NetVault Plug-in for VMware 13.1

Removing the snapshot and mount folder manually

When you mount a virtual machine for file-level backup or browse operation, the following events occur:

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The plug-in creates a snapshot named “BKB_SNAP” on the virtual machine.

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The plug-in creates a mount folder for the virtual machine in the Working Directory. This folder is assigned the same name as the virtual machine.

When you unmount the virtual machine, the cleanup process automatically removes the mount folder and snapshot. In a normal scenario, do not remove them manually.

If the plug-in fails to remove the mount folder or snapshot for any reason, a subsequent mount operation for the same virtual machine fails and the error message “A stale mount was found” is displayed. For example, if the plug-in exits unexpectedly after mounting a virtual machine, the snapshot and mount folder are not removed. In this scenario, you must manually remove them. You must also complete these steps if a snapshot is deleted manually while a virtual machine is still mounted.

To remove the snapshot and mount folder manually

If the Working Directory contains the mount folder for the virtual machine, remove it.

If you were using an advanced transport mode, such as san or hotadd, navigate to the <system_drive>/windows/temp/vmware-system directory.

If this directory contains any directory named <VM_UUID>-<VMmoref>, delete it.

Here <VM_UUID> is the universally unique identifier (UUID) of the mounted virtual machine and VM_moref is an internal reference that the ESXi or vCenter Server uses to see the virtual machine. To delete this folder, you may be required to set necessary permissions for the folder.

If you were using the hotadd transport mode, remove any disks of the target virtual machine — the virtual machine mounted for a backup — that were hotadded to the NetVault Client Virtual Machine — the virtual machine where the Plug‑in for VMware is running.

You can remove the disks from the vSphere Client for the virtual machine where the plug-in or NetVault Client is running.

Go to the Snapshot Manager in vSphere Client, and remove the snapshot named BKB_SNAP, if it still exists.

Wait for a few minutes (approximately 2 to 3 minutes) to allow any memory cache to be cleared before performing this step.

If the virtual machine is turned on, an error message — “Unable to access file <unspecified filename> since it is locked” — might display when you try to delete the snapshot, but the snapshot may thereafter disappear from the Snapshot Manager window. If a “Consolidate Helper-0” snapshot is displayed after you remove the snapshot, turn off the virtual machine.

After removing the snapshot BKB_SNAP, VMware recommends that you create and delete a snapshot. You can create and delete snapshots from the Snapshot Manager window in vSphere Client. The server tries to consolidate the redo logs during this operation, and therefore, it may take a few minutes to complete. Delete the Consolidate Helper snapshot, if it exists.

If some unwanted redo logs are still present on the datastore, perform Step 5 again.

Wait for a few minutes — approximately 2 to 3 minutes — to allow any memory cache to be cleared before performing this step.

Restoring image-level backups

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About restoring image-level backups

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Restoring a full virtual machine or individual virtual drives

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Relocating a virtual machine to an alternate ESXi Server

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Restoring a virtual machine to an alternate vCenter Server

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Renaming a virtual machine during restore

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Performing file-level restores from image‑level backups

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Recovering a virtual machine using Instant Restore

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Restoring virtual machine disk and configuration files

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Searching for files in savesets

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Viewing media list

About restoring image-level backups

The image-level backups can be used to perform the following types of restores:

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Recover a full virtual machine or specific virtual drives: You can use image-level backups to recover a full virtual machine to a previous known state or to restore one or more virtual drives for a virtual machine. This method is useful when there is data loss due to hardware failure, data corruption, or accidental deletion of virtual machine disk files. The virtual machine can be restored to the same or an alternate VMware ESXi Server Host or VMware vCenter Server.

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Restore individual files and directories: You can use image-level backups to restore individual files and folders. This method is useful when there is data loss due to user errors, data corruption, or accidental deletion of files. The individual files and directories can be restored to a specified directory on the NetVault Client.


	NOTE: To use an image-level backup for file-level restores, you must select the Perform File Level Indexing check box during backup. File-level indexing is disabled by default.

File-level restores are supported on the following file systems:

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Windows: NTFS

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Linux and UNIX: EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, XFS v2, XFS v3

The Plug‑in for VMware also supports volumes managed by Logical Volume Manager (LVM) on Linux-based systems and Logical Disk Manager (LDM) on Windows-based systems as single or spanned disks.

The current version of the plug-in does not support Windows Server 2012 ReFS (Resilient File System) and Striped Disks.

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Restore virtual machine disk and configuration files: You can use the image-level backups to restore the virtual machine disk and configuration files to a specified directory on the NetVault Client. With these restored files, you can then recover a virtual machine with the same or modified settings using Virtual Infrastructure Client or any other utility that lets you create a virtual machine using existing “.vmdk” files.

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Instant restore with continuous data protection (CDP) and QoreStor: If you use CDP for your VMware backups and QoreStor for your repository, you can recover data using the instant restore feature. QoreStor leverages remote database access (RDA) protocol and Linux network file sharing (NFS) to act as a temporary datastore to which NetVault mounts a backed-up image of a VMware virtual machine (VM), making the VM available in a matter of seconds. From here, you can confirm that the image contains all of the desired data and then migrate it to a vCenter host. For more information, see the NetVault Administrator's Guide and the QoreStor User Guide.