vSphere & VCB / License not available

[AWo]

We went from VI3 Standard Edition to vSphere 4 Standard + Storage VMotion. Since then the VCB 1.5 backup fails.

I saw this message in the task window of the vSphere client:

Task Name: Reconfigure virtual machine

Status: License not available to perform this operation

When I click on the "Details" link I got the message you can see on the screenshot.

While the VCB backup is running a few "Reconfigure virtual machine" messages appear and these are successful.

We're using VCB in "hotadd" mode and the both VCB roles (user and proxy) have all rights within vCenter (for testing).

Which license (VM hot add???) or what else do I miss? As VMware Hot Add is not part of the vSphere Standard, does that mean our VI3 Standard VCB license has gone?

AWo

VCP / vEXPERT 2009

Edited by AWo

[CHogan]

Hi there,

Yes, as you've stated hot-add is not licensed on the standard edition of vSphere. vSphere now licenses hot-add as per .

However you should still be able to use the SAN & NBD (network) backup transports. I think this is the same vcbAPI bug that we've seen with VDR.

Can you please file as SR, and ask the support folks to reference PR 422695. I believe a fix for the vcbAPI should be out soon, so hopefully we can get a fix for VCB 1.5 out quickly too since the problem is already understood internally.

HTH

Cormac

[AWo]

You state that it is not running because we use the "hotadd" mode where the proxy is virtualized but with a physical proxy it should work again?

And did I understand you right that there is a fix on its way that "hotadd" will work without the "VMware Hot Add" license?

AWo

VCP / vEXPERT 2009

[CHogan · Accepted solution]

No, I doubt that there is any difference in behaviour between virtual and physical proxies. If your backups are working, I suspect that they are reverting to NDB mode rather than using hot-add. If they are not working, set the transport type to NBD while we work on resolving the issue.

The issue we are currently aware of has to do with VMware Data Recovery - this product uses the vcbAPI. However the license error is identical.

I don't know if there is a fix for VCB 1.5 in the works, so i'd recommend you file the SR so we can track it.

HTH

Cormac

[CHogan]

And just to clarify, no there is no plan that i am aware of to allow hot-add to work without a hot-add license.

[AWo]

Thanks, I'll give it a try and I'll open a SR.

So if I got you right, now, the error message regarding the license is not correct and it should work with a virtual or physical proxy even without the "VMware hot add" license.

AWo

VCP / vEXPERT 2009

[CHogan]

Awo,

I'm probably not making myself very clear. I'll try to make myself a bit clearer.

The issue is that we shouldn't be attempting to do hot-add backups when there is no hot-add license. This is the bug that i pointed you to. This will be fixed for VMware Data Recovery, and should probably be addressed for VCB 1.5.

Since there is no hot-add license with vSphere standard, you cannot use the hot-add transport mechanism. Therefore with VCB in an appliance, you will have to change the transport mechanism to network based backups. If it was a physical VCB proxy, then you could use network or SAN mode.

So VCB will continue to work without the hot-add license on the ESX, but you will have to choose an alternate transport mechanism for backups.

Hope this is a bit clearer.

Cormac

[AWo]

NDB is working.

AWo

VCP / vEXPERT 2009