How to manually test hotadd functionality

Challenge

The need to test the capability of the proxy to actually access and attach the disk of a VM that it is to process for hotadd.

Solution

How to Test

Performing the following steps will help determine if the infrastructure is present to allow the Proxy to attach the disks of the VM to be processed in hotadd. It is advised to do this with a VM during off-peak hours as it requires a snapshot on the production server.

Note: Remember to review the cleanup section after performing the test.

1. Create a snapshot on the VM to be processed by Veeam Backup & Replication.
2. Within a vSphere client, attach the base disk from the VM in Step 1 to the Veeam Proxy.
   1. Edit the Veeam Proxy that will be processing the VM from Step 1.
   2. Click Add…
   3. Choose “Hard Disk”
   4. Chose “Use an existing virtual disk”
   5. Navigate to the location of the base disk from the VM in step 1.
   6. Specify that the disk should be attached Independent - Nonpersistent
   7. Click Finish

Analyzing the results:

• If the task completes and the disk is now attached to the proxy, this means the infrastructure is present to allow the Proxy to hotadd the VMs base disk.
• If you were unable to select the base disk (VMDK) from the datastore because the datastore was not visible to be browsed, then this means the proxy you were testing with does not have access to that datastore.
• If the task failed, it may be a permissions related issue that prevented the account you are using from completing the disk attach task. Test again with the account configured within Veeam Backup & Replication to access the VMware environment. If permissions issue still occur check permissions assigned to the account.
• There are a number of other reasons why this task could fail, if it has failed and you would like assistance, please open a support case and a Veeam Support Engineer will be happy to assist you.

Cleanup after test

If the testing was succesful and you know have the base disk of the production VM attached to the proxy, follow these steps to cleanup the environment after testing.

1. Detach the disk that was attached to the Veeam Proxy.
   1. Edit the Veeam Proxy used in the testing.
   2. Highlight the disk that was attached during testing.
      Note: If you are unsure which disk needs to be detached from the Proxy, check the disks file path, it should contain the name of the production server from which it is from.
   3. Click Remove (DO NOT select the option to "Delete files from datastore")
   4. Click Finish
2. Remove the snapshot created on the production server during testing.

Examples of Testing Steps

vSphere C# Client

vSphere Web Client