RDM disks
The following table describes how the plug-in handles RDM (Raw Device Mapping) disks.
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Optionally, you can omit the RDM disks in virtual compatibility mode during a restore.
You can find this file in <NetVault Backup home>\config on Windows and <NetVault Backup home>/config on Linux.
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Backup and recovery strategy
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. |
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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. |
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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. |
Using the image-level backup method
Performing image-level backups
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In the Navigation pane, click Create Backup Job to start the configuration wizard. |
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In Job Name, specify a name for the job. |
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In the Selections list, select an existing Backup Selection Set, or complete the following steps to create a set: |
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NOTE: To switch between the two views (Hosts and Clusters and VMs and Templates), select the ESXi or vCenter Server, and in the Actions list, click Toggle Inventory View. This option is only available when server node is open. |
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Back up all virtual machines within a container: Select the container node. Data selection is possible at all levels, starting from the Datacenter node. For example, to back up all virtual machines hosted on an ESXi server, select the host node; in the VMs and Templates view, select the corresponding folder node. |
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Back up individual virtual machines: Open the applicable container nodes, for example, Datacenter, Cluster, and Resource Pool, and select the virtual machines that you want to back up. In the VMs and Templates view, open the folder node, and select the virtual machines that you want to back up. |
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Back up individual virtual drives: Open the virtual machine node, and select the disks that you want to back up. The virtual drives are named “Hard Disk 1,” “Hard Disk 2,” … “Hard Disk n.” The plug-in only lists those disks for which it can generate a snapshot. |
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In the Plugin Options list, select an existing Backup Options Set, or complete the following steps to create a set: |
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IMPORTANT: On Windows, when you create a Backup Options Set for image‑level backups, you must use the default set “Default Backup Options — VMware Plugin — Windows” as the template. If you use any other set as the template, the backup may fail. |
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Under Backup Type, select one of the following options. |
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To back up all allocated sectors on a virtual drive, select this option. | |
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To back up disk sectors that have changed since the last Full Backup, select this option. |
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Under VM disk selection options, select one of the following options. |
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To back up all available virtual drives for the selected virtual machines, use this option. | |
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Under Other Options, configure the following settings: |
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To enable CBT on all virtual machines included in the backup job, select this check box. (You can also enable CBT on specific virtual machines by using the Enable Change Block Tracking method. For more information, see Enabling CBT on individual virtual machines.)
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To generate file-level indexes for all supported volumes that are included in the backup snapshot, select this option. File-level indexing lets you restore individual files and directories from Full, Incremental, and Differential image-level backups of virtual machines. For more information on how file-level indexing affects backups, see Configuring default settings. To do so, complete the following steps:
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If a backup job includes any unsupported disk types, this option is ignored for those disks. | |||||||||
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When you run a backup job, the plug-in creates a snapshot named “BKB_SNAP” on the virtual machine to back up the selected data. Regardless of whether the backup completes successfully or fails, the plug‑in removes the snapshot on job completion. The plug-in also removes the snapshot if the job is stopped or the parent or child processes are terminated for any reason. However, if a job exits abnormally, the cleanup process may fail to remove the snapshot. To address such cases, the plug‑in provides an option to delete the snapshot when you run the job next time. You can select the Remove snapshots from previous backups check box to remove any existing snapshots when you run the current job. Only the snapshots named “BKB_SNAP” are removed from the virtual machines. This option does not remove any other snapshots that exist on the virtual machine. | |||||||||
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The actual number of parallel streams for a job depends on the following factors: For parallel backups, the plug-in generates a parent process that coordinates the overall backup and individual child processes that perform the actual task of backing up the virtual machines. The maximum child processes that can be generated for a backup job is equal to the Maximum Number of Parallel Streams configured for the job. The parent and the child processes are all created on the NetVault Backup Client on which the plug-in is running. When configuring Maximum Number of Parallel Streams, consider the following: | |||||||||
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For more information about the Diagnose method, see Diagnosing virtual machine issues. You can access the Diagnostic Results dialog box from the View Logs page. The details are stored as log context objects. | |||||||||
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When a restartable backup completes with some failed virtual machines, the plug-in generates a backup index for the completed virtual machines and sets the job status to Job Stopped. The log messages and log context show which virtual machines have failed for the job. When you restart the job later, the plug-in runs an Incremental Backup job to back up the failed virtual machines. You can restart a job from the Job Status page. For more information about this method, see Restarting a backup job. A restarted instance does not back up virtual machines that are added to the host after the initial job is run. NOTE: If all virtual machines fail for a job, the job status is set to Backup Failed. You cannot restart a failed backup job. |
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NOTE: When performing multistream backups, do not select the Ensure backup is the first on the target media check box. If you select this check box for multistream backups, each data stream targets a separate piece of media to exist as the first backup on the media item. Thus, if a backup generates five streams, the job tries to obtain five blank or new media items.
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To submit the job for scheduling, click Save & Submit. |