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NetBackup™ Web UI VMware Administrator's Guide

Last Published: 2023-04-05

Product(s): NetBackup & Alta Data Protection (10.2)

Troubleshooting for CDP

VAIO stops sending data to CDP gateway

Happens when the IOFilter encounters problem and hence enters into NOOP (Non-Operational) mode.

Possible reasons:

IOfilter encountered problem with datastore.
IOfilter encountered problem while reading from vmdk on ESXi server.

Workaround:

Remove the VTSTAP policy from all the disks of protected the VMs and reattach.

Error: Storage policy is not detached from one or more virtual disks of virtual machine.

Happens when the storage policy is not detached from all the virtual disks of the VM. The next backups fail with error code 156.

Workaround:

Remove the Veritas I/O filter based storage (vtstap) policy from all the disks the VM that CDP protected previously. You can do this operation on the vCenter.

Error: Failed to retrieve or parse the version of Veritas IO filter.

You may get this error when trying to subscribe one or more VMs to CDP protection plan. Occurs when the CIM server service on ESXi server is non-responsive.

Workaround:

Restart the CIM server service on the ESXi server and retry the VM subscription to CDP protection plan. You can find the CIM server service of ESXi server, under Configure > Services section of the ESXi.

nbcctd service goes in inconsistent state. Cannot configure the CDP gateway.

Possible reasons:

When you mount a read-only file system and provide its path in the CDP gateway configuration, service is configured, but the gateway fails to start.
When you try to configure the gateway again, by giving a read/write path, the service still fails to start.

Workaround: Retry the operation after you remove the nbcct directory from:

<NBU installation path>/netbackup/nbcct in NetBackup 9.1.
<staginglocation>/nbcct in NetBackup 10.0 onwards.

CDP-based protection plan fails with the error: Storage policy is not attached to one or more virtual disks of virtual machine to be registered for IO tapping.

Possible reasons:

Currently, NetBackup supports only vtstap policy as storage policy for CDP. If you try to subscribe a VM using hybrid storage policy (encryption + replication) it shows the error.

Workaround: Avoid using hybrid storage policy (encryption + replication) for CDP protected VMs.

CDP service does not start after media server restart or mount path-related changes.

Possible reasons:

The configured staging area is unmounted post reboot or having an unsupported file system. For example, if you configure the CDP gateway using a supported mount like /mnt/stage_area and do not configure auto mount. After a system restart, this path points to root file system, which CDP does not support, hence the CDP service (nbcctd) cannot start.

Workaround: Ensure that the staging area or the relevant disk mounts are remounted properly, whenever there are changes in the system related to unmount or system reboot.

VM gets unsubscribed in powered off state and having I/O tapping policies attached to the VMDK. It should give warning to remove storage policies and then unsubscribe.

Possible reasons:

While removing CDP protection, if the protected VM is powered off, CDP gateway cannot get the required information of storage policies from VAIO. Hence, though the CDP protection is removed from the VM, the I/O tapping policies are still attached to the VMDK of that VM, it continues to tap the I/O'S and affect performance.

Workaround: Always detach the storage policy of the VMs before unsubscribing the VMs, irrespective of its powered on or off state.

Subscription to NetBackup protection plan fails, but the backup jobs keep dumping data in the staging area.

Explanation

Occurs when you protect a NetBackup primary server, using the same primary server's protection plan.

Workaround: We do not recommend protecting a NetBackup primary server using a protection plan made using the same primary server. If this error occurs, detach the Veritas storage policy from the NetBackup primary server VM, and unsubscribe the VM from the protection plan.

Cannot delete CDP protection plan when the CDP gateway is unreachable.

Explanation:

CDP policy is not deleted after removing the entries in case of an unreachable host.

Workaround: The CDP protection plan subscription does not get removed as we are not deleting the CDP policy before cleaning up the CDP host. So, we need to call Delete policy API manually after calling the Delete CDP gateway API, to delete the entries of the unreachable gateway.

You can clean up an unreachable CDP gateway using the following API:

To DELETE CDP Gateway

URL : https://netbackup/config/cdp-gateway/force

HTTP Method : DELETE

Headers:

    Authorisation: Bearer <Token>

    Content-Type: application/vnd.netbackup+json;version=7.0;charset=UTF-8

To Delete Policy

URL : https://netbackup/config/policies/policy_name

HTTP Method : DELETE

Headers:

    Authorisation: Bearer <Token>

After successful execution of above two APIs, the mapping for the policy and the VM is still visible in the web UI. If you try to remove protection of that VM through web UI, you can see an error message saying: Subscription ID not found. This is expected behavior.

CDP gateway update operation fails to restart the CDP service (nbcctd) on the gateway

Explanation: CDP gateway update operation tries to restart the service. If stopping the service takes longer time than usual, then update operation shows an error, indicating that the CDP service (nbcctd) failed to restart.

Workaround: In this case, check if the nbcctd service is running on the gateway. If the service is running, wait for it to shut down. To manually stop the service, use the command: /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/nbcctd -terminate. When the service has stopped, start it using the command /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/nbcctd -X.

Failed to get version from the Storage Platform Web Service(SPWS). Ensure that Nginx is running and configured correctly on the selected MSDP storage server.

Explanation: While creating a CDP protection plan to use universal share, if you select a storage device that does not have universal share capability, you get this error.

Workaround: You must select a storage device that has universal share capability.

Unsupported CDP gateway version with universal share. Minimum supported version is 10.2.

Explanation: While creating a CDP protection plan to use universal share, if you select a CDP gateway server lower than NetBackup version 10.2, you get this error.

Workaround: To use universal share, the CDP gateway version must be of NetBackup version 10.2 or higher.