Alert! Alerte! Achtung! Critical bug in vSphere 6

Backing up VMs in vSphere 6 can cause data loss in your backups! Earlier I wrote about critical bug with vSphere 5.5 update 3 related to backups which was absolutely unacceptable and here we go again…

Here’s symptoms from VMware’s KB:

When running virtual machine backups which utilize Changed Block Tracking (CBT) in ESXi 6.0, you experience these symptoms:
The CBT API call QueryDiskChangedAreas() API call can sometimes return incorrect changed sectors, which results in inconsistent incremental virtual machine backups.
Inconsistent virtual machine backups

Of course, no fix yet but let’s take a look at the joke of a workarounds they suggest:
– downgrade ESXi to version 5.5 and change VM hardware version to 10
– Shutdown VM before doing incremental backup
– Do full backup daily instead of incremental
Really? Do you think any of these solution are applicable in production environment? Ha ha…

VMware’s KB 2136854
I honestly feel horrible for IT Professionals caught by poor QA from VMware, yet again.

Update: 11/26/2015: VMware released patch to fix it: ESXi600-201511001

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