VDP backup jobs hung at 92%

[digitalj]

Most backup jobs are hanging at 92% completion.  I see some posts about recovery jobs hanging, but nothing about backups.  Logs on this beast are not user frendly so I've got no direction yet.  Any ideas what might be hanging these?

[digitalj]

this is a very frustrating situation as I now find out that not one backup job has completed in the week that this product has been installed.  Is it just this installation, or is anyone else having similar issues?

[RParker]

VDR - VDP, different name, same anemic, unperforming lackluster software.

BUY a REAL backup.  Veeam is what I would recommend.

You can spend ALL day fixing this, make it right maybe it works for a week, maybe 2.  You cannot rely on VDP/VDR for anything.  I REALLY hate the fact it has a built in limition on 100 VM's per instance.  That to me is not only very limited, but makes me nervous that a product (especially backup) has limitations... that's not good.

You can try veeam for 30 days for free, I highly recommend it.. ANYTHING is better than VDP/VDR. manually copying is better.. yes it REALLY is that bad.

I have no faith in it whatsoever.

[criver]

Hi,

Same problem has occurred in my environment  just at 92 % completion !!

I don't know what's causing this phenomenon, though...

[Arjan Hendriks]

Have seen the same, after some time the backup finishes. You could check if there is any network traffic to the ESX host where the vDP appliance is placed, so you know there is still traffic going.

[criver]

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback.

Certainly, this phenomenon has occurred in the case of Remote ESX.

It doesn't occur in local ESX.

Could you tell me the way not to cause this issue ?

Regards.

[Arjan Hendriks]

I can't tell you that, it's only a behavior I have seen this happened within the environment I was configuring.

[criver]

Thank you responding to my comments.  I'm sorry for replying to you so late.

I haven't found out  this causing yet.

Regards.

[VMware Community Member]

Hi, just a question about your screenshot.

It looks like you can see the vdp tasks in de vSphere Windows client but I don't see any vdp related tasks here ?

I even can't find/see the running vdp tasks anywhere (neither the Web or the Windows client).

[digitalj]

The only tasks I was ever able to see were the creating and removing of snapshots, and the status of the entire backup job.

I could never get any job to complete more than once, frequently was left with garbage snapshots that didn't show in vCenter, and couldn't reliably get the simplest tasks to work intelligently. I came to the conclusion that VDP is not a usable solution and have moved on to purchase something else.

[digitalj]

I opened a case and after a week of trying different solutions we doubled the memory on the appliance.  vDP now actually completes (about 35 guests) without errors. This has been consistent for 5 days and counting.

fingers crossed.

[AlexsYB]

SMis99 so still going strong ?

I am about to try bumping up the memory.... pretty crappy that it stops because of that.

What did you do double or ??

what about all the old snaps, remove them or ?

[smis99]

Hello digitalj,

the same issue here! VDP restore job gets stuck at 92%, with no further info. I tried file-level recovery and whole VM recovery, result is the same; stuck at 92% for 4 hours, then I cancel the job.

Have you received any advice from VMware?

Thanks and best regards

Jan @ Toyota Czech

Update: Ooops, sorry I misunderstood. Mine issue is RECOVERY related, while digitalj's is BACKUP related. Probably just a coincidence with the 92%.

[ChrisPahl]

I didn't see a link to this anywhere in the posts, but here is a KB artical that talks about this very issue. 

http://communities.vmware.com/message/2162214

Might not make you feel better about it.  I can tell you that I have noticed this behaivor in a number of VMware jobs where it will sit at a high percentage for a long period of time.  One example would be removing snapshots, I have watched that job sit for about 3 hours at 95% on a job that took 4 hours to complete.  Also talking with support on other issues they have told me not to pay attention to the % complete because it is not always an accurate representation of what the job is doing.

[mobcdi]

Found this kb article about restore jobs hanging at 92% http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2038440 but nothing about backup jobs doing the same thing.

Anyone have any ideas how to find out whats holding up the job completing one way or the other?

[digitalj]

I could not find any processes still running related to the backups.  I would also show backups completed since the 92% jobs.  This seemed to confirm that the 92% was a hung status and had no reflection on actual tasks.

Since doubling the resources, I have had one day with any type error which cleared the following day.

[mobcdi]

So the advise would be to leave the 92% task be and it should go in its own time or might that be on next running of the same backup job?

[digitalj]

Like was mentioned in this post (http://communities.vmware.com/thread/434807?tstart=0)  ensure that there are no tasks still running.  After checking the tasks were indeed eronious, I killed the task to clean them up.

[escapem2]

I am running version 5.5.5.180 and still having this issue sometimes fail sometimes it won't it's a really desperate backup appliance

[szilagyic]

This issue still happens even on the latest version of 5.5. The resolution to this issue is to increase the memory of the appliance to 8 GB.  I've been fighting this very same issue for weeks as I added more VMs to our backup jobs the problem got worse, I've tried everything and as soon as I increased the memory it is now working perfectly.  Previously to this, the backup job would hang at various stages, and the appliance would still have the disks of the VMs mounted and snapshots still present for those VMs.  I had to remove those VM mounted disks from the appliance as well as cancel the backup jobs, then consolidate the snapshots.   It has nothing to do with the VMs themselves.

This thread has more info: vSphere Data Protection stucks at 92% on Windows 2008 R2 VMs