backups fail on VSAN datastore

#1

I’m trying to run vertical backup on a single node ESI host with a VSAN datastore. I know, I know, single node VSANs aren’t supported but this is for a lab environment. I’ve found that if I try to backup a VM on the VSAN datastore it fails without ever moving any data, however, if I storage VMotion the same VM over to an NFS based datastore it works fine. VEEAM is also able to back this VM up regardless of where the VM sits so the issue seems specific to Vertical. Does Vertical backup not support VSAN datastores?

Log from VSAN datastore backup:

Creating a new virtual machine snapshot for OpenVPN
Uploaded file /vmfs/volumes/VSAN/1c19055a-f571-19d8-3b4e-001e67858cef/OpenVPN.vmdk
Uploading file vsan://ee1b055a-c81e-3c2b-9ffd-001e67858cef
Failed to locate file ‘/vmfs/volumes/VSAN/1c19055a-f571-19d8-3b4e-001e67858cef/vsan://ee1b055a-c81e-3c2b-9ffd-001e67858cef’: No such file or directory

Log from NFS datastore backup:

Creating a new virtual machine snapshot for OpenVPN
Uploaded file /vmfs/volumes/Nas/OpenVPN/OpenVPN.vmdk
Uploading file OpenVPN-flat.vmdk
Uploading *----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.06MB/s 05:17:18 1.9%

#2

Right, Vertical Backup does not support VSAN datastores. It doesn’t recognize paths like vsan://ee1b055a-c81e-3c2b-9ffd-001e67858cef.

#3

Are there plans to support VSAN or is that not intended. Most of my VMs are on VSAN so Vertical is of little use to me without VSAN support.

#4

I’m not sure if a disk file on a VSAN datastore can be read directly from inside the ESXi host. I’ll need to do some research first.

#5

They can be read just like any other file. I can login via SSH to the ESXi host directly and cd to /vmfs/volumes/VSAN just like any other datastore. It appears that there is just some confusion in the way vertical is building the path for the file to upload.

Let me know if there is any way I can help with figuring this out. I have a small VSAN deployed that we can use for testing.