Integrity Check Failures with VMware Data Recovery 2

In case you have been living under a rock for the last couple years I should first mention that VMware does offer it’s own backup solution for vSphere. This product is called VMware Data Recovery. Think of it as a really watered down version of Veeam Backup… without the replication piece. Basically you configure a backup repository (a bulk storage area), and then configure which VM’s to backup and to which repository. Well with VDR 2.0 and vSphere 5 there are some issues, and basically I was told that they changed how they talk to CIFS shared from the VDR appliance and because of that some Repository servers are not able to keep up with the about of traffic. The downside is that because of this Integrity Checks fail to complete, and after an integrity check fails on a repository all backups to that repository are hauled.

The fix?

Well after talking with VMware Tech support they recommended that I switch back to VDR 1.2.1 for the time being. So after downloading VDR 1.2.1 and configuring it I then got a new error. This time the VDR appliance failed to backup the VM because it thinks that vSphere was not taking snapshots properly. After a few more email exchanges with VMware they had me edit the /etc/resolve.conf file and add a search domain (the domain where my esx hosts live), and after doing that I was finally able to get good backups.

Once an update is released and VDR 2.0 can be used again I will update this post and also do a how-to on setting it up.

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12 Responses to "Integrity Check Failures with VMware Data Recovery 2"

  1. Having repeated corruption issues with simple config of CIFS vDR Dedup Stores. Tried v1.2 and 2.0. Just checked my datastores and they are failing integrity checks AGAIN! Will verify my resolve.conf file. Shouldn’t be this difficult….

  2. Thats funny, I was just working with VMware support on this, they are having me try some things so they can see what the problem is. Right now they are leaning toward a newer version of samba that is installed on the vdr 2 appliance compared to the version on the 1.2.1 appliance.

  3. I’m having the exact same problem with my brand new installation of vSphere 5 & vdr2.0 …

    Please do update if you get any news about a v2.x fix…

    Some info you might find useful:
    – cifs host is a hp dl380 g6 with 8 sas drives
    – os is win 2008 r2 sp1
    – vcenter is installed (i know its not recommended, but still…) on this host.

    On a different installation with vsphere 4.1 and vdr 1.x, and the same cifs hw and sw setup i have zero problems.

  4. Had all the recurring errors on vdr 1.2.1 so I switched to 2.0 and its just as bad, continual corruption and integrity checks. Not happy.

    Tried a demo of a commercial product and it worked flawlessly and much faster, but I’m not able to buy up just yet.

  5. Make sure your target storage device is using 15K drives. Integrity checks constantly fail to NAS using 7.2K drives, but complete 100% of the time to NAS using 15K drives. This fix is for VDR 2.0, error -102 I/O trouble writing to destination volume using CIFS shares

  6. Its actually bigger then that. I have been wanting to post up why this happens and exactly how to fix it i just havent gotten around to it yet. I will try to get to it this evening.

  7. Wasn’t aware that 15k drives were required and I don’t have those. Over the weekend I have deleted and reformatted my storage device, backed up half the VMs, then it failed and had to run integrity checks twice, and now it going again and is over half done with VMs. This whole thing ran fine with I first set it up. It went flawless for about 4-6 months. But once the integrity errors started it was like never ending. Each check would take 24 hours, then recatalog, reindex, and then another integrity check and on again.

    I suspected the drives, but then I ran the Acronis VM backup product demo and it was like 10 times faster, and no errors. It worked for about 10 days or so before I took it out as my boss was not ready to buy into it, and felt that the one we have should work!

  8. Tom i dont think its your drives. I have been using 7200 RPM drives and it works fine after the fixes from VMware that they had me try. Basically the VDR 2.0 applaince is FUBAR on the SAMBA package that comes with it. They had me copy all the 2.0 VDR scripts to a VDR 1.2.1 appliance with the old SAMBA package and it has been flawless pushing to 7200 RPM drives.

    So in the end its not the drives its SAMBA getting pissed at windows in the new VDR 2.0 version.

  9. Can you list those scripts that can be moved? I would like to try that. I still have my old VDR. I have had one full, successful set of backups for 25 VMs now, but I have had this before and go bad after a few days.

    Thanks.

    ~ tom

  10. From what I can tell there is still no official resolution to the problem from VMware. You could move all of the DR 2.0 executables to the 1.2 appliance if you would like but it is unsupported by VMware.

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