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Server 2008 Backup issues with Linux NAS devices

Ran into this issue today when setting up Server 2008 backup.

I had to backup the entire volume since i did not have access to the NAS device to change the configuration.

Symptom:

You try to backup the files and folders on a windows server 2008 R2 system, the backup target is a share folder created in a storage drive on NAS device running Linux system. After starting the backup and taking several minutes, error message will appear “the backup of volume xxx could not be completed, Error: the version does not support this version of the file format.” The backup operation stopped before completing.

Before clarify the root cause of this problem, we should first let you know a background of windows server backup

Background: 
The windows backup will have problems with sparse file only in case of "File Level (Selected file/folders in a volume)" backup. For "Block Level (full volume)" backup the sparse file is not a problem and the backup/recovery would succeed. This is because for Block Level Backup the .vhd file is never mounted whereas for File Level Backup the .vhd is mounted which does not support mounting of sparse file.

Thus, we can easily get the root cause

The failure happens while the .VHD file created by Windows Backup is mounted during backup.

The .VHD file is created as a sparse file and this is not supported by the native VHD driver and hence mounting of the .VHD failed.

After some investigation, we found that the "strict allocate = yes" option of Samba will force it to not have UNIX style behavior of creating sparse file. Solution is adding "strict allocate = yes" to the smb.conf and restarting the Samba.

Source: Microsoft

ERROR: The disk is blank with ESXi Datastore creation

ERROR: The disk is blank with ESXi Datastore creation

Call "HostDatastoreSystem.QueryVmfsDatastoreCreateOptions" for object "ha-datastoresystem" on ESXi "192.168.10.221" failed.

The other window underneath shows Location /vmfs/devices/disks/mpx.vmhba:3:C0:T0:L0  "The hard disk is blank."

This just happened to me when trying to create a new datastore on reconfigured RAID 10 array.

Call "HostDatastoreSystem.QueryVmfsDatastoreCreateOptions" for object "ha-datastoresystem" on ESXi "192.168.10.xxx" failed.

Disk is blank ! Well yes I just erased everything and initialized the new array.

So if you go on the Console or SSH in and run this command you get the ouput below.

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/disks/naa.60019b90b36c760014f68e5892d35343: 999.1 GB, 999116767232 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121469 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/disks/naa.60019b90b36c760014f68e5892d35343 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0: 2020 MB, 2020872192 bytes

64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 1927 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Notice no partition is present on the target disk.

So then you run this command

~ # fdisk -u /dev/disks/naa.60019b90b36c760014f68e5892d35343

Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table

This  prompts you to create a partition either extended or primary

you choose primary then label Partition 1

in my case I was using the entire disk so I chose the default sectors to use  MAX space on the disk.

Once done then run this again to check

Fdisk –l

Disk /dev/disks/naa.60019b90b36c760014f68e5892d35343: 999.1 GB, 999116767232 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121469 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

                                           Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System

/dev/disks/naa.60019b90b36c760014f68e5892d35343p1             1    121470 975699936+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0: 2020 MB, 2020872192 bytes

64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 1927 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Notice the partition is there

Login to viclient and create your datastore!!!