vzdump scheduled backups not working for KVM guests

[theitsmith]

I've configured VZDump to run daily and to backup all VMs (which include KVM and LXC).

LXC containers backup without issues every time; KVM, however, does not.

My current KVM guests are Windows 10 Pro and Windows Server 2016. Both have enabled "Shutdown: Allow system to be shutdown without having to log on".

If I manually run a backup (by navigating to Node -> Backup and selecting Backup Now), it works fine--the VM shuts down, the backup starts, the VM is restored to a running state, the backup continues, and the email notification is sent when completed.

However, the scheduled vzdump backups of the same VMs result in the following error for each Windows VM (I haven't tried this with a non-Windows KVM VM, so not sure if this is specific to Windows or to KVM backups):

100 vm01 FAILED 00:10:02 command 'qm shutdown 100 --skiplock --keepActive --timeout 600' failed: exit code 255

I should also note that running

qm shutdown 100

from the CLI works fine as well.

Please advise.

 

[Andrea Carnevali]

Hi Theismith.
In your VM have you installed the VIRT-IO driver ?
You can find the ISO here.
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Windows_VirtIO_Drivers

 

[theitsmith]

Hi, thank you for the reply.

I have Red Hat's virtio drivers installed, but only what was necessary--viostor, NetKVM, Balloon. All other drivers loaded via Windows Update.

Is there a driver missing that is preventing ACPI shutdowns from working?

 

[tom]

I suggest you use qemu-guest-agent.

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Qemu-guest-agent

 

[theitsmith]

I suggest you use qemu-guest-agent.

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Qemu-guest-agent

Understand, I can give that a shot. Thank you.

However, I added another VM yesterday--a non-Windows VM, a BSD variant--and am seeing the same problem with that VM (its backup failed last night too with the same exact error). Assuming this problem is something to do with a QEMU guest agent, how can that be resolved with a BSD variant?

In both cases (Windows and OpenBSD), ACPI shutdown is enabled.

 

[theitsmith]

Installing the QEMU guest agent in Windows resolved this issue. Thank you.

However, what is the option for non-Windows guests that may not have a QEMU guest agent option available? That is, ACPI shutdown is the only option for some non-Windows guests.

More specifically, I'm running OpenBSD with a cloud provider (they're using KVM only) and it works fine. However, PVE ACPI shutdown doesn't seem to work.