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NetVault Plug-in for Hyper-V 11.4.5 - User Guide

Backing up data: an overview

Plug‑in for Hyper‑V supports image-level backups and restores. An image-level backup includes all disk and configuration files associated with a given VM, enabling restoration of the entire VM. You can use this type of backup if hardware fails or VM disk files are deleted. Using the file-level indexing feature, you can also back up images with file-level indexing enabled and later perform file-level restores. As described in the next topic, there are network-connectivity issues with non-VSS-compliant VMs.

Important considerations
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Do not schedule multiple image-level backups to run simultaneously on the same VM. Running these backup types for the same VMs simultaneously may result in failure of one of these jobs. The plug-in allows only a single snapshot for a VM at any given point.
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Backups cannot be performed if the Hyper‑V Server or Cluster is in maintenance mode or inaccessible.
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Plug‑in for Hyper‑V supports the backup of databases that reside on VMs provided the databases are in a consistent state. The vendor, such as the VSS Writer for SQL Server and Oracle, must support the handling of consistent data before it provides the data to the plug-in. If an inconsistent snapshot error — VSS_E_WRITERERROR_INCONSISTENTSNAPSHOT — occurs, the plug-in notes this information in the debug trace and continues with the backup process.
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The plug-in uses installed VSS hardware providers on the backup host. If a provider-related error occurs, the plug-in tries to complete the backup using the applicable software provider.
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Online image-level backups are not fully supported for the following VMs:
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Non-VSS-compliant VMs, such as Linux
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Windows Server 2012 VM hosted by Windows Server 2008 R2
During backup, these VMs are placed in a Saved State, which causes the VM to pause. The VM resumes activity after the snapshot is taken.
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If your environment uses a Windows Server 2016 host or cluster, you can complete Full and Incremental Backups. A Full Backup performs a complete backup of the set of items that have been selected. An Incremental Backup backs up the set of items that have been selected since the most recent Full Backup or Incremental Backup. The plug-in takes advantage of RCT, which ensures that only the blocks that have changed since the initial Full or the last Incremental Backup are sent to the current Incremental Backup stream.

Performing backups

The procedure for performing image-level backups, with or without indexing, includes the steps outlined in the following topics.

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Selecting data for a backup
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Setting backup options
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Finalizing and submitting the job

Selecting data for a backup

You must use sets — Backup Selection Set, Backup Options Set, Schedule Set, Target Set, and Advanced Options Set — to create a backup job.

 
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TIP: To use an existing set, click Create Backup Job, and select the set from the Selections list.
1
In the Navigation pane, click Create Backup Job.
You can also start the wizard from the Guided Configuration link. In the Navigation pane, click Guided Configuration. On the NetVault Configuration Wizard page, click Create backup jobs.
2
In Job Name, specify a name for the job.
Assign a descriptive name that lets you easily identify the job when monitoring its progress or restoring data. The job 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.
3
Next to the Selections list, click Create New.
4
In the list of plug-ins on the NetVault Backup Selections page, open Hyper-V Plugin, and expand the localhost or <clusterName> node to display the list of VMs.
5
Select the localhost or <clusterName> node to include every VM that exists at the time of backup, or select individual VMs to back up a specific set of VMs.
 
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IMPORTANT: If VMs are explicitly selected with a green check mark, only the selected VMs are included in the backup, even if new VMs have been added to the Hyper‑V Server since the last backup.

If you are performing an Incremental Backup for a Windows Server 2016 environment, select the Backup Selection Set of the last Full Backup.
6
Click Save to save the set, 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.

Setting backup options

The next step involves creating the Backup Options Set or selecting an existing one.

 
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TIP: To use an existing set, in the Plugin Options list, select the set that you want to use.

There are multiple options available: Maximum Number of Parallel Streams, Enable indexing for File Level Recovery, Enable Active Block Mapping, and Type of backup.

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The default for Maximum Number of Parallel Streams is 4 for Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, and 2016, and 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2. If your environment uses Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, or 2016, you can increase the setting up to 32.
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The Enable indexing for File Level Recovery option is disabled by default. Indexing lets you restore individual files and directories from image-level backups of VMs.
File-level indexing is available to VMs that use the following file systems:
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Windows: NTFS
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Extended file systems: EXT2, EXT3, and EXT4
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XFS on Linux and UNIX
File-level indexing does not affect the size of the backup. However, it increases the size of the backup index and the total backup time. The amount of time taken to perform file-level indexing depends on several factors. These factors include the number of files, fragmentation of files on the volumes, network traffic, and load on the Hyper-V Server.
The plug-in 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. It does not support Windows Server 2012 or 2016 ReFS (Resilient File System) and Striped Disks or Storage Spaces.
If you intend to use file-level recovery for Linux- or UNIX-based VMs hosted on Windows Hyper-V Servers, the names of files, directories, and volumes cannot contain keyboard combinations of Alt+0 through Alt+32, nor can they contain the following characters: \\ \\ / [ ] : | < > + ; = . ? " (For more information, see https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc956689.aspx.)
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The Enable Active Block Mapping option is enabled by default. To reduce network and storage requirements, ABM technology provides filters to remove zeroed blocks during backups. Removing these blocks reduces the backup size and the amount of data transferred over the network. If you disable ABM, the plug-in automatically uses zero-block exclusion to ensure that the zeroed blocks are excluded during backups.
ABM is available to VMs that use the following file systems:
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Windows: NTFS
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Extended file systems: EXT2, EXT3, and EXT4
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The Type of backup section is available if the Backup Selection Set is based on a Windows Server 2016 host or cluster. Because the plug-in uses RCT to ensure that only changed blocks are sent to the Incremental Backup stream, you can indicate whether you want to complete a Full or Incremental Backup. A Full Backup performs a complete backup of the set of items that have been selected. A Full Backup does not depend on any other backup and can be restored in a single step. An Incremental Backup backs up the set of items that have been selected since the most recent Full Backup or Incremental Backup.
To select the backup options:
1
Next to the Plugin Options list, click Create New.
2
In the Maximum Number of Parallel Streams box, enter the applicable number.
If your environment uses Windows 2012, 2012 R2, or 2016, you can enter up to 32 to improve load balancing or performance, or both. However, if you are using tape drives, the number of parallel backup streams selected must be equal to or less than the number of available drives.
3
If you might want to perform restores at the file level, select the Enable indexing for File Level Recovery option.
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If you want to disable ABM for any reason, clear the Enable Active Block Mapping option.
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If your environment uses Windows Server 2016 or later, in the Type of backup section, select either Full or Incremental, whichever is applicable.
6
Click Save, specify a name for the set 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.
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