Xenserver 7, VDI copy action failed, VDI's now missing

[Resolve IT]

When attempting to move a VDI's to a new SR, the copy failed for unknown reasons with the error "The VDI copy action has failed". Now the disk is missing from the VM storage list, will not show up on either the old SR nor new, and does not show in an xe sr-list.

 

I do see a "base copy" VDI with the same size as the original VDI, but it is RO.

 

How do I go about recovering from this? Can I make the base copy rw and re-mount that on my VM?

 

I'm really in a bind here because the backups i have of the VM are a day out of date.

 

Please help!

[Jiri Cerny]

Hello,

which version of XenServer do you have? What about your SRs - LVM or Ext3? 

 

Alan is right, there was a bug: https://bugs.xenserver.org/browse/XSO-614

Fixed by XS70E017.

 

Jiri

[Alan Lantz]

Seems like I remember that being a known issue, is your XenServer fully up to date on patches? But yes, this is why I really don't like doing storage moves of any kind. There is the possibility of data loss. I can't remember if a hotfixes addresses this specifically or not, but it does sound familiar. I'm afraid there is likely no way to recover.

 

--Alan--

[Resolve IT]

This does appear to be the bug mentioned. I spent a good amount of time trying to make the Base Image usable, but to no avail. Ended up having to restore from my SR's snapshots.

[Alan Lantz]

Unbelievable.  I just ran into this bug myself. Whats odd is it didn't delete the vdi was moving, it instead chose to remove another vdi associated with the VM. Fortunately its a backup that I can recreate, but will still be a PITA. i am just floored that this wasn't caught sooner. Deleted data is BAD.

 

--Alan--

 

[Jiri Cerny]

Hello Alan,

that's very sad. Good luck with restoration proces;)

 

Could you describe conditions of your fail? Hadn't XS70E017 installed? You did Storage XenMotion from local SR to iSCSI/NFS?

 

Thanks

Jiri

[Alan Lantz]

On this particular pool I was only up to 11 so 17 wasn't installed. I was doing a Storage XenMotion from iSCSI LUN to iSCSI LUN.

Glad it was just a backup VM !!! I have it recovered and doing VM backups as we speak.

 

--Alan--

[Tobias Kreidl]

Never underestimate the importance of frequent, reliable backups! Glad to hear you've recovered your losses, Alan!

 

-=Tobias

[Steve Copley]

I have just fallen victim to this bug and really shocked that its remained in the base image. Our client has just upgraded from 6.2 to 7.0. Was insufficient free space on the storage to take snapshots to live migrate VMs so the VM was shut down and attempted to move. XenCenter attempted to do a snapshot move even with the VM offline, with insufficient space, the move was aborted and the VDI is gone.

 

Please tell me there is a way to recover and attach the VDI. I cannot believe such a serious bug is left available to new customers.

[Alan Lantz]

4 and 17 are both major hotfixes with regards to storage. No movement of VM's should be performed until systems are up to date. Sorry to see you have lost a VDI. In our case we do storage snapshots as well so I was able to recover. There could possibly be a way to recover a deleted VDI, but I'm not savvy enough to attempt that.

 

--Alan--

[System Administrator1709154119]

I just ran into this bug in v7.6!

 

I had just created a new template and was creating several new VMs from it.  Suddenly it complained that the VDI copy failed, and now I have discovered that the VDI I spent half a day preparing is now simply gone!

 

This is inexcusable!

 

[Alan Lantz]

Thats weird/discouraging. I haven't heard/seen anyone else mention this.  Can you get one of those 

VM's and re-create your template ? Nothing worse than loss of data.

 

--Alan--

 

[System Administrator1709154119]

I did.  Luckily I hadn't begun customizing the specific VM so I was able to convert that back to a new template.

 

But between this and my constant issues with the Conversion Manager tool (it cannot migrate Centos 6 VMs, in direct contradiction to their documentation) I have to say that I'm becoming very frustrated with XenServer.  It doesn't appear that Citrix is taking their product very seriously.  No wonder Amazon dropped them.

[Alan Lantz]

I really try hard not to bash XenServer on their own forums, but reluctantly I agree that its becoming more and more difficult to defend the product line. 

 

--Alan--