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NetVault Plug-in for VMware 12.3 - User Guide

Table of Contents

Introducing NetVault Backup Plug-in for VMware

About NetVault Backup Plug-in for VMware

Key benefits Feature summary

Target audience Recommended additional reading

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 the Distributed Jobs feature for load balancing Enabling or disabling CBT on virtual machines

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

Defining a backup strategy

About backup methods and types Data backed up and restored for different disk types

RDM disks

Backup and recovery strategy

Using the image-level backup method

Adding patterns to use for inclusion and exclusion of virtual machines Performing image-level backups

Additional notes Backup selection tree icons

Restarting a backup job Resetting CBT on a virtual machine Monitoring job progress

Using the file-level backup method

Performing file-level backups

Backup selection tree icons

Removing the snapshot and mount folder manually

Restoring image-level backups

About restoring image-level backups Restoring a full virtual machine or individual virtual drives

Prerequisites Restoring data

Important notes Restore selection tree icons

Starting a virtual machine

Relocating a virtual machine to an alternate ESXi Server Restoring a virtual machine to an alternate vCenter Server Renaming a virtual machine during restore Performing file-level restores from image-level backups

Restore selection tree icons

Restoring virtual machine disk and configuration files

Restore selection tree icons

Recovering a virtual machine from the restored 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

Setting up a network share Restoring data

Restoring file-level backups using the native Plug-in for FileSystem

Prerequisites Restoring data

Searching for files in savesets Viewing media list

Troubleshooting

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 Disk type is always Thick Provision Eager Zeroed after restoring an image-level backup Backup jobs of virtual machines protected by vSphere FT fail intermittently RDM disks are restored to VMDK files Unable to consolidate image-level backups Restore job fails on Linux when file size exceeds 50 MB Web Service process displays message that indicates the server is unavailable Installing an update puts the VMware Vstor2 MntApi driver into an inconsistent state Backing up and restoring encrypted disks Backing up a cloned virtual machine that has the same UUID Backing up virtual machines that are protected by vSphere FT Error using VVols with a storage array

Diagnosing virtual machine issues SOAP messages Generating VDDK logs

Restore job fails to add a virtual machine to the server inventory

Restore job fails.

A restore job fails with the following error:

Failed to add VM to target server's inventory.

Fault string is 'Invalid configuration for device '3'.

When this error occurs, enable trace and run the restore job again. When the job completes, open the file named vmw<nnn>_soaprecv.log, and check if it contains an XML message <WaitForUpdatesExResponse> with contents similar to the following:

<val xsi:type="LocalizedMethodFault">

<fault xsi:type="InvalidDeviceSpec">

<property>deviceChange[3].device.backing.fileName

<deviceIndex>3</deviceIndex>

<localizedMessage>Invalid configuration for device '3'.</localizedMessage>

If so, it indicates that the backup contains an invalid configuration for a CD or DVD drive.

To correct this problem:

1

Open the file vmware.cfg in a text editor.

You can find this file in <NetVault Backup home>\config on Windows and <NetVault Backup home>/config on Linux.

2

Set the value for the following entry to True:

[Custom:ReconfigureVirtualCdromDevices]

(The default value for this entry is False.)

3

4

Run the restore job again.

The job completes successfully. If a CD or DVD drive was set to “Host Device” or “Datastore ISO File” type during the original backup, it is reconfigured as “Client Device” type. A warning message in the logs provides a list of reconfigured devices. The log context includes their original configuration. To view the log context, click the More Info button.

5

After restoring the virtual machine, reset [Custom:ReconfigureVirtual CdromDevices] to False.

Disk type is always Thick Provision Eager Zeroed after restoring an image-level backup

After restoring a virtual machine, virtual drives that are Thin Provisioned or Thick Provisioned Lazy Zeroed are automatically converted to Thick Provision Eager Zeroed.

Regardless of the disk provisioning type, image-level backups without CBT enabled always back up the full disk. During restore, the .vmdk file is completely overwritten and VMware automatically converts a Thin Provision or Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed drive to Thick Provision Eager Zeroed.

To retain the original type for the drive during the restore process, make sure that the Enable Change Block Tracking for VM option is enabled for the backup job. For more information, see Defining a backup strategy.

Backup jobs of virtual machines protected by vSphere FT fail intermittently

When backing up virtual machines that are protected using VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance (vSphere FT), the backup job fails.

The job fails and reports the following: Cannot back up virtual machine while legacy fault tolerance is enabled.


	CAUTION: Before using the plug-in to back up virtual machines that are protected using vSphere FT, verify that your environment uses VMware ESXi 6.0 build number 4192238 or later.

Your virtual machine is protected by an earlier version of fault tolerance that does not support backup snapshots.

To back up and restore virtual machines that are using legacy fault tolerance, reconfigure the virtual machines to use a newer version of vSphere FT. Using the vSphere Web Client, turn off fault tolerance for the virtual machine, and then turn it on again. During the reconfiguration process, FT protection is not available for the virtual machine that you are reconfiguring.

RDM disks are restored to VMDK files

RDM disks in virtual compatibility mode are restored to flat “.vmdk” files and not to the original RDM.

The alternative is to omit these disks during a restore.

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