IBM Tivoli Storage Manager V6.3 Windows backup-archive client known problems and limitations

Question & Answer

Question

This document contains warnings and known problems for the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager V6.3 Windows backup-archive clients.

Answer

Tivoli Storage Manager V6.3 Windows backup-archive client known problems and limitations

Note: IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) 6.3 reached End-Of-Support (EOS) on April 30, 2017.
There will be no support extensions for TSM Version 6.3 products. Customers are encouraged to upgrade to a current product release that has not yet reached end of support. See in TSM Family Products with Support Extension contracts available which releases are supported or which are the recommendations for replacement.

Contents

Common

Common Tivoli Storage Manager Client warnings
Common Tivoli Storage Manager Client known problems and limitations

Windows

Common Windows client warnings
VMware backup warnings
Common Windows client known problems and limitations
Windows 32-bit client known problems and limitations
Windows 64-bit client known problems and limitations
VMware backup known problems and limitations
VMware VI API known problems and limitations
TSM Client Configuration Wizard for Fastback Integration known problems and limitations

Common Tivoli Storage Manager Client warnings

If you back up or archive data from a Tivoli Storage Manager Version 6.3 client, you cannot restore or retrieve that data using a Tivoli Storage Manager Version 6.2 or earlier client.
NAS backups performed on a Tivoli Storage Manager Version 6.3 server using the BACKUP NODE server command can only be restored by using the RESTORE NODE server command or a Tivoli Storage Manager Version 6.3 client.
Snapshot Differential Backup may delete existing snapshots created outside of Tivoli Storage Manager

An existing snapshot is selected by using the DIFFSNAPSHOT=latest client option
The existing snapshot name is prefixed by "TSM_"

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Common Tivoli Storage Manager Client known problems and limitations

Initial configuration wizard reports a protocol violation

The error dialog can be dismissed and the configuration wizard can be used without further error.

After the initial configuration, use the preference editor to set the Domain option.

Interrupt with CTRL-C

During a command line client operation, pressing CTRL-C might result in a TSM client program exception or other unexpected behavior. To abort a command line client operation, press the 'Q' key instead of CTRL-C.

Web Client tree expansion

When using the Web Client, the browser can crash if you do the following, using the view menu item in the backup or restore tree window:

Click on "Expand Entire Branch"
Then click on "Collapse Entire Branch"
Web Client font requirements for non-English file names

For browsers running on Windows, the browser machine must have the Arial Unicode MS font installed. This font is available with MS Word 2002 and MS Office XP. See Microsoft's KB article 287247 for installation instructions. If you require this font, contact your Microsoft representative.

Logfile out of space handling

If any log file (dsmerror.log, dsmsched.log, or dsmwebcl.log) runs out of space during a session, writing to that log ceases, but other processing continues. End of processing return codes will reflect all errors and conditions, not just those we were able to log.

To prevent this problem, set the ERRORLOGMAXSIZE (for dsmerror.log) or SCHEDLOGMAXSIZE (for dsmsched.log and dsmwebcl.log) options to limit the log size to available space. Note that using these options causes the log data that would exceed the maximum to be written at the beginning of the log, overwriting the oldest entries.

ERRORLOGMAX and SCHEDLOGMAX behavior in out-of-space conditions:

If the specified maximum error log file size is greater than the available free space on the specified file system and the log is being transitioned from a non-wrapped log to a wrapped log, the following error message will be issued:

ANS1521E Failure writing to a Tivoli Storage Manager log or log-related file:<LOG FILE NAME>, errno = 28, There is not enough space in the file system

This is correct behavior. However, the log header record might be incomplete or there may be no "END OF DATA" text marker at the end of the error log. After space has been made available, the TSM client will subsequently treat the log as unwrapped because a valid header record is not found. A new log will be created and this partial log will be written to the prune file.

If there is insufficient space in the file system to append an entry to the log, the TSM client will continue to run, but the error message will not be logged.

Some keywords have not been translated into Chinese for the backup-archive client:

Some keywords, such as "Snapshot", have not been translated into Chinese. This is most notably evident in the backup-archive client GUI.

If client encryption is used and you choose to abort a command line backup or archive operation when prompted for an encryption key, the entire operation will immediately end with return code (RC) 12, even if there are other files eligible for backup that do not require encryption.
When regional settings are updated in the Java GUI preference editor, the GUI needs to be restarted before the changes become effective.
There are minor errors displaying ANS1036S in foreign languages: On all platforms Polish has an extra period on the second line, and on several platforms the format is incorrect.
Handling spaces in file names in schedule definitions

objects

options

objects

For Windows clients:

objects=’"c:\home\proj1\Some file.doc"’
objects=’"c:\home\proj1\Some file.doc" "c:\home\Another file.txt" c:\home\noblanks.txt’
objects=’"c:\home\My Directory With Blank Spaces\"’
objects=’"c:\Users\user1\Documents\Some file.doc"’
objects=’"c:\Users\user1\Documents\Some file.doc" "c:\Users\user5\Documents\ Another file.txt" c:\Users\user3\Documents\noblanks.txt’ objects=’"c:\Users\user1\My Directory With Blank Spaces\"’

This will ensure that c:\home\proj1\Some file.doc is treated as a single file name, as opposed to two separate files (c:\home\proj1\Some, and file.doc). Some examples of options parameter usage:

options='-preschedulecmd="c:\home\me\my files\bin\myscript" -postschedulecmd="c:\home\me\my files\bin\mypostscript" -quiet'
options='-presched="c:\home\me\my files\bin\precmd" -postsched=finish'

You can also refer to the objects and options parameter information for the define schedule and update schedule commands in the appropriate IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Administrator’s Reference.

Java GUI does not start with invalid option in options file

In rare cases, when there is an error in the dsm.opt file, the Java GUI will not start properly. The Java GUI will attempt to start, but at some point after 70%, the title screen disappears and nothing appears to happen.

To work around the problem, refer to the dsmerror.log or dsmj.log file in the installation directory or from where the command to start the Java GUI was issued for the offending option, and remove it manually from the options file. You should be able to restart the client without problems.

Reset button does not function properly in Preference Editor Communications Panel

On certain systems, the Communications panel in the Preference editor will not display correctly when the Reset button of the preference editor is invoked. When you click the Reset button, the list of communication methods might not display the proper list after the reset is complete.

If there is a need to reset the communication panel back to the original settings, exit out of the preference editor and restart it.

IMAGEGAPSIZE Option

The value for the IMAGEGAPSIZE option should not be specified outside the listed ranges for MB and GB units. If it is, the client will not report it as an error.

Select all after applying filter from Backup window

After applying a filter to a directory in the Backup window, when you check the check box for this filtered directory, the corresponding files in the file view on the right are not checked (not selected). To select the files in that filtered directory, click on the name of the checked directory and the boxes next to the filtered files are checked.

Connection Information dialog might not appear in certain situations

The Connection Information dialog might not appear correctly in certain situations. An exception will be logged in the dsmj.log file when this occurs. This will occur when you do the following:

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Windows client warnings

Windows PE

ANS1464S Cannot load ICC encryption library

Because the scenarios described in the field guide are not run from a fully installed TSM client, the registry entry indicating the location of the ICC encryption library does not exist. Since the recovery scenarios described in the field guide do not involve TSM encrypted files, you can bypass this error by modifying your client options file and specifying the option ENCRYPTIONTYPE DES56. This prevents the client from attempting to load the ICC encryption library.

Image backup does not work with shared memory protocol

To use the SHAREDMEM (shared memory) communications method, the TSM server and client must be executed by the same user. If the server and client are started by different accounts, then they will not be able to establish a connection with each other.

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VMware backup warnings

VM backup and restore: VMware off-host backups using vStorage for Data Protection API

TSM VMware off-host backup uses the virtual machine host name as the default TSM node name to store file level backup data on the TSM server. TSM clients installed inside the guest operating system also uses the host name as the default TSM node name, and therefore allows for an easy restore of off-host backup file restores. TSM Full VM backup uses the host name as the virtual machine Full VM image name on the TSM server. To ensure that these backup images are unique, TSM backup will check for duplicate host names in the same backup operation. If a duplicated is detected, the backup will fail with the following error message: ANS4161E Duplicate virtual machine name 'hostname' was detected in the same backup operation.
Full virtual machine backups of Windows 7 guest OS, using the LAN or Hotadd transport, when running on VMware Virtual Center 2.5 and ESX 3.5u5 will fail. The failure is not seen with other guest operating systems, or when running on vCenter4.0/ESX 4.0 level of VMware.
vStorage File-level backup operations can cause a crash of dsmc.exe or dsmsvc.exe when processing certain virtual machines with very complex disk configurations. The exact virtual machine disk configuration which triggers this crash is unknown, but it was encountered on one occasion with a virtual machine having more than thirty volumes spread across six virtual VMDK disks. The volumes included a complicated mix of various software RAID types, spanning multiple disks and using different stripping. The call stack of the crash will be similar to:

Stack Trace: vixMntapi.dll, VixMntapi_FreeVolumeInfo()+205696 bytes vixMntapi.dll, VixMntapi_FreeVolumeInfo()+219128 bytes vixMntapi.dll, VixMntapi_FreeVolumeInfo()+75736 bytes vixMntapi.dll, VixMntapi_FreeVolumeInfo()+78327 bytes vixMntapi.dll, VixMntapi_OpenDiskSet()+138 bytes dsmc.exe

vStorage File-level backup operations that crash or are are terminated (by pressing the Ctrl-C keys) from dsmc.exe or dsmsvc.exe using the Hotadd Transport mode can leave the Hotadd(ed) disk mounted on the Proxy system. This mounted disk must be removed via the Virtual Center's "Edit Settings" dialog.

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Common Windows client known problems and limitations

ANS0361I Message in error log

ANS0361I DIAG : Acquire Mutex failed: Invalid mutex
You may occasionally see the above message in dsmerror.log. It does not cause any functional error and you can ignore this message. The problem will be fixed in the TSM client 6.4.3 and 7.1.2 fix packs.

TSM Web client GUI cannot browse network resources to perform a backup.

Windows Vista and Windows 2008 must be restored using Windows PE 2.0. Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 require Windows PE 3.0 for ASR restore.
While performing an incremental backup using the snapdiff option on a Windows TSM Client, the CIFS default security type must have NTFS-Style. The CIFS security style can be set from either of the following methods:

FilerView:

Filer View -> CIFS -> Configure -> Security Use Group ID Permissions: No Default Security Style: ntfs

By issuing the following qtree command: qtree security /vol/nnn ntfs.

ANS2837E Failed to perform incremental backup operation using snapshot difference as the user id and password for NAS Filer have not been configured correctly.

In certain situations, Internet Explorer 7 fails to connect to the dsmcad. An exception will be reported and the connection will fail if the dsmcad is configured for COMMMethod TCPip and and IPv6 address is used for the address in Internet Explorer 7. To correct this problem, use an IPv4 address.
Installation Path Limitation

The TSM Client utilizes the Microsoft Windows Installer. Currently, there is an installation path limitation of 256 bytes.

Single Byte character sets use 1 byte per character
Double Byte character sets use 2 bytes per character

Changing TSM features or components using the "Programs and Features" "Change" process

On Windows Vista, the mechanism for changing installed TSM client components fails. The following error is reported:

1: Failed to install ISKernel Files. Make sure you have appropriate privileges on this machine.The failure occurs when you change the TSM install from the "Programs and Features" section of the control panel. To work around this problem, run the TSM Client setup.exe from the extracted image (default placement is c:\tsm_images), or start the CD-ROM and choose the client installation. Another alternative is to completely uninstall the client, then reinstall the client with the features that you want.

Windows Server 2003 - backup/restore system state

When restoring an inactive version of DHCP, you must also restore the corresponding inactive version of the System State. Otherwise the DHCP service will not start.

VSS image backup might fail after a VSS image restore on small volumes (about 500 MB).

On Windows Vista and later operating systems, VSS stores snapshot data on the volume on which the snapshot is being taken. This data located in the "System Volume Information" directory. On a 500 MB disk it takes about 350 MB to create the snapshot. TSM backs up only used blocks during the image backup. The data internal to VSS is also saved as part of the image. During an image restore, TSM recovers all image data. In this case, a second VSS image backup is not possible because of the lack of free space on the hard disk. VSS cannot create a snapshot for TSM due to the lack of space.

Euro symbol (?) support

The euro symbol does not display correctly in the command-line client. This is a Microsoft Windows limitation since the OS does not officially have a euro symbol-compatible code page (for example, cp858). In order to enable this support, you must first contact Microsoft for the cp858 file (c_858.nls) and install it under c:\WINNT\System32\ (or wherever your Windows directory is located). Then you need to modify the registry. IMPORTANT: The registry editor requires extreme accuracy. If you are not accustomed to editing the registry, ask your Windows administrator to make this change for you.

To enable support for the 858 code page, do the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ Nls\ CodePage

c_858.nls

To enable support for the Latin 1 code page, do the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ Nls\ CodePage

c_850.nls

File names with Greek polytonic key combinations and Windows Vista

File names with Greek polytonic key combinations, specifically Ypogegrammeni and Prosgegrammeni diacritic marks, will always be backed up by the the backup-archive client during incremental backup even if the file has not changed. The problem is due to inaccuracies in the case folding rules for these characters. The problem only occurs on Windows Vista and not other Microsoft operating systems. A problem report has been opened with Microsoft to correct this behavior.

The problem will occur with characters which occupy the Unicode code points U+1F88 through U+1FF3. Note that these characters represent a very specific subset of Greek characters and will most likely not occur in file names.

ANS1334W message during system drive restore on Windows Vista

It is normal to see many warnings while attempting to restore junction points on the system drive. In Windows Vista, the default location of the user data has changed. To enable interoperability with older applications, Microsoft created junction points at the deprecated locations to point to the new locations. For example "C:\Documents and Settings" is now a junction point that points to "C:\Users". It is expected to have many junction points in the user data folder.

Restore system state on Windows Vista failed with RC 4323 when running as a backup operator

When running as a backup operator, RegUnLoadKeyEx() returns access denied error (RC 5) during the merge process of the registry key. This causes the TSM client to fail to replace the system hive of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Use the administrator account to restore the system state instead. Backup of the system state using the backup operator still works. This problem does not occur for the Windows 2003 client. Backup and restore of the system state on Windows 2003 using the backup operator works. The problem has been reported to Microsoft.

When running an incremental backup with a UNC file specification, omit the wildcard "*" at the end of the specification. Otherwise the root directory will not be backed up.
Restoring from a backupset from a 3570 tape library attached to the client system is not supported.
The Web Client applet runs as a snap-in on Microsoft Management Console when the Web Client agent is installed on Windows platforms only. The Web Client applet does not work in Microsoft Management Console for Web Client agents installed on non-Windows machines.
When using the Web client, there are certain situations where the "Action Complete" dialog will be obscured from view and unselectable via the Windows task bar, causing other windows on top of it to become unclickable until this dialog is closed. To circumvent this problem, use the Task Manager or the "Alt-Tab" keys to bring the "Action Complete" dialog to the foreground so it can be closed. Once this dialog is closed, the other open dialogs will become accessible.
When installing the TSM scheduler service while the TSM server is down or otherwise unreachable, the node password will not be stored on the client computer. Without a stored password, the scheduler service cannot connect to the TSM server. To resolve this, after the TSM server becomes available, use the command line or GUI client to connect to the server, and enter the password when prompted. This will cause the password to be stored on the client computer, allowing the scheduler service to authenticate with the server.

This problem might occur when you are setting up a scheduler running through a firewall using the server-initiated sessions. In this case, start the scheduler from the command line (dsmc schedule) and enter the node's password when prompted. After the password is updated, stop the command line scheduler (press the 'q' key twice), then restart the scheduler service.

After an image has been restored to a plain file using the -imagetofile option with the "restore image" command, a data copy utility will be needed to transfer the image data from the file to a disk volume. While IBM does not provide such a utility, there are several ports of the UNIX "dd" command available for Windows. You can get one of those ports here:

http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite/dd.htm

c:\> dd if=x.img of=\\.\x: bs=1M

UNC names are not allowed if the local system account is set to logon
Restoring the system state

Starting with the 5.4.0 TSM client, files that are protected by the System File Protection (SFP) are restored to temporary files and replaced on reboot. Any in-use system files are also restored to temporary files and replaced on reboot. The following files have been identified by Microsoft as ones that cannot be restored:

Ctl3dv2.dll DtcSetup.exe NtDll.dll Smss.exe

You will see temporary files for those that can not be restored on your machine after the reboot because they cannot be renamed to the original file names. The names of the temporary files will begin with "$TSMxxx.orginal_name". In addition to these files, the following have been identified on Windows 2003 SP1 that they cannot be restored if the file on the machine is exactly the same as the restored file. This is a problem on Windows 2003 SP1 only and not on Windows 2003 R2.

kbdal.dll, kbdaze.dll, kbdazel.dll, kbdblr.dll, kbdbu.dll, kbdcr.dll, kbdcz.dll, kbdcz1.dll, kbdcz2.dll, kbdest.dll, kbdgkl.dll, kbdhe.dll, kbdhe220.dll, kbdhe319.dll, kbdhela2.dll, kbdhela3.dll, kbdhept.dll, kbdhu.dll, kbdhu1.dll, kbdkaz.dll, kbdkyr.dll, kbdlt.dll, kbdlt1.dll, kbdlv.dll, kbdlv1.dll, kbdmon.dll, kbdpl.dll, kbdpl1.dll, kbdro.dll, kbdru.dll, kbdru1.dll, kbdsl.dll, kbdsl1.dll, kbdtat.dll, kbdtuf.dll, kbdtuq.dll, kbdur.dll, kbduzb.dll, kbdycc.dll, kbdycl.dll

On Windows Vista, in addition to the ones identified by Microsoft, locale.nls cannot be restored. These files are hard links to the files in the Windows\winsxs directory. Therefore, you will see at least two temporary files of locale.nls, two temporary files of smss.exe, and so on.

Even though these files cannot be restored, this does not harm to your operating system. The temporary files TSM created can be deleted with the proper permissions.

Windows GUI is unresponsive during large retrieve operations

Currently there is a problem when starting a retrieve operation from the main window. The client appears to be unresponsive, but it is still processing information that is received from the server. The client will respond when the information has been processed.

Windows GUI Configuration Wizard

The Windows GUI Configuration Wizard for creating a service does not properly set up a service when the user selects the option to run the service under a different user account. The issue is that on Windows, the user that runs the service needs to be granted the "Logon as a service" security right and that is not being setup. You can avoid this problem by going into the MMC services panel and re-entering the users password, after which Windows automatically grants the required right to that user.

Windows GUI local backupset restore

If you do not select a backupset location after being prompted, you will receive the "Operation stopped by user" error message.

Windows GUI Preference Editor

In the Windows GUI preference editor Diagnostic tab, the warning is not removed from the filename box when tracing is disabled and an error exists.

Web Client performance workaround

Disable Java caching from the Java Control Panel to help improve performance on the Web client on the browser machine.

TSM Client Automatic Deployment known problems and limitations

Client installation images and temporary files are not removed after an automatic restart

After the client deployment, the deployment manager tries to remove the self-extracting installation images and temporary files. However, if the deployment manager automatically restarts the client computer, the reboot interrupts the cleanup and the self-extracting images and temporary files are not removed. The deployment status will be "Success".

A client deployment requires a reschedule if the deployment process missed the set start time

To ensure all system resources are released before the new client installation, the client deployment utilizes a two-step process:

However, if the start time is missed, the deployment status is "Unknown" and the ANE4252E message is logged in the setup.log file. The client deployment requires a reschedule.

A client deployment requires a reschedule if the extraction of the installation image stalls

If the extraction of the installation image takes longer than 10 minutes, the deployment status is "Stopped", and the client deployment requires a reschedule.

The client deployment status is "Failed" with exit code 259 if the installation takes more than one hour

If the installation of the new client takes longer than one hour, the deployment manager times out with a deployment status of "Failed" and Microsoft installer return code 259, which indicates that no data is available. Check the installBA.log for the actual installation result.

Intermittent problem with Active Directory individual object restore

Active Directory queries ("query adobjects" command) and restores ("restore adobjects" command) can occasionally fail. In case of failure, the following error error message might be issued:

ANS5821E Cannot connect to Active Directory.

A retry of the operation should resolve the issue. If you see it constantly failing after several retries, contact TSM support.

Insufficient space in Javaheap

If the following messages are received from Java Virtual Machine (JVM) while running DSM executable:

JVMST109: Insufficient space in Javaheap to satisfy allocation request JVMDG217: Dump Handler is Processing OutOfMemory - Please Wait. JVMDG315: JVM Requesting Heap dump file

dsm -Xmx256m

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Windows 32-bit client known problems and limitations

Windows 2003 automated system recovery (ASR)

In rare occurrences, the TSM ASR restore process proceeds before the TSM Client installation has completed. This issue has only exhibited itself on Windows 2003 systems using a minimal hardware configuration. The following workaround can be used to complete the process:

Change statement "REM pause" to "pause"

Moving a directory from Windows Explorer using cut and paste can result in the old and new directories not being properly backed up or expired during a journal based backup under certain circumstances.

A directory move operation can be done from a command prompt with the move or rename command, or from Windows Explorer using drag and drop or cut and paste.

The TSM Journal daemon assumes that a "move directory" operation has occurred when a delete directory operation is followed immediately by a create directory operation.

If a delete directory operation is not followed by a create directory operation (for the same directory), the delete operation is assumed to be for a single directory object and not as the result of a move operation.

For a move operation, journal based backup must force a normal incremental backup of both directories in order to ensure that all files in the deleted directory are expired correctly, and that all files in the destination directory are backed up correctly.

For a single directory delete operation, only the directory itself is expired on the TSM server.

Since it is possible to perform other operations between the time a Windows Explorer directory cut operation is performed and when the follow-on paste operation is performed, the TSM Journal daemon might not correctly identify the operation as a directory "move" operation.

Restoring files causes the journal to record the change activity. If the restore is using the active backup copy, the change record is deleted from the journal. When restoring with a backupset, it is not possible (without querying the server) to know if the copy of the file is the active backup copy. The net result is that if the next incremental backup is done using the journal, these files will be backed up again. This can be avoided by performing an incremental with the -NOJOURNAL option.
Known problems with anti-virus software

Some anti-virus software can incorrectly generate change notifications to the TSM journal service, causing files that have not changed to be incorrectly backed up during journal based backup.

Development is currently working with virus protection vendors to fix these problems. If you see these problems with virus protection vendors not listed below, report the problem to your virus protection software vendor or IBM support.

Symantec Norton Anti-Virus Corporate Edition (Nav)

Symantec has implemented an interim fix which eliminates most incorrect change notifications generated during Nav scan processing.

This interim fix was incorporated into Nav CE version 7.51 and must be obtained from Symantec technical support.

The complete fix is included in Norton Anti-Virus Corporate Edition 8.0 and higher.

Customers should refer to Knowledge Base article 4011082926 and the CRT STS number (Defect 362082, Incident 421919).

Note that the initial interim fix still generates some incorrect notifications for attribute (read-only, archive, etc) bitmask changes, and requires a registry setting for NAV and a Journal Based Backup .ini file setting.

Note that this fix will prevent Nav from preserving the last access timestamp on any scanned objects.

The Journal Based Backup service must also be configured to not generate change notifications for last accessed timestamp changes and attribute bitmask changes.

Two changes must be made to enable this fix:

HKLM\Software\Intel\LANDesk\VirusProtect6\CurrentVersion NoFileMod = 1

This setting prevents Nav from caching and restoring timestamps and security information during scan processing.

[JournaledFileSystemSettings] NotifyFilter=0x15b

This setting will generate change notifications for the following type of change activity:

Name changes (creations, deletions, and renames)
Size changes
Modification timestamp changes
Security (acl) changes

Restoring data with multiple TSM encryption keys

If you need to restore a group of files that have been encrypted by TSM with more than one encrypt key for the group, the files might not be restored. The following error message will be logged in dsmerror.log:

ANS4014E Error processing '\\spike\c$\want\dollar': unknown system error (150) encountered. Program ending.

The restore will continue, but the file will not be restored. You need to re-submit the restore request to restore the individual file.

Windows 32-bit and 64-bit interoperability

Windows 32-bit applications have a different HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE registry tree from 64-bit applications. This means that the 32-bit and 64-bit TSM API are mutually exclusive and their passwords will be stored in different locations in the registry tree. Thus the 32-bit API will not be able to access the password entries generated by the 64-bit API.

For example:

The 64-bit BA client package will only install a 64-bit scheduler. But another application could be using the 32-bit API. If the scheduler and application share the same node name, then the generated passwords stored in the registry in encrypted form could become out of sync. If the application changes the password, the 32-bit portion of the registry will be updated with the new password, but the 64-bit portion of the registry will not reflect this change.

To alleviate password synchronization issues between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows clients, use a separate node name for each client.

Windows image backup and restore

The TSM client can back up a consistent snapshot of a volume, but it cannot guarantee consistency of applications that store data on multiple (different) volumes. For example, the TSM client can back up the image on drive F:, but if Application A keeps its main data files on drive F: and its log files are on drive G:, when the TSM client restores drive F: the data files might not be in sync with whatever changes might have gone into the log files on drive G: since the image backup of drive F:.

If an unrecoverable read failure occurs during image backup, the following message is displayed:

ANS0322E (RC4161) no text available for this return code.

Bad Sectors on a drive

If part of the volume resides on an area of the drive with bad sectors TSM will skip those sectors while sending image data to the server, displaying the warning message ANS2026W. In some rare cases an attempt to read data from bad sectors may lead to device read failure with image backup failing. If this is the case the possible workarounds are:

Problems migrating from 32-bit to 64-bit

The restore of system state data backed up from 32-bit Windows environments to 64-bit Windows environments (and vice versa) is not supported.

The restore of DFS links backed up from 32-bit Windows environments to 64-bit Windows environments (and vice versa) is not supported.

When migrating from 32-bit Windows to 64-bit Windows, it is recommended that you avoid backing up the 64-bit system state data into the same file spaces containing the 32-bit system state data. This precludes inadvertently restoring the 32-bit data, which is incompatible with 64-bit Windows.

To avoid commingling the data, you can do either of the following before migrating to 64-bit Windows:

Ask your TSM administrator to rename the existing file spaces. Once the migration is complete and you have backups of the 64-bit system object or system state data, your TSM administrator can delete the renamed file spaces. Since the 32-bit system state data must not be restored to 64-bit Windows, there is little reason to retain the data.
File spaces to rename include one or more of the following:

SYSTEM STATE
SYSTEM SERVICES
ASR

Ask your TSM administrator to delete the existing file spaces (listed above) for your node.

Connecting to server SSL port by mistake

If a client connects to SSL port on the server but the client doesn't have SSL enabled, the client would seem to hang until the session times out on the server.

The client doesn't have a way to tell whether server is expecting SSL or not. If you forget to enable SSL on the client, it will try to connect with regular (non-SSL) session to server's SSL port. The connection will "hang" because both client and server would wait on expected responses from each other.

To avoid this situation, make sure you set SSL option to "yes" along with setting the TCPPort to server's SSL port.

Browsing Web Client help issue

When browsing Web Client help, the following error message might be logged in the dsmerror.log on the machine where the TSM Client Acceptor resides:

Error reading http request.

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Windows 64-bit client known problems and limitations

Windows Vista (x64) and special language characters

Windows Vista (x64) might not correctly display certain characters in non-English settings when running command line programs (dsmc and dsmadmc). It will work correctly with the code page set to 1252. To change the code page on a command prompt, enter the command chcp 1252

TSM Backup-Archive Client FTP package on Windows Vista on x64

Currently there is a problem when you extract the TSM Backup-Archive Client Windows x64 FTP package on Windows Vista. The following error might be displayed:

"The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information to see whether you need an x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher."

Follow these steps to install the package:

This issue will be addressed in a future TSM BA Client release.

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VMware backup known problems and limitations

VMware off-host Full VM backup using vStorage APIs

Transport mode does not failover

Platform string set to "TDP VMware"

When the Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments (TSM for VE) license file is installed on a VMware vStorage Backup server, the platform string stored on the TSM server will be set to "TDP VMware" for any nodename used on that machine since that machine is licensed for TSM for VE; This platform string can be used in the context of PVU calculations. If a nodename is being used to backup the machine with standard Backup-Archive client functions (e.g., file-level or image backup), then this platform string should be interpreted as a Backup-Archive client for the purposes of PVU calculations.
VMware Change Block Tracking (CBT) support for content-aware backups

TSM full VM backup will use VMware Change Block Tracking (CBT) support if available to enable content-aware (used-block only) backups. VMware CBT requires ESX 4.0 or later host (with virtual hardware 7). TSM will turn on CBT on the first TSM backup of the virtual machine. TSM full VM backup does support virtual machines that do not support CBT, for example on ESX 3.5 host. In this case, both used and unused areas of the disk will be backed up and an informational message will be logged to the dsmerror.log. The TSM GUI Backup dialog or command line 'dsmc show vm all' will display the CBT status.
RDM Physical Compatibility Mode and Independent disks

Backups are not supported for virtual machines that have either independent disks (either persistent or non-persistent), or that have raw device mapping (RDM) disks configured in physical compatibility mode. RDM disk configured in virtual compatibility mode are supported.

In previous releases, attempting to back up a virtual machine that included one of these disks would fail. Two options have been added to allow the virtual mskiprd skioachine backup to succeed, but skip the backup of these disks. Also on restore, these disks will not be restored.

The new options are "VMPROCESSVMWITHPRDM=NO/YES" and "VMPROCESSVMWITHINDEPENDENTDISK=NO/YES". The default for these options is "NO", meaning the virtual machine will fail to backup. If both types of disks are included in the virtual machine, then both options must be specified and set to "YES" for the backup to succeed.

Templates and virtual machines deployed as vApps

The Tivoli Storage Manager Backup-Archive Client cannot back up vCenter virtual machine templates. Also, virtual machines that are deployed as vApps are not included in full VM backups.

Scheduler service running as "Local System Account" can consume large amounts of memory

Running the TSM scheduler as a Windows service running as "Local System Account" can consume large amounts of memory when processing full VM backups using vStorage APIs (TSM server define schedule action=BACKUP subaction=VM when vmbackuptype=FULLVM and vmfulltype=VSTOR). When run on a backup proxy with multiple scheduler services, the memory used on a single scheduler service process can jump to 800 MB when processing 20-30 VMs. This condition is not seen on every backup attempt. When running multiple scheduler services, for example 8-10, on a single backup proxy and more than a single process sees the increased memory usage, the performance of the entire backup and system can be effected.

Temporary fix: Setup the TSM scheduler to run as a Windows service running as "Administrator Account". IBM is working with VMware for a fix to run as "Local System Account".

Client-side deduplication performance and return code=254

VMware off-host full VM backups with client-side deduplication enabled fails with return code=254.

Error message: ANS7899E The client referenced a deduplicated extent that does not exist on the TSM server.

Fix: When running heavy backup loads on the TSM server, if a VM backup fails multiple times with RC=254 or an increase backup run time is noticed when client-side deduplication is enabled, disable client-side deduplication for the VMware backup proxy node. This issue does not occur when using server-side deduplication.

Incorrect level of the VMware Tools

When a TSM backup VM command fails consistently with the following error in the dsmerror.log, an incorrect level of the VMware Tools might have been installed inside the guest OS:

ANS9365E VMware vStorage API error. TSM function name : visdkWaitForTask TSM file : vmvisdk.cpp (2811) API return code : 78 API error message : Cannot create a quiesced snapshot because the create snapshot operation exceeded the time quielimit for holding off I/O in the frozen virtual machine.

Fix: It might be necessary to uninstall and re-install the latest version of VMware Tools on the guest OS virtual machine.

If the problem persist, refer to the following VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article for detailed information and solution:

Title: "Cannot create a quiesced snapshot because the snapshot operation exceeded the time limit for holding off I/O in the frozen virtual machine".

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1018194

Long running snapshot delete

A TSM backup VM command can fail if the delete snapshot of a failed prior run requires a longer timeout value than one set by the VMware vCenter. The following error might be logged in dsmerror.log as a result of this timeout value that is exceeded by the vStorage API:

ANS9365E VMware vStorage API error, API error message: "server refused connection", API return code:14009,

Fix: The snapshot delete will continue to be processed. The next backup attempt should succeed.

Change Block Tracking (CBT) needs reset

When a TSM Backup VM fails with one of the following warning messages in the dsmerror.log:

ANS9365E VMware vStorage API error. TSM function name : visdkQueryChangedDiskAreas TSM file : vmvisdk.cpp (3592) API return code : 12 API error message : SOAP 1.1 fault: "":ServerFaultCode[no subcode]"A specified parameter was not correct. deviceKey" ANS9365E VMware vStorage API error. TSM function name : visdkPrintSOAPError TSM file : vmvisdk.cpp (885) API return code : 12 API error message : SOAP 1.1 fault: "":ServerFaultCode[no subcode]"Error caused by file /vmfs/volumes/4ade85fd-81f49624-57f5-000e0cdd0d21/winxp-32/winxp-32.vmdk"

It might be necessary to reset the VMware Change Block Tracking (CBT) for the virtual machine.

This error can occur if the ESX server is shut down or rebooted without first entering maintenance mode. It can also occur when a backup is attempted through both the ESX Server and vCenter at the same time for the same VM. Change Block Tracking is needed by TSM to back up content-aware (used-block only areas of the disk). If CBT is in this failed state, TSM will continue with the backup, and will back up the used and unused areas of the disk.

Fix: Run a single TSM backup with the testflag vmbackup_cbt_reset.

Example: dsmc backup vm 'myvm' -testflag=vmbackup_cbt_reset.

This testflag will require a snapshot and snapshot delete to turn off CBT and a second snapshot to turn on CBT. Therefore, the testflag should not be set permanently as it could impact backup performance.

VMware Transports(SAN, hotadd, NBDSSL, NBD) - VMVSTORTRANSPORT option

Use the VMVSTORTRANSPORT option with the backup VM or restore VM command to specify the transport to be used with the vStorage API for Data Protection(VADP). The transport determines how VADP accesses virtual disk data. Valid transports include any order or combination of SAN, hotadd, NBDSSL, and NBD specified separated by a colon. The first transport in the list that is available in the environment will be used. NBD or network based data transfer is the LAN transport and should be available in all environments. It is not necessary to set this option. The default value is to use the VADP order which is currently defined as "san:hotadd:nbdssl:nbd". This option is passed directly to the VADP API.

Place the VMVSTORTRANSPORT option in the client options file (dsm.opt). Some common examples are as follows:

Current default order of transports when none is specified. VMVSTORTRANSPORT san:hotadd:nbdssl:nbd When the SAN path is temporarily unavailable, fail the backup so as not to impact the LAN. VMVSTORTRANSPORT san Disable the use of hotAdd when running backup server inside VM. VMVSTORTRANSPORT nbdssl:nbd Select NBD even when NBDSSL is available for better performance. VMVSTORTRANSPORT nbd

Restore to ESX server instead of to the vCenter

Restoring a virtual machine to a ESX server, when that VM was backed up from vCenter, requires -datacenter=ha-datacenter parameter on the restore command.

"Clear lazy zero" is repeated in VMware vCenter task during VM Restore

When performing a virtual machine restore using vSphere 4.0 and when using SAN transport, the message "Clear lazy zero" is repeated in the "recent tasks" section of the VMware vSphere console, and the performance of the restore drops. VMware, instead of zeroing a VMDK as it is created, instead sets the lazy zero bit on each block in the VMDK so that it can be cleared at a later time. To avoid the performance issue, perform a restore to the ESX server instead of a vCenter.

Slow restore using SAN transport

Although VM backups using SAN as transport is very fast, VM restores using SAN is usually the slowest of all transports. This problem is more prevalent when thin disks are used, and VMware recommends using NBDSSL for restores when thin disks are involved.

See the following VMware KB article for more detailed information (Best practices when using SAN transport for backup and restore):

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1035096

Thin-provisioned disk

There is a know problem in VMware vSphere 4 where a snapshot disk does not show the correct thin- or thick-provisioned trait based on the actual disk's property. As a result, when a backup of a virtual machine with a thin-provisioned disk set in the disk properties is performed, TSM is unable to save the thin-provisioned disk attribute. Since this attribute is not saved, TSM is unable to restore the disk as thin-provisioned, but instead will restore the disk using the thick-provisioned disk attribute.

See the following VMware KB article for detailed information:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1020137

Note: VMware vSphere 5 provides the ability to get the thin- and thick-provisioned trait, so this attribute will be saved during a backup. The default restore behavior is to still restore all disks as thick, even if they were thin at the time the virtual machine was backed up. You can override this behavior by specifying the testflag VMRESTOR_DONT_FORCE_THICK. Specifying this testflag will retain the original thin- or thick-provisioned trait, but only if TSM was able to get that attribute at the time of the backup.

There is also a known issue with the VMware VDDK where thin disks being restored to a local datastore, using the VMRESTOR_DONT_FORCE_THICK testflag, will incorrectly try to use the SAN transport. To restore thin disks in this situation, a combination of the testflag VMRESTOR_DONT_FORCE_THICK and the "VMVSTORTRANSPORT nbdssl:nbd" (or any acceptable values excluding "san") should be used. Since "san" is not in the list of transports to use, it will not be incorrectly chosen when restoring thin disks to a local datastore.

Solution for write-protected SAN on Windows Server 2008 proxy

From VMware VDDK 1.2.1 and VDDK 5.0 Release Notes:

Solution for write-protected SAN on Windows Server 2008 proxy
When using SAN Transport or Hot Add mode on a Windows Server 2008 proxy, make sure to set the Windows SAN policy to "Online All" using Microsoft Windows DISKPART utility, otherwise writes produce error message:

"ANS9365E VMware vStroage API error, API rc 1, API error message:Unknown error".

diskpart san policy OnlineAll exit

See the following VMware KB article for detailed information:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1035096

For Hot Add mode, if setting the SAN policy to "Online All" does not resolve this issue, it might be necessary to also disable automount to prevent Windows from automatically mounting and assigning driver letters to the volumes added for the Hot Add transport. This can be done by issuing the following commands from diskpart:

diskpart automount disable automount scrub exit

English/7bit ASCII virtual machine names

There are some limitations of the VMware vStorage APIs and in TSM processing virtual machines with non-English/7bit ASCII characters in the name. Tivoli Storage Manager support for VMware backup and restore is limited to English virtual machine names. Names using other languages is not supported at this time.

VMware datastore space issues for backups

When backing up a VM, a snapshot of the VM is taken and usually stored in the same datastore as the virtual hard disk that is being backed up. If there is not enough space in the datastore for this snapshot, an error will occur. If the VM is not running, the error message that is returned will be like the following message:

'API error message : File testVM/testVM.vmx is larger than the maximum size supported by datastore[DataStore1_LUN1_500GB]'.

'API error message : Cannot create a quiesced snapshot because the create snapshot operation exceeded the time limit for holding off I/O in the frozen virtual machine.'

See the following VMware KB article for more detailed information:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1012384

Virtual machine names containing the comma or semi-colon characters

Tivoli Storage Manager uses the ',' (comma) as the virtual machine name separator character, and the ';' (semi-colon) character as the keyword separator when specifying a list of virtual machines to back up. As a result, it is not possible to explicitly specify a virtual machine name that contains either of these characters. Virtual machine names containing these characters can be backed up implicitly if they are included by one of the VM keywords.

Backing up the backup proxy

It is possible for a backup proxy running in a virtual machine to back itself up, but there are some known issues where the backup might fail because a snapshot cannot be created. The backup will fail with the message:

"Cannot create a quiesced snapshot because the snapshot operation exceeded the time limit for holding off I/O in the frozen virtual machine".

It might be possible to prevent this message by modifying how a part of the virtual machine is quiesced. It is possible to configure the virtual machine so that application data is not quiesced, while still allowing the file system to be quiesced. The implication to this is that application data might not be flushed to disk before the snapshot is take. File system data will still be flushed, and the I/O held while the snapshot is being taken.

See VMware KB for more detailed information:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1030943

Backing up Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 virtual machines containing dynamic disks

Backing up Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 virtual machines that contain dynamic disks can result in the dynamic disks being detached from Windows at the end of the backup. The dynamic disks are still intact and can be reconnected to Windows.

This problem occurs because application-consistent quiescing is performed when the snapshot is taken during the backup process. For application-consistent quiescing to be available on Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2, one of the conditions that Windows requires is that the virtual machine must not use dynamic disks. This is because VMware uses a hardware provider to perform the VSS snapshot, and shadow copies created by hardware providers of volumes that reside on dynamic disks have a specific requirement that they cannot be imported onto the same system.

See the following Microsoft VSS topic for more detailed information:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384594%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

It might be possible to prevent this message by modifying how part of the virtual machine is quiesced. It is possible to configure the virtual machine so that application data is not quiesced, while still allowing the file system to be quiesced. The implication to this is that application data might not be flushed to disk before the snapshot is taken. File system data will still be flushed, and the I/O held while the snapshot is being taken.

See the following VMware KB article for more detailed information:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1031298

Restoring virtual machines backed up with TSM 6.3 from down-level clients is not supported

Virtual machines backed up using the 6.3 level of the TSM backup-archive client cannot be restored from down-level clients. This includes prior levels of the TSM backup-archive client, as well as prior levels of the TSM for Virtual Environments clients.

Backing up a virtual machine that has a TSM for Virtual Environments volume mounted

If the virtual machine being backed up is running TSM for VE (Virtual Environments), and has a TSM for VE volume mounted, the backup of that virtual machine might fail with the message:.

"Cannot create a quiesced snapshot because the snapshot operation exceeded the time limit for holding off I/O in the frozen virtual machine".

To allow the backup of this virtual machine to continue, unmount the volume from TSM for VE and retry the operation.

Avoid uses of / (slash), \ (backslash) or % (percent) in named elements (virtual machine names, datacenter names, folder names, and so on)

VMware allows the use of (/, \, %) but VMware internally stores each of these characters as an escape sequence. A slash is escaped as %2F or %2f, a backslash is escaped as %5C or %5c, and a percent is escaped as %25.

If one is using these special characters, then the escape sequence must be used to reference them in the TSM client.

For example, OurDatacenter\LevelOne becomes OurDatacenter%5cLevelOne

Message: "You do not have access rights to this file"

When a TSM backup VM command fails with the following error message in the dsmerror.log:

ANS9365E VMware vStorage API error. TSM function name : VixDiskLib_Open TSM file : vmvddksdk.cpp (1404) API return code : 13 API error message : You do not have access rights to this file

The following should be checked:

Powering on a restored Linux Guest VM with EFI boot enabled might fail. Manual steps are required in order to configure the guest VM to properly boot from the restored Linux EFI boot disk.

The following steps describe the procedure to successfully boot from a restored Linux EFI guest VM:

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VMware VI API known problems and limitations
Tivoli Storage Manager client does not display virtual machines in Virtual Center linked mode. Tivoli Storage Manager development believes that this is a VMware issue. The VI API does not support Virtual Center in linked mode. You have to set up the backup proxy as it does today connecting each vCenter server. The Tivoli Storage Manager client supports connecting to one vCenter server at one time.

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TSM Client Configuration Wizard for Fastback Integration known problems and limitations

TSM FastBack V5.5.1 or later version is required

TSM FastBack Viewable Storage is not supported for Client Groups

When creating TSM FastBack Client Groups, use the selections from the server/volume panel. If you chose an entry from the Viewable Storage, you receive a FastBack warning message - FBSG10571 - recommending that this selection not be used. The TSM for FastBack integration will NOT work for any selections made from the Viewable Storage, and unpredictable results will occur if such a selection is made.

Unicode characters are not supported by FastBack

TSM FastBack does not support unicode characters, so when creating FastBack policy names, etc., be sure to avoid entering unicode characters. TSM Client Configuration Wizard for FastBack uses the names displayed by the FastBackShell "mount dump" command, so avoid any characters which appear differently when displayed via that command versus what is entered into the TSM FastBack Manager GUI. (Some UTF-8 characters may be formatted differently by FastBack for display purposes and will not work with the TSM Client Configuration Wizard for FastBack).

The TSM FastBack credential file is required On the FastBack installation drive, a directory named \FastBackTSMScripts must exist and must contain the credential.txt file for the TSM for FastBack integration. The TSM Client Configuration Wizard for FastBack will create subdirectories and script files in this directory, so care must be taken not to delete files that might be needed for subsequent scheduled TSM backups

On the FastBack installation drive, a directory named \FastBackTSMScripts must exist and contain the file credential.txt for the TSM for FastBack integration. The TSM for FastBack integration will create subdirectories and script files into this directory, so care must be taken not to delete files which may be needed for subsequent scheduled TSM backups.

Avoid FastBack Policy names that differ only by underscores and spaces

The subdirectories created for script files are named as follows:

\FastBackTSMScripts\Policy\server\volume (e.g. C:\FastBackTSMScripts\Policy_Name_1\TESTMACHINE\C)

To avoid problems with spaces appearing in these scripts, the directory names are created by converting any spaces ' ' to underscores '_'. Hence these two Policy names "Policy with spaces" and "Policy_with_spaces" will both be stored to the same directory and overwrite each other if both are used for the TSM Client Configuration Wizard for FastBack.

The "Schedule Start" and "Register FastBack Client as Client Node" pages that simplify the TSM schedule startup procedure are available for the Java GUI only.

These pages are not available if you use the wizard in the Web Client.

JDK Limitations for TSM Configuration Wizard for FastBack - Web Client version

The TSM Configuration Wizard for FastBack on the Web Client requires IBM SDK 1.5 or Sun JRE 1.6. IBM SDK 1.6 is not supported.

Resource Bundle Error Messages displayed in the dsmerror.log when running the wizard - Web Client version only

The following Resource Bundle Error messages might be displayed in dsmerror.log when running the Tivoli Storage Manager Configuration Wizard for FastBack from the Web Client:

Error opening input file com/ibm/ps/uil/nls/UilInternalResources_en.class

These errors do not affect the functioning of the Web Client wizard and can be ignored.

LVSA driver creates tsmlvsacache directory to store internal data. This directory is not excluded from image backup.

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[{"Product":{"code":"SSGSG7","label":"Tivoli Storage Manager"},"Business Unit":{"code":"BU058","label":"IBM Infrastructure w\/TPS"},"Component":"Client","Platform":[{"code":"PF033","label":"Windows"}],"Version":"6.3","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB26","label":"Storage"}}]

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IBM Tivoli Storage Manager V6.3 Windows backup-archive client known problems and limitations

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