Hello,

Can someone describe in details how exactly VBA works? I mean where exactly snapshot is taken, which systems writes data where? Let’s say there are three LUNs. LUN1 stores vmdk for some VM which we want to backup. LUN2 stores VBA. LUN3 stores Networker. As I understand, when VBA starts the backup proces it asks vcenter to do a snapshot of the VM, and that snapshot is stored on the same LUN as VM. Then, VBA mounts that snapshot to one of it’s proxies and sends data using DDBoost directly to DataDomain (assuming we are using DD). Networker is only controlling whole proces, right?

The reason I am asking is that we had a problem with VBA. It was running OK until one day. It stopped, and all VBAs showed error:

2013-12-17 03:00:34 avnwcomm Error <0000>: Plugin returned non-zero exit code (10059). Aborting NetWorker connection.

2013-12-17 03:00:24 avvcbimage Warning <6788>: Found unknown section 'browse-from-catalog' in workorder, ignoring

2013-12-17 03:00:25 avvcbimage Warning <6788>: Found unknown section 'browse-from-catalog' in workorder, ignoring

2013-12-17 03:00:34 avvcbimage Warning <16004>: Soap fault detected, Could not connect to getHostMoref 'esx2.local'., Msg:'SOAP 1.1 fault: SOAP-ENV:Client [no subcode]

2013-12-17 03:00:34 avvcbimage FATAL <0000>: [IMG0009] The Host 'esx2.local' is in a state that cannot perform snapshot operations.

2013-12-17 03:00:34 avvcbimage Error <0000>: [IMG0009] createSnapshot: snapshot creation failed

We tried reinstalling, configuring, firewalls rules, users, passwords, etc. Nothing helped. After few days we noticed one thing, that there was small amount of free space on Networker's LUN. When I increased the size of that LUN everything started working properly. There was about 10% of space free (around 100GB), now it’s about 30%. Why would Networker need that space on its own LUN? It’s outside of NW’a local VMDK? NW was thin provisioned, but during VBA backup I did not notice any significant amount of space occupied by NW VM in addition to what it takes when no backups are performed (it was about 20GB used from 100GB provisioned), so NW is not writing much data even locally.

Best regards,

Krzysztof