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Limitations on VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) and Multipathing

Details

Please be aware of the following limitations on VCB and multipathing.

For VCB versions 1.0.3 and higher:
 
For VCB versions 1.0.2 and older:
  • Older versions of VCB do not support multipathing.
  • You cannot have Powerpath or any other multipathing software installed on your VCB proxy when using these older versions of VCB.
  • When using VCB 1.0 with multiple paths to a SAN LUN showing up on the proxy, all the inactive paths on the proxy must be deactivated.

If you have multipathing software installed, or if you are using VCB 1.0 and have inactive paths that have not been disabled on the VCB proxy, VCB can fail to access a virtual machine disk image.

In this case, full virtual machine (image) backups will fail with the error message, Error: Failed to export the disk: The device is not ready. File level virtual machine backup for Windows guests will fail to mount the file systems in the virtual machine's disk images.

 

 

 
 

Solution

VMware Consolidate Backup version 1.0.2 can now ignore any inactive paths to a SAN LUN and you do not need to disable inactive paths. However, VCB 1.0.2 still does not support multipathing and you cannot have Powerpath or any other multipathing software installed on your VCB proxy.
 
If you are still using a version VCB earlier than version 1.0.2, check for inactive paths and disable them on the VCB proxy as follows:
  1. Log on to your VCB proxy as a user with administrative privileges.

  2. Click Start. Right-click My Computer in the Start menu and select Manage.

  3. This brings up the Computer Management utility.

  4. In the Computer Management window, select Storage/Disk Management.

  5. If the Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard pops up, close it by selecting Cancel.

  6. The lower right portion of the Computer Management window now displays a list of all disks visible to the system. If a disk is visible under multiple paths, there will be an entry for each path in this list.

    Inactive paths to disks are indicated by a small No Entry icon superimposed over the disk system as shown in the following image. (In this example, Disk 13 is an inactive path):



  7. In order to deactivate an inactive path, right-click its little icon with the superimposed No Entry icon on it and choose Properties from the context menu.

  8. This brings up the Disk Drive Properties dialog for this path. On the General tab, change the value for Device usage to Do not use this device (disable). This causes the entry for the disk to be removed from the list of devices presented by Disk Management.

  9. Do this for all inactive paths.

  10. If you need to re-enable a path again, or if you have accidentally disabled the wrong path, you can re-enable all the devices by using Computer Management/System Tools/Device Manager. Click Disk drives. This is an exhaustive list of all disks and paths visible to your system. By right-clicking on a disk symbol, you can access its Device Properties dialog, in which you can change the state of the Device usage setting back to Use this device (enable).

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Actions
  • KB Article: 2195414
  • Updated: Feb 20, 2009
  • Products:
    VMware Consolidated Backup
    VMware ESX
  • Product Versions:
    VMware Consolidated Backup 1.0.x
    VMware Consolidated Backup 1.5
    VMware Consolidated Backup 1.1