Today I had a customer call, where a Exchange 2010 backup repeatedly failed. HPE Data Protector was unable to create a differential or incremental backup. For each database, the following error was logged:
[Minor] From: OB2BAR_E2010_BAR@exchangeserver.domain.tld "MS Exchange 2010+ Server" Time: 21.03.2016 20:00:27 [170:313] One or more copies of database DATABASE are already being backed up in a different session. Interestingly, there was no other backup session running. But the night before, the backup jobs failed because of a network failure.
HPE Data Protector stores multiple backup objects on a single Catalyst store item. A backup object can be a volume, a mount point, a database or a virtual machine. You can have multiple backup objects per backup client. If your filesystem backup job has four backup clients, and each client has two volumes, the backup job will contain 8 backup objects. Another example is a single database of a Microsoft SQL or Oracle database server (instance).
Today, I was at a customer to prepare a two node vSphere cluster for some MS SQL server tests. Nothing fancy, just two HP ProLiant BL460c Gen9 blades and two virtual volumes from a HP 3PAR. Each blade had two 400 GB SSDs, two 64 GB M.2 SSDs and a 1 GB MicroSD card. Usually, I install ESXi to a SD card. In this case, a MicroSD card. The SSDs were dedicated for PernixData FVP.
Sometimes you need to reset the ILO Administrator password. Sure, you can reboot the server, press F8 and then reset the Administrator password. If you have installed a HP customized ESXi image, then there is a much better way to reset the password: HPONCFG.
Check the /opt/hp/tools directory. You will find a binary called hponcfg.
~ # ls -l /opt/hp/tools/ total 5432 -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 5129574 Oct 28 2014 conrep -r--r--r-- 1 root root 108802 Oct 28 2014 conrep.
Some days ago, I blogged about the new HP StoreOnce software release 3.13.0. This release included several fixes. One fix wasn’t mentioned by me, although it’s interesting.
Fixed issue where Windows 2012 R2 built-in native backup was not supported with 3.12.x software (BZ 61232) Windows Server Backup (WSB) is part of Windows Server since Windows Server 2008. WSB can create bare metal backups and recover those backups. The same applies to system state backups, file level backups, Hyper-V VMs, Exchange etc.
In January 2014 I wrote a blog post about network flooding because of Windows NLB clusters in unicast mode. Yesterday, Windows NLB, HP switches and I met again.
After moving a customers core network from HP 5400zl switches to two IRF stacks with HP 7506 switches, multiple Windows NLB clusters stopped working. Because the Windows NLB used multicast operation mode, it was instantly clear that the switches were the problem.
Since september 2015, the latest version of HP StoreOnce backup system software is available. The latest release 3.13.0 is available for HP StoreOnce VSA, 6500, B6200 multi-node and all single node systems running software version 3.x. This also applies to some D2D 2500, 4100 and 4300 single-node backup systems running software versions 2.x. Make sure that you take a look into customer notice c03729283 for details on performing the conversion.
Last week, my colleague Claudia and I have ported a HP ProVision configuration to HP Comware. Unexpectedly, it wasn’t routing or VLANs or OSPF that caused headaches, it was a Wake-on-LAN (WoL). Depending on the used tool, the magic packet (which wakes up the computer) is a broadcast (255.255.255.255) or a subnet-directed broadcast (e.g. 192.168.200.255). So it was important to know what tool the customer used.
This is how HP ProVision implements subnet-directed broadcasts:
Since monday I’m helping a customer to put two HP 3PAR StoreServ 7200c into operation. Both StoreServs came factory-installed with 3PAR OS 3.2.1 MU3, which is available since July 2015. Usually, the first thing you do is to deploy the 3PAR Service Processor (SP). These days this is (in most cases) a Virtual Service Processor (VSP). The SP is used to initialize the storage system. Later, the SP reports to HP and it’s used for maintenance tasks like shutdown the StoreServ, install updates and patches.
While I was playing with my shiny, new HP StoreOnce VSA in my lab, I noticed a curious behavior. I created a NAS share for some tests with Veeam Backup & Replication. Creating a new share is nothing fancy. You can create a share in two ways:
using the GUI, or using the CLI So I created a new share:
Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0
Nothing special, as you can see.
