Veeam Backup and Replication on ESXi 4.1: “Input string was not in a correct format.” -> Upgrade to 4.1.2

I’m in the process of moving the VMs on my ESX 3.5 box to an ESXi 4.1 box (so I can get ESXi 4.1 installed on the ESX 3.5 box).
I tried copying over the files using the free Veeam Backup and FastSCP 3.0.2.270, but that obviously does not work well:

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Veeam Backup and FastSCP
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API version on the server does not allow CreateDirectory operation
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OK
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The free FastSCP works on a file by file base, but that won’t cut it.
Hoping the licensed product would work better, I registered for a trial of Veeam Backup and Replication (it is version 4.x in stead of FastSCP which is still 3.x).

The registration process went swift, but I was just a tad bit too early trying to run it against VMware ESXi 4.x:
When I downloaded the Veeam Backup and Replication yesterday, I got 4.1.1.
Just a few hours later, 4.1.2 was released and I obviously missed that.

That miss took me a few extra hours extra to get everything working, because I ran in to two issues:

1. On my first test-box, version Veeam Backup and Replication 4.1 did not install: it rolled back almost at the end.
   That might have to do with the fact that FastSCP used to be on that box. I uninstalled it, but found out later that the uninstall removed only parts (including the entry in the control panel), but not everything.
2. On my second test-box, Veeam Backup and Replication 4.1 did install, and could successfully connect to my ESX 3.5 and ESXi 4.0 machines. But not to my ESXi 4.1 machine. I got this error:

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Veeam Backup and FastSCP
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Failed to login to “192.168.71.158” by SOAP, port 443, user “root”, proxy srv: port:0

Input string was not in a correct format.
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OK
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I googled around and nothing on the internet would help.
Not even modifying the apiVersion element in /usr/lib/vmware/hostd/docroot/client/clients.xml from v4.1 to 4.1 (as suggested by this translated Russian message).

All this fiddling required me to do some SSH (and since SSH by default on *nix is not available for the root user, also add non-root users).
Getting that right took me a while as well, so expect a few more VMware ESXi 4.x related blog posts soon.

Installing Veeam Backup and Replication 4.1.2 (build 4.1.2.125) solves the error messaage completely.

–jeroen (now going to sleep because he drained a couple of hours on this problem).

via: Community Forums • View topic – [LATEST RELEASE] Version 4.1.2 (Aug 4, 2010).