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NetBackup™ for Microsoft SQL Server Administrator's Guide

Last Published: 2024-03-27

Product(s): NetBackup & Alta Data Protection (10.4)

Troubleshooting VMware backups

Note the following when you perform a VMware backup that protects an application:

The Application State Capture (ASC) job contacts the NetBackup client on the guest virtual machine and catalogs the application data for recovery.
One ASC job is created per VM, regardless of which applications are selected in the policy.
ASC messages are filtered based on the ASC job details in the Activity monitor.
Failure results in the discovery job or parent job exiting with Status 1.
If you enable recovery for a particular application but that application does not exist on the VM, the ASC job returns Status 0.
bpfis is run and simulates a VSS snapshot backup. This simulation is required to gain logical information of the application.

Table: Issues with using a VMware policy to protect databases

Issue	Explanation
A database backup fails.	Databases are cataloged and protected only if the configuration is supported for VMware backups. See Limitations of VMware application backups.
A database backup fails.	NetBackup is installed on an excluded Windows boot disk. The ASC job detects this type of disk and treats it like an independent disk. Do not select the Exclude boot disk option if NetBackup is installed on the boot drive (typically C:).
ASC job produces a status 1 (partially successful).	You selected databases for backup that exist on both supported and on unsupported disks. See "A database backup fails" for unsupported disk information.
ASC job produces a status 1 (partially successful).	Full-text catalog files exist on the mounted folders. The databases are not cataloged.
The Application State Capture (ASC) job fails and the databases are not protected.	When the ASC job fails, the VMware snapshot or backup continues. Application-specific data cannot be restored. When you query the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), it may show that the database was backed up. In this case, though the database was skipped, the snapshot was still successful.
	You disabled the Enable virtual Machine quiesce option.
	Database objects are on a VHD disk. No objects in the backup are not cataloged, including those that do not exist on the VHD.
	You excluded any data disks from the VMware policy, on the Exclude disks tab. Be sure that any disks that you exclude do not contain database data.
	The VMware disk layout has changed since the last discovery. In this situation, you must force NetBackup to rediscover virtual machines by lowering the value of the Reuse VM selection query results for option. See the NetBackup for VMware Administrator's Guide.
	You cannot use a VMware incremental policy to protect SQL Server. However, the VMware backup job is successful.

	If Enable T-SQL snapshots is enabled, ensure that the SQL Server VSS Writer service is disabled on the guest virtual machine (SQL Server client) to prevent the ASC job failure.
ASC job fails with status code 142.	The NetBackup version on the primary server, media server, and the client must be at version 10.4 to support T-SQL snapshot backups. Legacy VMWare-ASC backups are supported for back-level versions. The ASC job may fail with status code 142 if you attempt T-SQL snapshot backups on back-level NetBackup versions.
You can recover the entire virtual machine from the backup, but you cannot recover the databases individually.	You did not select Application protection option Microsoft SQL Server on the VMware tab in the policy, which allows recovery of the databases from the virtual machine backups.
Transaction log backups fail.	You must first perform a full VMware backup without log truncation (Truncate logs option).
The databases are not quiesced.	Neither the Veritas VSS provider nor the VMware VSS Provider were installed at the time of backup. In this case, the recovery of a database after it is restored may require manual steps.
Unable to recover from SQL Server agent differential backup.	If you enabled the Enable T-SQL backups option for VMware backups and the backup failed, NetBackup is not able to inform SQL Server that the backup failed. The next differential backup becomes invalid because there is no full backup on which to base the incremental backup. This issue is resolved after the next full backup is successful.