so I deleted the inital session.  I created another session and tried to import the .sfr file, but it failed saying invalid config.  Then I manually remvoed the mounted disk in the VM, manually removed the mounted snapshots datastores in the ESX host and now I cannot delete the SFR session becuase it says the mounts cannot be found or accessed.  Basically, it seems all my manual steps I took have screwed up my SMVI config...??  Looking to make it nice and clean again - still haven;t gotten a SFR to work properly although I am going to spin up another guest to be a different SFR VM to run the Restore Agent from and see if that works...  Still, any guidance or ideas on how to clean up SMVI would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Nate

[nhammes]

In addition, the backup I used originally for SFR shows as "mounted for SFR", but not just "mounted" and I can't figure out how to change the state of this backup so it shows "No" for Mounted for SFR... I think that residual data may be part of the problem but I am not sure...

Thanks again,

Nate

[ydk]

The backup is showing as mounted for SFR because the metadata is not cleaned up correctly. If you had deleted SFR session Instead of removing attached disks and mounted datastores manually, SMVI would clear the flag. Now to clean things up you have two options - a) manually edit SMVI catalog and remove mounted for SFR flags or b) let the SFR session expire when the time is up and the flag would go away. In the mean time you can create another SFR session and give it a shot with another guest VM.

[nhammes]

OK, I figured it was something along those lines... but, can you tell me for future reference how I would manually clean up the SMVI catalog to make things clean again?  Appreciate your quick response.  I guess I should have set the Mount Expiry time to 1 or 2 hours for testing purposes... I was following hte Admin Guide which said leave it at default (24 hours).

Thanks again,

Nate

[nhammes]

OK, so the expiration time has expired except the SfR session has not gone away or cleaned itself up.  If I try to delete the session, I get an error becuase it can't find the mounted datastores it expects because I had already removed them manually...  So, can you tell me how to clean up the catalog manually or point me to a doc that will explain it?  Thanks for your help.

Nate

[rethelion]

Can anybody tell me if SMVI is compatible with Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7?

Or are there any dependencies regarding Java?

On both systems with the latest Java version I'm getting an error when I start the GUI:

Error initializing global configuration details:
javax.xml.ws.soap.SOAPFaultException: Message part {http://soap.smvi.netapp.com/}globalConfiguration-get was not recognized.  (Does it exist in service WSDL?)

Also the functions of Snapmanager aren't working, for example nothing happens when I press the add-button in the Backup Window.

[amritad]

Hi

Are you using SMVI 2.0? Were you able to add storage systems to SMVI in the set-up tab?

Regards

Amrita

[nhammes]

I am using 2.0 and I am able to add storage systems… I have everything working fine now after you pointed me to the issue with OWA and saving the config file.

Thanks,

Nathan Hammes

Sr. Systems Engineer

Advanced Systems Group (ASG)

Thornton, Colorado

w - 303.301.3051

c - 303.815.9881

nhammes@virtual.com<mailto:nhammes@virtual.com>

This email and any attachments may be confidential and are intended solely for the individual to whom they are addressed. Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in error.

[rethelion]

I've installed 2.0 but under Help->About it says Version 3.0.

In the setup-tab I've added our Netapp Filer.

[satheesh1]

>>I've installed 2.0 but under Help->About it says Version 3.0.

It's a bug, Latest version is 2.0p1. I recently upgraded to 2.0p1 and everything looks good

Satheesh

[#13]

Regardless of what I'm trying, SMVI won't work.

I've installed a machine with Windows Vista and I'm still getting the error message from above.

[jcorbin121]

Is tehre a resolution to this? I also am getting this error.

We upgraded our VCenter to 4.1 on a fresh Win2K8 64bit OS

- installed VCenter and all the parts/pieces necessary

- installed virtual storage console snap ini

- installed SMVI 2.0

nothing in the netapp tab of VSphere clientworks, all I get is the page cannot be displayed error

I cannot add a storage system in SMVI setup...

[rethelion]

The "page cannot be displayed"-error can be caused by a proxy configured in the IE-settings; check if there's a proxy configured and disable it.

The error on your screenshot is exactly the same I'm getting...

[#16]

Also, if you have VSC installed, then you should not have to install SMVI as the SMVI functionality is built in to the VSC.  So it may be causing you an issue having both installed...  I would remove SMVI and configure the backup/restore stuff from wihtin VSC...

[amritad]

Please take a look at the upgrade section in the IAG. You can upgrade from standalone SMVI to VSC 2.0.1 (which is our integrated plug-in)

Regards

Amrita

[rethelion]

VSC works fine so I think I'll use that instead of SMVI.

Just one question, how are VMs or Datastores backed up with VSC and where are those backups stored? And the most important, how can I determine how much diskspace I'll need?

I'm sorry for those stupid questions, but I'm still a Netapp beginner

[amritad]

No questions are stupid J.

You can see the complete list of backup jobs if you go to the home view -> netapp-> backup and recovery tab

Regards

Amrita

[rethelion]

Ok, now I've created a virtual machine for testing purposes and added a backup job in the VSC which takes a backup every hour. Backup, Restore and SFR work without any problems.

It looks like VSC creates a snapshot for every backup and the restore uses Snaprestore/Flexclone; do I get that right?

By the way is there no licence key for SMVI which has to be entered somewhere?

[amritad]

Yes backup uses snapshots. For restore please see the screenshot attached. This describes the various restore processes used.

Regards

Amrita

[rethelion]

Thank you Amrita, your posts helped me very much so far.

Just one last question: If the machine, that runs SMVI/VSC, has a failure what happens with the backups? Can existing backups be added to a new VSC installation?