“Storage connection failure” alarm during backup/restore operation involving Storage Snapshot.

Backup from Storage Snapshots

In an environment where an initiator/storage group consists of both the ESXi hosts and the Veeam Backup Proxies, Veeam will use the existing initiator/storage group instead of creating a new group. This causes the storage snapshot that is exported to the proxy to become visible to the ESXi hosts. When the job completes, the storage snapshot is then unexported and deleted. During this time, the ESXi hosts see the storage snapshot (it isn’t mounted), and when the storage snapshot suddenly disappears triggers the event in VMware which in turn triggers the alarm in Veeam ONE.

Restore from Storage Snapshots

During the restore operation, a clone of the selected storage snapshot is created and mounted to the user-selected ESXi host as a new volume. Once the restore is completed, Veeam Backup & Replication issues a command to the storage system. The storage system deletes the snapshot copy from the ESXi host and performs cleanup operations. This removal of the storage is what causes ESXi to trigger the event which in turn triggers Veeam ONE to display the alarm.

Backup from Storage Snapshots

To prevent the ESXi hosts from seeing the Storage Snapshots that are exported to the Veeam Backup Proxy, it is advisable to create a separate initiator group for backup proxies only.

Restore from Storage Snapshots

As the alarm triggered within Veeam ONE is related to an event within the VMware environment, the only way to prevent the alarm in Veeam ONE from triggering is to schedule alarm suppression when a restore occurs.

See more details of how to suppress the alarms.