1313 - InstantData FSR to vSphere troubleshooting

Background

Redstor's InstantData Full System Recovery (ID FSR) technology is able to recover virtual machines back to VMware vSphere environments. To do this, it leverages the VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK) libraries.

If experience a recovery issue and you need information to help with troubleshooting, most of it can be found in the normal FSR logs and error logs (default location C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Redstor Backup Pro\InstantData\Logs\). However, your Redstor support representative may ask you for additional diagnostic information. The steps below show you how to gather this. Once you have it, please send it to your support representative for analysis.

FSR to VMware: connectivity and the restore process

When ID FSR restores to VMware, the following connections are initiated. Should any of these fail, the restore will also fail. 

1. Running on the workstation machine, ID FSR connects to the Redstor Data Management Platform to authenticate and retrieve available backup dates. Typically this uses TCP port 443.
2. With VMware selected as the restore target, ID FSR connects to the vCenter server on TCP port 443, and the available resources are retrieved (resource groups, datastores, etc.).
3. With the resource and datastore selected, ID FSR communicates with the vCenter server to create the virtual machine files and virtual machine disk files (the vCenter server is instructed to complete this step).
4. ID FSR, using the VDDK library, connects to the target ESXi host in order to connect to the datastore and restore the data to the virtual machine disk files. This connection is from the workstation to the ESXi host. The exact port used is determined by the VDDK, but this is typically TCP port 902.

For the restore to succeed, the workstation must also be able to resolve the address of the vCenter server and the selected ESXi host (even if it is part of a cluster).

Note that as with most TCP client connections, all source ports are randomly selected.

Increasing the FSR logging level

To increase the logging level:

1. Use Notepad to open the file InstantDataFSR.NLog.config in the directory C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Redstor Backup Pro\InstantDataFSR\<version>\.

• The file should not be confused with the InstantDataFSR.Console.NLog.config file. Editing the Console file will have no effect on the InstantDataFSR application.

2. Locate the section beginning with <rules> and change the line above LogFileBuffer from either minlevel="Info" or minlevel="Debug" to minlevel="Trace".

For example, change this:

  <rules>
    <logger name="*"
            minlevel="Debug"
            writeTo="LogFileBuffer" />
    <logger name="*"
            minlevel="Error"
            writeTo="ErrorFile" />
  </rules>

to this:

  <rules>
    <logger name="*"
            minlevel="Trace"
            writeTo="LogFileBuffer" />
    <logger name="*"
            minlevel="Error"
            writeTo="ErrorFile" />
  </rules>

Save and close the file, and run the restore as normal. The additional logging information will be written to the log file.

VDDK logs

The VMware VDDK logs can be found in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\vmware-<username>.

For example, user joe.bloggs would find his logs in C:\Users\joe.bloggs\AppData\Local\Temp\vmware-joe.bloggs.

VDDK logging level

To change the VDDK logging level (and other settings), you need to edit the file C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Redstor Backup Pro\InstantDataFSR\<version>\vddk.conf using Notepad.

For the joe.bloggs example, this will be C:\Users\joe.bloggs\AppData\Roaming\Redstor Backup Pro\InstantDataFSR\20.9.1.809\vddk.conf.

Details of the available settings can be found on pages 46-47 of this vSphere guide.

Note that the default logging levels of vixDiskLib.transport.LogLevel="6" and vixDiskLib.nfc.LogLevel="4" will already be set to the maximum available in VDDK.