Veeam 8 Error: Failed to open VDDK

If you don’t want to read the detail. To resolve the issue, remove the Basic / evaluation license from the vCenter Server License Manager and restart the VMware VirtualCenter Server service. Additional Information For more information about the VDDK Diagnostic Tool, see the VDDK documentation.

I needed a better solution for backing up my VMware virtual machines. Everyone I talked to had good things to say about Veeam. So I get a demo license and started to evaluate the product.

Installation was easy. Configuration was easy. Sparked a Windows 7 Profession 64-bit VM and tried to make a backup. Veeam choked with this error message:

Error: Failed to open VDDK disk [[netapp-2] win7-pro-64/win7-pro-64_1.vmdk] ( is read-only mode – [true] ) Failed to open VMDK.

I confirmed I was logged in as vsphere.localAdministrator

Logon attempt with parameters [VC/ESX: [vmlab.local];Port: 443;Login: [vsphere.localAdministrator];

My GoogleFu failed me. I did find a troubleshooting tip to remove vCenter from Veeam and add an ESXi host. Did that and Veeam worked! So that helped narrow the problem down to vCenter.

[24.02.2015 20:03:32] <  1488> dsk| WARN|VDDK logon has failed. Logon specification: [VC/ESX: [vmlab.local];Port: 443;Login: [[email protected]];VMX Spec: [moref=vm-898];Snapshot mor: [snapshot-2079];Transports: [hotadd];Read Only: [true]]. VMDK path: [[netapp-2] win7-pro-64/win7-pro-64_1.vmdk]. Read only mode: [true].
[24.02.2015 20:03:32] <  1488> dsk| >>  |VDDK error: 16064.The host is not licensed for this feature
[24.02.2015 20:03:32] <  1488> dsk| >>  |Failed to open VMDK.