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After patching some test ESX hosts with ESX 3.5 Update 4, the problem with the VMware tools being shown as "Not running" after a VCB backup operation seems to have been solved. This has cured some backup woes at least.

I will now run ESX 3.5 Update 4 in a test cluster (with virtual machines that will be backed up with VCB) for a few of weeks before updating production ESX hosts to Update 4.

Last week we started having problems with VCB Backups. Normally while a VCB backup job is in progress the VI Client will report that the VM tools is not running on the VM that's being backed up. When the VCB backup job completes, the status of the VMware Tools changes from "Not running" to OK.

However, I've seen cases where even after the VCB job completes, the VMware Tools status fails to change from "Not running" to "OK". If you then try to run a VCB job on the same VM, the job will fail if the VCBMounter is set to look for the virtual machine IP rather than virtual machine name or UUID.

I first noticed this problem on Monday, 16 March, but a couple of days later I found a VMware KB article dated 18 March 2009 which describes the exact same issue. The problem seems to be occurring only on hosts with patch bundle ESX350-200901401-SG. However, instead of offering a fix to the issue, VMware is only offering a few workarounds. I hope they release a patch to fix this issue soon.

Some workarounds given by VMware are:

1. Restart the mgmt-vmware service immediately after the backup job is done. This changes the Tools status to OK. You can write a cron job to do it periodically.
   
   OR
   
1. Log in and log out, or log out if you are already logged in, from the virtual machine. This changes the Tools status to OK if it was showing as Not running.
   
   OR
   
2. Use VCBMounter to look for virtual machine name or UUID rather than virtual machine IP. Virtual machine IP only works when the status of tools is OK, but virtual machine name and UUID works even if the Tools status shows as Not running.

My preferred workaround: 

I find that restarting the VMware Tools Service in the guest OS always gets by the problem, but loggin into every single VM that reports the wrong status for it's VMware Tools could be a bit of a drag. So I choose to do this remotely rather that logging on to each VM.

From any Windows workstation/server, open a command pompt and run:

sc \\{vm-name-or-ip-address} stop "VMTools"
sc \\{vm-name-or-ip-address} start "VMTools"

Information on this issue can be found on the VMware Knowledge Base article: KB1008709

It is good to see that VMware has managed to keep momentum even as Citrix and Microsoft launched their Hypervisors as an onslaught on VMware's Virtualisation market share. Now, even today customers still select VMware Virtual Infrastructure as the best platform to run Microsoft Exchange. I guess this goes to show that although Microsoft and Citrix may be catching up, VMware is still miles ahead in the race and this is why I say so:

I've been playing around with Windows 2008 R2 Beta with Hyper-V for a little while now to try and get a feel for what it does and how it does it. Even though I'm a hardened VMware supporter (this is no secret by now, and I'll stay a hardened VMware supporter for the foreseeable future), I do think Microsoft is making steps in the right direction. I haven't really had enough time to play with Citrix XenServer, so I can't really comment on that. I have no doubt that Hyper-V on Windows 2008 R2 will be a good product. However, even though Microsoft seems to be throwing everything they have at their attempts to get Hyper-V and their entire package on par with VMware, it still just feels like they’re are just about trying to catch up with the functionality of, well, VI3!, a product that is just about to be superseded by the new VMware vSphere. Now I don't have the exact details, but I'm sure vSphere will be released later this year. vSphere will have an enormous amount of new functionality (some of which may still be well kept secrets by VMware). If vSphere is released this year with lots of new bells and whistles, what will Microsoft have to do to get Windows 2008 R2 on par with vSphere? Time will tell I guess.

Anyway, back to Exchange on VMware. I found this article on the topic:
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090310005551&newsLang=en  

As expected, Veeam has released FastSCP 3.0 today. Here's the press release:

Columbus, Ohio, March 5, 2009 — Veeam Software, award-winning provider of systems management tools for VMware virtual datacenter environments, today announced the immediate availability of a new version of its popular FastSCP free tool, version 3.0. The new release, like all products in the Veeam Management Suite for VMware, supports VMware ESX, ESXi and the ESXi free edition.

Veeam FastSCP is widely used among VMware administrators and has become the de facto standard for file management and VM copy in VMware environments. It is used to quickly copy virtual machines between ESX hosts; between Windows and ESX; and between Windows or ESX and ESXi, including the free version of ESXi.

Since its first release in October of 2006, Veeam FastSCP has become the #1 most popular free tool used by more than 60,000 VMware administrators worldwide. The product has always been available at no charge, and continues to be free. With Veeam FastSCP and Veeam Monitor Free Edition, Veeam shows its commitment to contributing to the VMware community by offering quality free tools to help administrators in their daily tasks.... read on...