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NetVault Plug-in for VMware 12.1 - User Guide

Introducing NetVault Backup Plug-in for VMware Installing the plug-in Configuring the plug-in Defining a backup strategy Using the image-level backup method Using the file-level backup method Restoring image-level backups Restoring file-level backups Troubleshooting

Supported transport modes

Plug‑in for VMware supports the following methods for accessing virtual machine disks:

•
SAN mode
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HotAdd mode
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LAN mode
SAN mode

To use the SAN transport mode, the plug-in must be installed on a physical machine.

The SAN transport mode supports virtual machine disks stored on Fibre Channel SAN, iSCSI SAN, or Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) storage devices. This mode allows you to offload backups to a physical NetVault Backup Client.

SAN mode requirements
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With SAN storage, the NetVault Backup Client must have read and write access to the LUNs that contain the VMFS volumes (datastores) with virtual drives or the virtual compatibility RDMs. The NetVault Backup Client must be added to the same fabric zone to which the ESXi Server belongs. Moreover, the same host mode (connection type) must be set on the NetVault Backup Client and the ESXi Server. For example, if you have an IBM array with the host mode set to LNXCL, the same setting must be used for the NetVault Backup Client.
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To access VMFS datastores through iSCSI, you can use iSCSI initiators that are enabled on the ESXi hosts. The iSCSI initiators allow the host to connect to the iSCSI storage device through dedicated hardware or standard network adapters. For more information about configuring your systems, see the VMware iSCSI setup documentation and vendor-specific documentation.
 
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NOTE: During restores, the SAN transport mode offers the best performance on thick disks. On thin disks, the NBD and NBDSSL transport modes are faster than the SAN mode.

During SAN restores, disable CBT on the virtual machine.

HotAdd mode

To use the HotAdd transport mode, the plug-in must be installed in a virtual machine.

The HotAdd method involves creating a linked clone of the target virtual machine and attaching the virtual drives to the backup proxy, which allows the disks to be read locally. However, these operations incur some overhead on the ESXi host, so the HotAdd mode is not as efficient as the SAN mode.

The HotAdd mode supports all types of storage devices. This mode does not require you to expose SAN LUNs to the NetVault Backup Client.

HotAdd mode requirements
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To use the SCSI HotAdd mode, the backup proxy virtual machine must reside on the same datacenter as the target virtual machines — that is, the virtual machines that you want to back up.
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The ESXi Server that hosts the backup proxy must have access to the datastores on which the backup proxy and target virtual machines reside.
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The virtual machines must use SCSI controller; the HotAdd mode does not support IDE and SATA controllers. The HotAdd mode only supports LSI SCSI controller; it does not support Paravirtual SCSI controllers.
LAN mode

To use the LAN mode, the plug-in can be installed either on a physical machine or in a virtual machine.

The LAN mode uses the Network Block Device (NBD) or NBDSSL protocol to access virtual drives. The ESXi Server host reads data from the storage device, and sends the read data across a network channel to the plug-in. The NBD transport mode performs unencrypted data transfers and can be used if the ESXi Server and Plug‑in for VMware reside on a secure isolated network. NBD is faster than NBDSSL, and takes fewer resources on the ESXi Server and backup proxy. The NBDSSL transport mode uses SSL to encrypt all data passed over the TCP connection and can be used to protect sensitive data.

The LAN transport mode supports all types of storage devices. You can use the LAN transport mode if the ESXi Server uses local storage devices or NAS to store its virtual machine disks.

LAN mode requirements

To use secure communication channels (NBDSSL), enable SSL certificate verification in your virtual environment.

Configuring default settings

1
In the navigation pane, click Create Backup Job, and then click Create New next to the Selections list.
2
Open the NetVault Backup Client on which the plug-in is installed.
3
Click VMware Plugin, and select Configure from the context menu.
 
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NOTE: You can also configure the default settings from the Change Settings page:
1
In the Navigation pane, click Change Settings.
2
If the plug-in is installed on the NetVault Backup Server, click Server Settings.
— or —
If the plug-in is installed on a NetVault Backup Client, click Client Settings; in the clients table, select the client, and click Next.
3
Under Plugins, click Plugin Options.
4
Under Plug‑in for VMware, configure the following settings:
 
Option
Description

Transport Mode

Select the transport mode for accessing virtual machine disks. The supported modes are:

•
SAN
•
HotAdd
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NBD or NBDSSL

For more information about transport modes, see Supported transport modes.

To use the most suitable transport mode automatically, select Auto. On new plug-in installations, the Auto transport mode is selected by default.

Fallback Transport Mode

In the Fallback Transport Mode list, select the transportation mode that is used when the primary transportation mode fails. The available options are nbd, nbdssl, and none. If no alternative is available, select none.

On new plug-in installations, the fallback transport mode is set to nbd by default.

On upgrade installations, the fallback transport mode is set to nbdssl if the mode was set to san or hotadd mode before upgrade.

Default Inventory View

Plug‑in for VMware provides two View Types to browse the VMware inventory objects on the NetVault Backup Selections page:

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Hosts and Clusters: The Hosts and Clusters view is the default inventory view for the Plug‑in for VMware.
The Hosts and Clusters view provides a hierarchical view of the hosts, clusters, and their child objects. In a cluster setup managed by a vCenter Server, the virtual machines are displayed under the Cluster node. In a standalone ESXi Server setup, the virtual machines are displayed under the individual hosts.
The Hosts and Clusters view does not display the folders created on the vCenter Server.
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VMs and Templates: The VMs and Templates view provides a flat view of all virtual machines and templates in the inventory; the virtual machines are grouped by Datacenters and folders.
NOTE: To switch between the two views, select the ESXi or vCenter Server on the NetVault Backup Selections page, select Toggle Inventory View from the context menu. This option is only available when the server node is open.

Progress Statistics Update Interval

This setting determines the interval at which the plug-in updates progress statistics on the Monitor Job page. The default value for this option is 10 seconds. To change the default interval for progress updates, type or select a new value. The progress interval is specified in number of seconds.

NOTE: Frequent progress updates can have a negative impact on the performance of the plug-in.

Read Block Size

This setting specifies the number of disk sectors to read or write per operation. The default value is 65536 sectors (one sector = 512 bytes; 65536 sectors = 32 MiB). Setting a large block size for read and write operations can improve backup performance.

Enable virtual machine locking

If a virtual machine is migrated — for example, through Storage vMotion — while a backup or restore job is in progress, it can cause a job to fail. It can also create orphaned virtual drives on the datastores.

You can use this option to enable locking of virtual machines against Storage vMotion during backup and restore operations. The virtual machines are locked before a job starts and unlocked after the job completes.

This check box is selected by default.

Attempts to acquire lock

This option specifies the maximum number of attempts that are made to lock a virtual machine against Storage vMotion.

The default value for this option is 10.

Continue without lock

By default, the backup of a virtual machine fails if it cannot be locked against Storage vMotion.

When you select this check box, the plug-in continues to try to back up the virtual machine after the attempts to acquire a lock fail.

Working Directory

The Working Directory is used for the following purposes:

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To mount virtual machine volumes during file-level browse and backup operations.
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To store the data temporarily while restoring legacy backup savesets created with Plug‑in for VMware 1.x.

The default path for the Working Directory is <NetVault Backup home>\tmp on Windows and <NetVault Backup home>/tmp on Linux. To change the location, specify the full path. If you specify a path that does not exist, the plug-in automatically creates it on the NetVault Backup machine.

Perform File Level Indexing

File-level indexing lets you restore individual files and directories from Full, Incremental, and Differential image-level backups of virtual machines. If you want to use file-level indexing by default, select this option; it is cleared by default.

File-level indexing is available to volumes that use the following file systems:

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Windows: NTFS
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Linux and UNIX: EXT2, EXT3, and EXT4, XFS v2, XFS v3

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.

NOTE: The current version of the plug-in does not support Windows Server 2012 ReFS (Resilient File System) and Striped Disks.

File-level indexing does not affect the backup size. However, it increases the backup index size and the total backup time, which is why the option is cleared by default. The amount of time taken to perform file-level indexing depends on several factors, including the number of files, fragmentation of files on the volumes, network traffic, and load on the ESXi or vCenter Server.

5
To save the settings, click OK or Apply.

Enabling the Distributed Jobs feature for load balancing

Plug‑in for VMware includes a Distributed Jobs feature that supports the load balancing of image-level backup and restore jobs. Using this feature, you can run jobs across multiple NetVault Backup Clients that are acting as backup proxies. All Plug‑in for VMware backup and restore jobs are eligible for distribution, however, you can disable the feature for specific jobs. The following list describes some of the ways in which the plug-in behaves when this feature is used:

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If a VMware proxy is unavailable for any reason, such as the NetVault Backup Services are stopped, NetVault Backup searches for another available VMware proxy to run the Plug‑in for VMware jobs.
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If the VMware proxy is overloaded, the next job is transferred to another VMware proxy that has a smaller load and more available system resources to run the job.
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When all available proxies are equally loaded, the next job runs on the same VMware proxy.
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Windows VMware proxy jobs are transferred to another Windows VMware proxy, and Linux VMware proxy jobs are transferred to another Linux VMware proxy.
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Restricting the file-level backup to distribution as a file-level backup is supported only on Windows. Distribution requires mounting the virtual machine, a process that is Windows-specific.

To use the Distributed Jobs feature, the NetVault Backup Server and Clients must be using NetVault Backup 12.0 or later, and the Plug‑in for VMware version must be 12.0 or later.

To enable the Distributed Jobs feature on NetVault Backup Server
1
In the Navigation pane, click Change Settings.
2
Click Server Settings, and then click Job Manager.
3
On the Job Manager dialog box, select the Allow VMware plugin jobs to be distributed on other VMware backup proxy option.
This option is disabled by default.
4
If you want to change the default threshold from 2, enter the applicable number for the Jobs threshold for VMware Backup Proxy setting.
This value indicates the number of jobs that can run on the same VMware proxy before the next job is distributed to the same proxy or a different one, depending on the load balancing. You can enter a value up to 100.

Enabling or disabling CBT on virtual machines

This section includes the following topics:

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About CBT
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Enabling CBT on individual virtual machines
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Disabling CBT on a virtual machine
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Manually disabling CBT on a virtual machine
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