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Backups For Vmware

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32 views5 pages

Backups For Vmware

Uploaded by

Shrinivas Dasari
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Backups for VMware

 Updated Monday, November 13, 2023

You can initiate backups from a backup set (all subclients) or from a subclient. You can also schedule
backups to run automatically.

If VM archiving is configured, you can perform archiving as part of backup jobs.

When a virtual machine is discovered during backup, a client for the VM is created in the CommCell
Console if one does not already exist. If a virtual machine with spaces or special characters in its name is
discovered during backup, the spaces or special characters are replaced with underscores ('_') when
creating the VM client name that is displayed in the CommCell Console. The VM name with spaces or
special characters is still displayed on the Virtual Machine Status tab for the backup job, in the backup
job summary, and in reports that include the VM name. The following special characters are replaced:

[ \ \ | ` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * + = < > ? , { } ( ) : ; ' \ " \ \ s / ]

Data You Can Back Up


Virtual machines (Windows and Linux, powered on or powered off)

VM templates (using HotAdd, NAS, NBD, or NBDSSL transport modes)

VMDK files

Virtual RDMs

GPT or dynamic disk volumes

vSphere tags on virtual machines

VM custom attributes

VM vApp options

Settings for Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)

Fault-tolerant virtual machines that meet the following requirements:

Configured as fault tolerant in the vSphere Web client

Hosted on ESX 6.x or a more recent version

VM hardware version 11 or a more recent version


Data You Cannot Back Up
Virtual machines that contain SCSI adapters that are configured for bus sharing (physical or virtual)

Virtual machines that are configured with fault tolerance (before ESX 6.x or hardware version 11)

Virtual machines that do not have a disk attached

Virtual machines replicated by VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM)

VM templates (using SAN transport mode)

VM Settings for High Availability (HA)

Physical RDMs

Independent disks

Disks using the multi-writer option (install an in-guest agent on the VM to protect data on multi-
writer disks)

Page and swap files (VMware Tools must be installed on guest VMs)

Backups You Can Perform


Full backups

Full backups, using IntelliSnap

Incremental backups

Application-aware backups

IntelliSnap Support
You can configure a VMware hypervisor to perform IntelliSnap backups. From the snap copy, you can
restore full VMs, restore a disk and attach it to an existing VM, and restore guest files and folders.
 Note

Backup or restore can fail if the name of the datastore, cluster, or virtual machine contains any
of the following characters:
+&@%=#%*$#!\/:*?"<>|;'
For more information, see Error downloading or uploading virtual machine configuration file.

If some parts of a virtual machine backup job are not completed successfully, the job status is
"Completed w/ one or more errors." You can view the Job Details dialog box and then select the
Virtual Machine Status tab to check the status of specific VMs.
If the status for a specific virtual machine is "Partial Success", some information for the VM was
successfully backed up, but other information was not. Failed items for a VM contribute to the
Failed Objects count in the Backup Job Summary Report.
A VM is only included in a backup of failed VMs if the VM is marked as Failed in the Virtual
Machine Status tab. VMs that complete with partial success are not included as failed VMs.

Application Aware Backups

See Application Aware Backups for the Virtual Server Agent.

VADP Backups
Commvault supports backups for environments using vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP). During
VADP backups, the Virtual Server Agent requests a snapshot of the virtual machine hosted on the VMFS
datastore. The snapshot VMDK and virtual machine configuration files are then copied to the storage
media without requiring any dedicated disk cache on the proxy server. In the case of incremental
backups, Changed Block Tracking (CBT) helps quickly identify the data blocks on the virtual machine
that have changed since the last backup.

Similarly, during restores, virtual machines are restored directly to the appropriate ESX Server and
datastore without the need for staging on the proxy server.
VM Archiving

Virtual machines that are identified by the VM management rules for the subclient can be powered off,
relocated, or archived by running a backup operation. When the backup job is complete, virtual
machines that met the VM management criteria for the subclient are powered off, relocated, or
archived.
 Note

When archive management is enabled for a subclient, all subsequent backups default to
incremental backups; the Full option is disabled and you can only choose Incremental or Synthetic
Full.

You can verify that a virtual machine has been archived by viewing the Virtual Machine Status tab in the
Job Details dialog box. Double-click the entry for a virtual machine to display the Status Details dialog;
the VM Archive Management status field displays the value Archived.

You can also verify archived virtual machines in the vSphere client. When you select a virtual machine
that is archived, the Annotations area on the Summary tab displays Archived: Yes.

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