28 replies to this topic

[Bandalo]

I'm hoping you guys out there might be able to help with this...

I have a WHS 2011 install that's running on a VMWare ESXi server. I've been running it for more than a year with no problems. It backs up 3 clients on my home network, and I don't use it for much else.

A month or so ago I started seeing corrupt backups. I did the repair option a few times, but it would always come back a couple days later. I deleted the backup database entirely and started over, and the same problem popped up again. So, I wiped out the entire VM, and completely reinstalled WHS 2011 on a new VM, and reinstalled the connector on all the clients. Worked for about a week, now the problem has popped up again.

VMware isn't reporting any disk errors, and none of the other VMs are having problems.

Any idea where I should start looking?

[jmwills]

Any updates available for VMWare?

[Bandalo]

Running 5.0 right now, and I have been since it came out. There's an update available, but it has some known bugs, so I don't want to install it yet.

[jazzerjay]

Known bugs?

[Bandalo]

The known bugs in 5.0U1 have to do with auto-start not working properly for some VMs...that's why I haven't updated from 5.0 yet..

[jazzerjay]

This blog article says it's just in the free version, which we're not running at work of course. http://blogs.vmware....0-update-1.html

However, there is a thread that says it's not just in the free version and is indeed broken in the licensed version. http://communities.v...art=30&tstart=0

Thanks for looking out!


(Now back to our regularly scheduled program)


Have you re installed the client connector?

[Bandalo]

Well, I'm running the free version of ESXi on this machine. It only has a few VMs, the WHS 2011 instance, a Win7 instance, and a very small LINUX appliance. The LINUX appliance runs some stuff on my network though, so the auto-start is critical. Database was corruped again when I checked this morning. This is really getting annoying.

[Bandalo]

If it helps, all of the errors appear to be on one particular desktop. Or at least, that's the one that always loses data after the client backup database repair.

[ikon]

If it helps, all of the errors appear to be on one particular desktop. Or at least, that's the one that always loses data after the client backup database repair.

Hmmmm, perhaps that desktop is having disk issues?

[Bandalo]

I thought that might be the case, so last week I nuked the machine and reinstalled Win7 from scratch on it. Then I did another reinstall of WHS 2011 just to make sure. The only unusual thing about this machine is that it's running two SSDs in RAID 0. Haven't had any disk errors reported by the machine itself, just the corruption in the backup database.

[ikon]

Might be worth putting a spinning drive into that computer, disconnect the SSDs for now, install Win7 on the spinning drive, and try backing it up. You know, just to check if it IS the SSDs.

[Bandalo]

I can give it a try this weekend. It's gotta be something with the RAID though if that's it. This machine has been my primary gaming machine for a loong time now, and it's had an SSD for over a year and a half. The RAID 0 was only setup about 6 months ago though.

[jmwills]

How many drives are we talking about?

[Bandalo]

2 Kingston 120GBs. Running RAID 0 off the motherboard's controller.

[Bandalo]

Well, further time has shown that if I run repair a few times, the problem will go away. Until the next scheduled backup cleanup runs, then it pops up again.

[ikon]

Not terribly reassuring, is it?

[Bandalo]

Not in the least.

Is there any way to dig though the logs for the server backup cleanup task? I've gone through the regular windows logs in the event viewer, and I can't find anything unusual.

[pcdoc]

I have had the pro version for years. I used it for about a week and I was hooked So I never saw the limitations

[Bandalo]

The pro version of what?

[jmwills]

The only thing that remained constant in your environment was the hard drive the backups were going to. Possibly a bad drive or at least a failing one?