Introduction
Installing the plug-in
About plug-in editions
Deployment overview
Prerequisites
Installing the plug-in
Removing the plug-in
Configuring the plug-in
Adding a server
Reconfiguring a server
Removing a server
Supported transport modes
Configuring default settings
Enabling or disabling CBT on virtual machines
Defining a backup strategy
About CBT
Enabling CBT on individual virtual machines
Disabling CBT on a virtual machine
Manually disabling CBT on a virtual machine
Enabling or disabling quiescing of virtual machines
About quiescing virtual machines
Enabling quiescing of virtual machines
Disabling quiescing of virtual machines
Removing backup preferences for a virtual machine
Unlocking a virtual machine
About backup methods and types
Data backed up and restored for different disk types
Backup and recovery strategy
Using the image-level backup method
Performing image-level backups
Restarting a backup job
Resetting CBT on a virtual machine
Monitoring job progress
Using the file-level backup method
Restoring image-level backups
About restoring image-level backups
Restoring a full virtual machine or individual virtual disks
Relocating a virtual machine to an alternate ESXi Server
Renaming a virtual machine during restore
Performing file-level restores from image-level backups
Restoring virtual machine disk and configuration files
Searching for files in savesets
Viewing media list
Restoring file-level backups
About restoring file-level backups
Restoring file-level backups using shared network drives
Restoring file-level backups using the native Plug-in for FileSystem
Searching for files in savesets
Viewing media list
Troubleshooting
Common errors
NetVault Backup Service fails to start on Windows
NetVault Backup Service fails to start after the machine is restarted
NetVault Backup Service starts, but stops immediately on Linux
Linux Hybrid version of the plug-in does not run on 64-bit OS
Crash occurs during a backup
CBT-based image-level backup fails
SAN transport reports errors when multiple backups access the same datastore
Default SCSI controller type on RHEL 7 and RHEL 6
File-level backups do not back up data for a reparse point
Restore job fails when using SAN transport
Restore job fails to add a virtual machine to the server inventory
Backup jobs of virtual machines protected by vSphere FT fail intermittently
Diagnosing virtual machine issues
SOAP messages
Generating VDDK logs
Introduction
About Dell™ NetVault™ Backup Plug-in for VMware®
Dell NetVault Backup Plug‑in for VMware (Plug‑in for VMware) protects your virtual machines from disaster, media failure, and data corruption. Its intuitive, easy-to-use interface gives you a single, centralized console to configure backup and restore policies for your virtual environments. The Plug‑in for VMware is integrated with VMware vSphere Storage APIs – Data Protection, formerly known as VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP). It allows you to protect your virtual environment without the need for complex scripting or deep understanding of VMware® ESXi™ or VADP internals. The plug-in minimizes downtime by allowing you to restore complete virtual machine images or individual files quickly and reliably with minimal interaction. Through automatic integration with a wide range of backup devices, your virtualized data can be protected and safely stored off-site to meet your disaster recovery and business continuity goals.
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NOTE: The NetVault Backup Plug-ins for applications such as SQL Server®, Exchange, or SharePoint® can be combined with the Plug‑in for VMware to provide comprehensive protection to your data. The Plug‑in for VMware provides bare metal recovery for virtual machines. The application plug-ins simplify data protection of business-critical applications by automating the backup and recovery processes and performing important maintenance functions such as transaction log truncation. |
Key benefits
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Improve VMware® ESXi™ performance with vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP): The Plug‑in for VMware works with VADP to provide centralized backups that reduce the load on ESXi Servers and backup traffic on the Local Area Network. This approach is especially important if you need to consolidate hardware. You have the flexibility to protect all your virtual machines deployed on a single ESXi Server or protect multiple ESXi Servers from a single NetVault Backup Client. With VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion® (Storage vMotion), the plug-in is able to protect your virtual machines without requiring detailed knowledge of their location. |
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Increase confidence while deploying VMware: The Plug‑in for VMware protects individual ESXi Servers and a full VMware® vCenter™ environment. It empowers you to create comprehensive, flexible backup policies without the need for complex scripting or deep understanding of VADP. The plug-in provides peace of mind because you simply point-and-click to back up or restore virtual machines. It increases efficiency by consolidating virtual machine backup management into a single environment, improving storage administration efficiency. The solution enhances protection for Windows®-based virtual machines by performing VSS-based snapshots to quiesce applications before backup. |
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Automatic integration of backup devices ensures business continuity: The Plug‑in for VMware supports a wide range of backup devices, allowing you to store your backup data on disk-based storage devices, virtual tape libraries, or physical tape libraries. It ensures that your virtualized environments are protected and stored off-site for disaster recovery purposes. The plug-in also frees administrators from being available 24x7 by allowing less experienced VMware administrators to initiate restores correctly and as quickly as possible, reducing downtime and improving business continuity. |
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Shorten backup windows and improve device utilization: The Plug‑in for VMware speeds virtual machine image-based backups with high-performance Incremental and Differential Backups for data stored in virtual machines. The plug-in integrates with the Changed Block Tracking (CBT) feature to ensure that only blocks that have changed since the initial Full, and the last Incremental or Differential Backup are sent to the current Incremental or Differential backup stream. This integration provides more efficient backups and reduced network demands. |
The Plug‑in for VMware also preserves the use of the VMware vSphere® Thin Provisioning feature during virtual machine recovery operations to control storage costs and protect data. It performs this task by ensuring virtual machine disks only use the amount of storage they currently need while being able to dynamically add more allocated space as required.
Feature summary
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Supports backup and restore of virtual machines that are protected using VMware vSphere® Fault Tolerance (vSphere FT), when managed under a vCenter Server by VMware® ESXi™ hosts that use version 6.0 build number 4192238 or later |
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Allows Full, Differential, and Incremental file-level backups of Windows®-based virtual machines |
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Relocates virtual machines to alternate VMware® ESXi™ Server |