NetVault Plug-in for VMware 12.3.1

Full Backup: A Full Backup provides a backup of all allocated sectors on a virtual drive. Full Backups take longer to complete and consume more backup media. These backups serve as the base backup for future Incremental and Differential image-level backups.

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Differential Backup: A Differential Backup provides a backup of disk sectors that have changed since the last Full Backup. Differential Backups speed up recovery since the plug-in is only required to restore two savesets.

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Incremental Backup: An Incremental Backup provides a backup of disk sectors that have changed since the last Full, Differential, or Incremental Backup. Incremental Backups consume minimum storage space and are quicker to perform. However, data recovery can take more time depending on the number of savesets that the plug-in is required to restore.

Image-level backups without CBT

Only Full image-level backups are supported on virtual machines that do not use CBT.

File-level backups

The file-level backup method is only available to Windows-based virtual machines. File-level backups allow you to restore a single file or a set of files. You can use these backups to recover from data loss due to user errors, data corruption, or accidental deletion of files.


	NOTE: Only the Windows version of the Plug‑in for VMware supports file-level backups of virtual machines. The plug-in can only mount a virtual machine that uses the same version, or an earlier version, of the OS used by the backup proxy. For example, the plug-in cannot mount a Windows Server 2016 virtual machine that is located on a Windows Server 2012 backup proxy.

The Plug‑in for VMware uses NetVault Backup Plug-in for FileSystem (Plug-in for FileSystem) for file-level backups.

File-level backup types

The Plug‑in for VMware supports the following types of file-level backups:

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Full Backup: A Full Backup provides a backup of all selected files and folders. Full Backups take longer to complete and consume more backup media. However, restores are faster since the plug-in is only required to restore a single saveset. Full Backups serve as the base backups for subsequent Incremental and Differential Backups

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Differential Backup: A Differential Backup provides a backup of files that are new or have changed since the last Full Backup. Differential Backups speed up recovery since the plug-in is only required to restore two savesets. However, these backups consume more storage space and take more time to complete than the Incremental Backups. Differential Backups duplicate the data backed up by previous backups of the same type.

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Incremental Backup: An Incremental Backup provides a backup of files that are new or have changed since the last Full or Incremental Backup. Incremental Backups consume minimum storage space and are quicker to perform. However, data recovery can take more time depending on the number of savesets that the plug-in is required to restore.

Data backed up and restored for different disk types

The Plug‑in for VMware includes the following data in CBT-enabled backups and restores.

Table 2. Data backed up and restored for different disk types
Disk Type	CBT-enabled Full Image Backups	Incremental/ Differential Image Backups	Restore of CBT-enabled Full Image Backups	Restore of Incremental/ Differential Image Backups
Thin (Required space supplied and zeroed out on demand.)	Only used disk sectors are backed up.	Only changed disk sectors are backed up.	Only used sectors are restored.	Only used disk sectors are restored. Each sector is restored only once.
Zeroed Thick (All space allocated at creation time, unused part zeroed out on first write.)	Only used disk sectors are backed up.	Only changed disk sectors are backed up.	Only used sectors are restored.	Only used disk sectors are restored. Each sector is restored only once.
Eager Zeroed Thick (All space allocated and zeroed out at creation time.)	All disk sectors are backed up.	Only changed disk sectors are backed up.	The entire disk is restored.	The entire disk is restored. Each sector is restored only once.
Virtual Compatibility RDM (Raw Device Mapping)	All disk sectors are backed up.	Only changed disk sectors are backed up.	The entire disk is restored.	The entire disk is restored. Each sector is restored only once.
Network File System (NFS)	All disk sectors are backed up.	Only changed disk sectors are backed up.	The entire disk is restored.	The entire disk is restored. Each sector is restored only once.


	NOTE: Regardless of the disk provisioning type, image-level Full Backups without CBT back up only the allocated blocks of the disk. Thus, backup of a 20 GB disk that only uses 2 GB results in a backup size of approximately 2 GB backup. If the disk resides on an NFS disk, the entire disk is backed up and the size reflects this. When you restore a non-CBT backup, all blocks are restored and allocated. After a disk is restored from a non‑CBT backup, subsequent CBT-enabled Full Backups back up the entire disk.

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NetVault Plug-in for VMware 12.3.1 - User Guide

Unlocking a virtual machine

Defining a backup strategy

About backup methods and types

Data backed up and restored for different disk types