Introduction
Installing the plug-in
About plug-in editions
Deploying the plug-in
Prerequisites
Installing the plug-in
Removing the plug-in
Configuring the plug-in
Adding a server
Configuring default settings
Configuring CBT
Defining a backup strategy
Using the image-level backup method
Using the file-level backup method
Restoring image-level backups
Enabling CBT on a virtual machine
Disabling CBT on a virtual machine
Manually disabling CBT on a virtual machine
Enabling virtual machine locking
Understanding backup consistency states
About restoring image-level backups
Restoring a full virtual machine or individual virtual disks
Using other restore procedures
Performing file-level restores from image‑level backups
Restoring virtual machine disk and configuration files
Using additional features available on the Choose Saveset page
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
Using additional features available on the Choose Saveset page
Troubleshooting
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 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® ESX® 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.
 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, while 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 ESX 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 ESX 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 ESX Server or protect multiple ESX 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 VMware® ESX® and VMware® ESXi™ Servers as well as 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 can 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 confidently 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 to give you more efficient backups and reduced network demands. |
The Plug‑in for VMware also preserves the use of VMware vSphere® Thin Provisioning feature during virtual machine recovery operations to control storage costs and protect data 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.