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NetVault Plug-in for RHV 13.0 - User Guide

About backup methods and types

Backups use the RHV snapshot technology to provide point-in-time images of VMs. This includes all disk and configuration information of a VM. You can use these backups to perform the following types of recoveries:

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Recover a full VM to a previous known state.
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Restore one or more virtual disks for a VM along with the VM.
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Restore one or more virtual disks to another VM in the same cluster and storage domain.
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Relocate a VM to another cluster or storage domain.

The following backup types are supported:

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Full Backup: A Full Backup provides a backup of all disk blocks on a virtual disk. Full Backups take longer to complete and consume more backup media. These backups serve as the base backup for future Incremental and Differential backups.
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Differential Backup: A Differential Backup provides a backup of disk blocks that have changed since the last Full Backup. Differential Backups speed up recovery because the plug-in is only required to restore two savesets.
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Incremental Backup: An Incremental Backup provides a backup of disk blocks that have changed since the last Full or Incremental Backup. Incremental Backups consume minimum storage space and are quicker to perform. However, data recovery can take more time depending on the number of savesets that the plug-in is required to restore.

Important considerations

When employing Plug‑in for Red Hat Virtualization, it is important to consider the following caveats:

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The plug-in cannot perform backups in the following scenarios:
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When the RHV-M is inaccessible.
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If the Windows backup proxy is not operational.
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The plug-in does not back up the following items:
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Windows backup proxy VM
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Shared disks
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A valid RHV-M name includes alphanumeric and “.”, “-”, “_” special characters only. RHV supports no other special characters.
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Before backing up a Windows VM with multiple dynamic disks, confirm that the SAN policy is set to OnlineAll. You must set the SAN policy through the Windows administrator user.
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To back up VMs with large disks, use four or less streams.

Backup and recovery strategy

A well-designed backup strategy helps you recover from the damages caused by failure and resume normal operations as quickly as possible. Before you start backing up your data, ensure that a good strategy is in place that safeguards your data against various failure modes, such as media failure, data corruption, user error, and complete loss of a data center.

Your backup plan should define what backup methods are used, when and at what intervals the backups are performed, how backups are stored, how long backups are retained, and how the backup media are reused.

The following are some example backup sequences to offer you guidelines:

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Full Backups only: You can choose to perform only Full Backups if the backup size is small, backup window is not an issue, or storage media is not a constraint. In such scenarios, you can schedule Full Backups every night or every <n> hours depending on the frequency of updates.
If a failure occurs, the plug-in is only required to restore a single saveset.
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Full and Incremental Backups: For quicker backups and minimum use of storage media, you can include Full and Incremental Backups in your strategy. For example, you can schedule Full Backups every Sunday and Incremental Backups every day or every <n> hours depending on the frequency of updates.
If a failure occurs, the plug-in is required to restore data from the recent Full Backup and each Incremental Backup in the backup sequence. The restore might take longer if several Incremental savesets have to be restored. For example, if the failure occurs on Saturday, the plug-in is required to restore the Full Backup taken on Sunday and Incremental Backups taken from Monday through Friday.
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Full and Differential Backups: For quicker restores and reduced media usage, you can include Full and Differential Backups in your strategy. For example, you can schedule Full Backups every Sunday and Differential Backups every day or every <n> hours depending on the frequency of updates.
If a failure occurs, the plug-in is required to restore data from the recent Full Backup and the last Differential Backup.

Adding patterns to use for inclusion and exclusion of VMs

In addition to selecting VMs from the backup selection tree, you can create and store patterns of VM names for inclusion and exclusion from backup jobs. When you specify VM name patterns to include or exclude, or both, the plug-in stores them with a Backup Selection Set. When you submit a backup job, you can select the set with the stored patterns. The plug-in then populates the backup list with VMs whose names match the specified pattern or patterns.

 
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IMPORTANT: During a backup job, the plug-in applies the inclusion and exclusion feature only to the VMs specified in the Backup selection set.

Selecting an RHV host and patterns selects all of the VMs of the selected host.

To add patterns:
1
In the Navigation pane, click Create Backup Job.
2
Next to the Selections list, click .
3
In the list of plug-ins on the NetVault Selections page, open RHV Plugin then the DataCenter, and then the cluster. Under the hosts, select the VMs that you want to back up.
Below the cluster node, the plug-in displays two additional items along with the hosts in the clusters, Specify Inclusions and Specify Exclusions. Clicking Specify Inclusions displays additional options, such as Show include patterns and Add include pattern. After you have selected Show include patterns, the option changes to Hide include pattern. Clicking Specify Exclusion displays additional options, such as Show exclude patterns and Add exclude pattern. After you have selected Show exclude patterns, the option changes to Hide exclude pattern. As you add patterns, the plug-in displays an informational node for each saved pattern.
 
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NOTE: To apply the inclusion and exclusion patterns to all VMs on a host, select the RHV host.
4
To add a pattern that you want to include in a backup, click Add include pattern.
5
In the Enter include pattern dialog box, type the pattern that you want the plug-in to search for.
Use the regex pattern to include VMs that conform to the specified pattern. For example, if you want the plug-in to include all of the VMs that start with SQL, type (SQL).*
 
6
To save the pattern, click OK.
7
Repeat Step 4 through Step 6 for each pattern that you want to add for inclusion.
8
To add a pattern that you want to exclude from a backup, click Add exclude pattern.
9
In the Enter exclude pattern dialog box, type the pattern that you want the plug-in to search for using the same guidelines described previously for include patterns, and then click OK.
Continuing with the previous example, if you want the plug-in to locate all VMs that start with SQL but exclude specific versions of the SQL Server VMs, type the complete name of the VM that you want to exclude, such as SQLQATest1.
10
Repeat Step 8 and Step 9 for each pattern that you want to add for exclusion.
11
When you are finished, select all required VMs under the hosts, and select the applicable inclusion and exclusion patterns.
12
Click Save, enter a name in the Create New Set dialog box, and click Save.
The name can contain alphanumeric and nonalphanumeric characters, but it cannot contain non-Latin characters. On Windows, there is no length restriction. However, a maximum of 40 characters is recommended on all platforms.
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