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

[keitha]

Tyrone,

You can do this by using the "Mount" Button to mount the backup to an ESX server then register the VM in the backup. If you want to keep the VM long term you will want to SVMotion the VM to a different datastore then unmount the backup.

Keith

[imarcroft]

Does this require a flexclone license to perform the mount operation?

[radek_kubka]

Only in NFS environment.

In iSCSI / FC environment LUN cloning will be used in absence of FlexClone license.

Regards,
Radek

[boyang]

Hi Gurus,

I have a case 2001674167, after upgraded to SMVI2.0 from SMVI1.0, here is some difference behavior about SMVI delete VM’s snapshot spanning two versions.

Actually I had searched our design-depot , kx and wikid, but did not get any acquisition.

So I have two question now:

1 If a snapshot for VM failed to create ( by some reason, time out, etc..), SMVI2.0 will delete that snapshot, this is new functional action for SMVI2.0, that’s right?

2 If answer of 1 is right,  so whether SMVI2.0 will according to some rule to takes correspond action? we have that rule ?

perhaps per kind of error, smvi has different action, I guess..

( e.g.   time out -> delete that snapshot of VM, 

        another an error -> keep that snapshot of VM   )

[pd]

Hi there...

When writing a pre/post script today I found out that while TR-3737 states that the environment variable "BACKUP_NAME" will contain the name of the backup (which I took to mean the name I gave the job), this is obviously not the case. My backup job was title "script-test", and the variable came up as "backup_script-test_YYYYMMDDhhmm" where the last part is a timestamp. This makes it quite tedious to branch in the script (a .bat file) depending on which job called the script. The reason I want to do this is I have to do several similar, although not identical pre/post jobs for different backups and instead of maintaining a separate script for each job I wanted to have only one.

While it is possible to work around this, it makes for some rather "unelegant" code (and it contradicts the example from TR3737)

Questions: is this intended behaviour? Is TR-3737 wrong or maybe just misleading at that point? Is there a way to uniquely and easily identify the backup job which called the script withour resorting to awkward constructs like:

if %BACKUP_NAME% == backup_script-test_%BACKUPDATE%%BACKUP_TIME% "do something special"

Thanks and regards,

Patrick

[amritad]

Hi Patrick,

Each backup name also consists of the time stamp. I think I need to make it more specific in TR 3737. Thanks for the feedback I will incorporate the same.

REgards

Amrita

[tyrone_owen_1]

Hello,

Had an issue with a restore with the following error:

8736572125 [management8 5e6aaf27e9ca5ba1fc19b071344c08b3] WARN com.netapp.smvi.task.filerestore.CreateFileRestoreKeyTask - Destination virtual machine 'vm_hostname' does not contain a supported guest operating system. Operating system was found to be 'Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server' and SMVI supports [Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows Server 2008]. SMVI does not have a restore agent for this operating system type.

Can anyone link me to supported guest OSs?

Thanks

[amritad]

Hi

You can findl all inter operability related details in our IMT site. Here's the link

http://now.netapp.com/matrix/

Please search for SMVI here.

REgards

Amrita

[tyrone_owen_1]

Thanks.

If I choose SMVI as the storage solution I don't get an option for the guest OS.

[tyrone_owen_1]

I also got this error:

8743819898 [restore0 9cf35b4427abd88448b18fd9267d68db] ERROR com.netapp.common.flow.Operation - FLOW-11008: Operation failed: Failed to find progress of restore for lun /vol/NFS_DATASTORE/vn_hostane,/vmware-9.log on storage system NetApp_hostname

[amritad]

Hi

Check for Host OS. Windows 2000 is not supported.

Regards

Amrita

[tyrone_owen_1]

Aren't we talking about the 'Guest OS' not the 'Host OS'?

Thanks

[amritad]

Hi

In either case windows 2000 is not a supported configuration.

Regards

Amrita

[tyrone_owen_1]

Hi,

I apprecaite that Windows 2000 isn't supported however where can I find this in documentation. You pointed me towards the IM which we've etablished is a little bit confusing. for example if you choose ESX as the Host OS, Windows 2000 is still selectable from the Tree View. If you choose SMVI as the storage solution you don't get an option to choose a guest OS.

Thanks

[tyrone_owen_1]

..... a better question may be, how do I treat guest OSs that are not supported by SMVI? what are the recommendations for backup/restore?

[findlay]

sorry if I've missed the point here, but

SMVI will snapshot the underlying storage no matter what OS is being guested by vmware.  Isn't the only issue "how happy will the OS be?"?

SMVI asks vmware to snapshot the guest OS before the netapp snapshot.  Are you saying this does not work for win 2000?

to answer the question of how to cope with unsupported OSes, if you can shut down the OS before the snapshot you will have a perfectly consistent image of your virtual machine when SMVI does it's stuff.

I have written a script which can be run as a pre and post smvi script that will shutdown machines, initiate a snapshot then start them up again if you're interested.

[amritad]

Hi

I guess I need to check again . I thought SFR was not working for Windows 2000? Is normal backup and restore also failing on Windows 2000 OS? Typically we list the configurations that have been tested by QA in the IMT. And all guest OSes are supported for normal backup and recovery. I will also double check with our engineering team and get back to you.

Regards

Amrita

[tyrone_owen_1]

Don't seem to have an issue with backing up. I was trying to restore a virtual machine, here is the error I got from the SMVI server's App Log:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        SMVI
Date:          9/25/2010 3:05:43 PM
Event ID:      4096
Task Category: Warn
Level:         Warning
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      SMVI_hostname.domain.local
Description:
8736572125 [management8 5e6aaf27e9ca5ba1fc19b071344c08b3] WARN com.netapp.smvi.task.filerestore.CreateFileRestoreKeyTask - Destination virtual machine VM_hostname does not contain a supported guest operating system. Operating system was found to be 'Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server' and SMVI supports [Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows Server 2008]. SMVI does not have a restore agent for this operating system type.

Eventually the restore failed with:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        SMVI
Date:          9/25/2010 5:06:31 PM
Event ID:      4096
Task Category: Error
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      SMVI_hostname.domain.local
Description:
8743819898 [restore0 9cf35b4427abd88448b18fd9267d68db] ERROR com.netapp.common.flow.Operation - FLOW-11008: Operation failed: Failed to find progress of restore for lun /vol/DATASTORE_NAME/VM_hostname/vmware-9.log on storage system FILER_name

The issue was worked-around in the end, it's just a little concerning.

Thanks

[amritad]

Hi

Was restore successful for you in the end? I was wondering if LUN connectivity was lost for some reason due to which this error message was reported. In case you see issues with this please file a support case for the same with the logs. Our team at NGS will help you with this.

Regards

Amrita

[tyrone_owen_1]

Had to restore by mounting the snap as a NFS datastore and copying the VMDK out.

amritad wrote:

"Typically we list the configurations that have been tested by QA in the IMT. And all guest OSes are supported for normal backup and recovery. I will also double check with our engineering team and get back to you."

OK, so there are no unsupported windows OSs for SMVI backup and restore. Can I ask how you get to the information in IM?

I'm going to pursue some testing.

Thanks

[dunno1958]

Hello,

I'm a little confused about the SFR process.

I've looked through the SMVI manual which goes throiugh the process of the user calling the helpdesk, etc, which culminates in an email being sent to the end user so that they can service their request.

What if I don't want to follow this process? What if the VM I want to restore a single file to doesn't have email, do I just use the URL to point to the restore agent install files? What OSs is the restore agent compatible with? If I install it on NT 4.0, is it going to blue screen???

Does the session expire in SMVI?

Thanks