Backup solutions fail to backup a virtual machine after vMotion

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Backup of a virtual machine starts failing.
• Backup solution displays .vmx path instead of virtual machine name.
  
  For example:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• In vpxd log file, you see many references to VmRemovedEvent and VMRenamedEvent:
  
  grep "Invalid host event" vpxd-*.log | grep "vim.event.VmRenamedEvent"
  grep "Invalid host event" vpxd-*.log | grep "vim.event.VmRemovedEvent"
  
  
• Virtual machines can be randomly removed from backup set.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.5.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5

Cause

During the process of vMotion, there are multiple events generated. Some of them are VMRenamedEvent and VMRemovedEvent. The VM is renamed to its full vmx path and then removed from the source host. After vMotion is completed, these events should be discarded. Occasionally, these events end up collected and interpreted by the backup software. The VM is then either renamed to the full path in the backup set, which makes the following backups fail as the VM got its original name, or removed from the backup set, depending on the event collected.

Resolution

To work around the issue, use these options:

• Avoid vMotion for the backed up virtual machines.
• Correct the backup set when necessary.

To resolve this issue, contact the backup solution vendor.

Additional Information

Ensure to open a service request with the Backup solution Support in parallel to confirm this issue from the backup logs. To be alerted when this article is updated, click the subscribe button [cid:[email protected]] . For more information on KB subscription features, see the Knowledge Base Article FAQs: How to Subscribe to VMware Knowledge Base Articles (76417). Location of vCenter Server log files Location of VMware vCenter Server 6.0 log files