Chat now with support

Get Live Help
Complete Registration

Sign In

Request Pricing

Contact Sales

NetVault Plug-in for VMware 12.0 - 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

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

Diagnosing virtual machine issues SOAP messages Generating VDDK logs Third-party contributions

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.

Diagnosing virtual machine issues

The Diagnose Virtual Machine method includes some predefined tests, which are used to identify issues in virtual machine setup that can cause failures when the plug-in performs the following activities:

•

Access the virtual machine disk (VMDK) files

•

Check CBT status and capabilities

•

Create quiesced snapshots

The plug-in reports the problems detected during these tests, and provides suggestions to correct the problems. You can run these tests at any time.

To run diagnostic tests:

1

Start the Backup Job Wizard, and click Create New next to the Selections list.

2

Open the NetVault Backup Client on which plug-in is installed, and then open VMware Plugin.

3

Open the VMware ESXi or VMware vCenter Server and the other applicable container nodes — for example, Datacenter, Cluster, Resource Pool, and other nodes — to display the target virtual machine.

4

Click the virtual machine, and select Diagnose Virtual Machine from the context menu.

The plug-in performs the following tests:

•

Create a snapshot.


	NOTE: When performing diagnostic tests, the plug-in tries to create a quiesced snapshot. This operation may take some time to complete depending on how busy the virtual machine is.

•

Open and read VMDK files using the configured primary transport mode.

•

Check the virtual hardware version.

•

Check the current CBT setting.

•

Check if VMware Tools are installed and running.

•

Check if any snapshots exist on the virtual machine.

5

View the results in the Diagnostic Results dialog box:

•

Results: This tab shows the results of the diagnostic tests (passed or failed).

•

Recommendations: This tab includes suggestions to correct the problems detected during the tests.

•

Virtual Machine: This tab shows general information about the virtual machine.

6

To close the dialog box, click Close.

SOAP messages

When you enable tracing, the Plug‑in for VMware generates the following two files along with the other trace logs:

•

vmw(nnn)_soapsent.log

•

vmw(nnn)_soaprecv.log

These files contain communication details between the plug-in and vSphere Web Service running on the VMware vCenter or ESXi Servers.

When you send the trace files to Quest Technical Support, ensure that these two files are included.

Related Documents

The document was helpful.

Select Rating

I easily found the information I needed.

Select Rating

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Terms of Use Privacy Cookie Preference Center