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NetBackup™ for VMware Administrator's Guide

Last Published: 2024-09-30

Product(s): NetBackup & Alta Data Protection (10.5)

Introduction
1. About NetBackup for VMware
2. About the virtual machine backups that include database data
3. About the NetBackup appliance as a VMware backup host
4. NetBackup for VMware components
5. Appliance as backup host: component overview
6. Media servers as backup or discovery hosts
7. Overview of the VMware backup process
8. NetBackup for VMware terminology
Required tasks: overview
1. Overview of VMware tasks
2. Overview of NetBackup tasks
Configuring RBAC roles for VMware administrators
1. RBAC roles for the VMware administrator
2. Assigning permissions at specific VMware object levels
3. Create a custom role for a VMware server or datacenter
4. Create a custom role for an Organization VDC administrator
5. Create a custom role to manage specific VMs
6. Manage permissions for a datacenter
7. Manage permissions for a single VM
8. Apply RBAC role permissions for a VM to other VMs
Notes and prerequisites
1. NetBackup for VMware: notes and restrictions
2. Notes on VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols)
3. NetBackup IPv6 parameter required for backups in VMware IPv6 environments
4. NetBackup for VMware: notes on Linux virtual machines
5. Notes on the NetBackup appliance as a VMware backup host
6. NetBackup for VMware support for SAN multi-pathing
7. NetBackup for VMware support for fault tolerant VMs
8. NetBackup character restrictions for the Primary VM identifier
9. In the policy Query Builder, display names, resource pool names, and vApp names are case-sensitive
10. Notes on the hotadd transport mode
11. Notes and limitations for tag usage in VMware Intelligent Policy queries
12. Notes and limitations for the backup and restore of VMware tag associations
13. Notes and limitations for the backup and restore of VMware storage policies
14. Support for LVM thin pool based volumes
VMware vSphere privileges
1. About VMware vSphere privileges
2. VMware vSphere privileges for virtual machine backups
3. VMware vSphere privileges for a full VM restore
4. VMware vSphere privileges to create an instant access VM
5. VMware vSphere privileges for NetBackup plug-in operations
6. VMware vSphere privileges for instant rollback
7. VMware vSphere privileges for agentless SFR privileges
8. VMware vSphere privileges for individual vmdk restore privileges
9. VMware vSphere privileges for vApp restore and vApp restore to template
10. Optional permissions for better integration with VMware vSphere
Managing VMware servers
1. About VMware discovery
  1. Change the autodiscovery frequency of VMware assets
  2. Discover VMware server assets manually
2. Add VMware servers
  1. Using the VMware Managed Object Browser to verify the server name
3. Validate and update VMware server credentials
4. Browse VMware servers
5. Remove VMware servers
6. Create an intelligent VM group
7. Remove an intelligent VM group
8. Add a VMware access host
9. Remove a VMware access host
10. Change resource limits for VMware resource types
  1. VMware resource types and limits
11. Setting privileges for posting events to vCenter
12. Authentication token for the NetBackup vSphere plug-ins
13. Validating VMware virtualization server certificates in NetBackup
Configuring backup policies for VMware
1. Configure a VMware policy
2. Limit jobs per policy on the Attributes tab (for VMware)
3. Backup options on the VMware tab
4. Exclude disks tab
5. Browse for VMware virtual machines
6. Limiting the VMware servers that NetBackup searches when browsing for virtual machines
7. Virtual machine host names and display names should be unique if VMs are selected manually in the policy
8. Primary VM identifier option and manual selection of virtual machines
9. About incremental backups of virtual machines
10. Configuring incremental backups
11. Storage Foundation Volume Manager volumes in the virtual machine
Configuring a VMware Intelligent Policy
1. About automatic virtual machine selection for NetBackup for VMware
2. Support and use of VMware tag associations
3. The basics of a NetBackup query rule
4. Important notes on automatic virtual machine selection
5. NetBackup requirements for automatic virtual machine selection
6. Automatic virtual machine selection: Task overview
7. Options for selecting VMware virtual machines
8. About the Reuse VM selection query results option
  1. The effect of virtual machine discovery on vCenter
9. Configure automatic virtual machine selection
10. Editing an existing query in Basic mode
11. Using the Query Builder in Advanced mode
12. AND vs. OR in queries
13. Examples for the NetBackup Query Builder
14. The IsSet operator in queries
15. About selecting virtual machines by means of multiple policies
16. Order of operations in queries (precedence rules)
17. Parentheses in compound queries
18. Query rules for resource pools
19. Query rules for datacenter folders (host folder)
20. Query rules for duplicate names
21. Query rules for tags
22. Query Builder field reference
23. Test Query screen for VMware
24. Test Query: Failed virtual machines
25. Effect of Primary VM identifier parameter on Selection column in Test Query results
26. Effect of Primary VM identifier parameter on VM Name column in Test query results
27. Refreshing the display of virtual environment changes in the Query Builder
28. Reducing the time required for VM discovery in a large VMware environment
Use Accelerator to back up virtual machines
1. About the NetBackup Accelerator for virtual machines
2. Accelerator: full vs. incremental schedules
3. How the NetBackup Accelerator works with virtual machines
4. Accelerator notes and requirements for virtual machines
5. Accelerator forced rescan for virtual machines (schedule attribute)
6. Accelerator requires the OptimizedImage attribute
7. Accelerator backups and the NetBackup catalog
8. Accelerator messages in the backup job details log
9. About reporting the amount of Accelerator backup data that was transferred over the network
10. Replacing the Accelerator image size with the network-transferred data in NetBackup command output
Configuring protection plans for VMware
1. Protect VMs or intelligent VM groups
2. Customize protection settings for a VMware asset
3. Remove protection from VMs or intelligent VM groups
4. View the protection status of VMs or intelligent VM groups
Malware scan
1. Assets by workload type
Instant access
1. Prerequisites of instant access
2. Things to consider before you use the instant access feature
3. Create an instant access VM
4. Restore files and folders from a VM backup image
5. Download files and folders from a VM backup image
6. Instant access Build Your Own (BYO)
7. VM malware scan
Instant rollback
1. Prerequisites of instant rollback
2. Things to consider before you use the instant rollback feature
3. Instant rollback from a VM backup image
Continuous data protection
1. About continuous data protection
2. CDP terminology
3. CDP architecture
4. Prerequisites
5. Capacity-based licensing for CDP
6. Steps to configure CDP
7. Removing VMs from the CDP gateway
8. Defining the CDP gateway
9. Sizing considerations
10. Limiting concurrent CDP backup jobs
11. Controlling full sync
12. Monitoring CDP jobs
13. Using accelerators with CDP
14. Recovering CDP protected VMs
15. Some limitations of CDP
16. Troubleshooting for CDP
Backing up virtual machines
1. Manually back up virtual machines
2. Trial backup for VMware
3. Using the Activity monitor to monitor virtual machine backups
4. Restarting jobs individually in the Activity monitor
5. Viewing NetBackup activity in vSphere Client (HTML5)
VM recovery
1. Restore notes and restrictions
2. Restore notes and restrictions on Linux
3. Recover a full VMware virtual machine
4. Restoring VMware virtual machine disks
VMware agentless restore
1. About VMware agentless restore
2. Prerequisites and limitations of VMware agentless restores
3. Provide access to a credential for agentless single file recovery to a guest VM
  1. Add a credential for a VMware guest VM
  2. Create a custom role for agentless single file recovery to a guest VM, with a credential
4. Recover files and folders with VMware agentless restore
5. About restricted restore mode
Restoring Individual files and folders from VMware backups
1. About restoring individual VMware files and folders
2. Restore individual files and folders
3. Recovery options for restore of VMware files
4. Setting up NetBackup Client Service for VMware restores to a Windows shared virtual machine drive
Using NetBackup to back up Cloud Director environments
1. About NetBackup for vCloud Director
2. Notes on creating a NetBackup policy for vCloud
3. Notes on restoring virtual machines into vCloud Director
4. Recover VMware Cloud Director virtual machines
5. Restore a vApp template that has multiple virtual machines
6. Reducing the time required for VM discovery in a large vCloud environment
Restore virtual machines with Instant Recovery
1. About Instant Recovery for VMware
2. Task overview for Instant Recovery for VMware
3. Performance recommendations for Instant Recovery for VMware
4. Requirements for Instant Recovery for VMware
5. Notes on Instant Recovery for VMware
6. Restarting the Client for NFS service on a Windows restore host
7. Instant Recovery options on the nbrestorevm command
8. Restoring a virtual machine with Instant Recovery for VMware
9. Restoring a virtual machine to a different location with Instant Recovery for VMware
10. Restoring individual files with Instant Recovery for VMware while the current virtual machine is running
11. Job types for Instant Recovery for VMware
12. Reactivating a restored virtual machine with Instant Recovery for VMware
Protecting VMs using hardware snapshots and replication
1. About virtual machines and hardware snapshots
2. Deployment and architecture
3. Features and applications supported
4. Prerequisites for hardware snapshot and replication
5. Operations supported with hardware snapshot
6. Configuring a VMware policy to use hardware snapshots
7. Configuring a VMware policy to use NetBackup snapshot manager replication
8. Jobs in the Activity Monitor that use hardware snapshot for VMs
9. Notes and limitations
10. Troubleshooting with VMware hardware snapshot and replication operations
Best practices and more information
1. NetBackup for VMware best practices
  1. NetBackup for VMware with deduplication
2. How NetBackup handles VMware tag associations at restore
3. Best practices for VMware tag usage
4. About reducing the size of VMware backups
  1. Block-level backup (BLIB): full vs incremental
  2. Deleting a vSphere Client snapshot
5. Further assistance with NetBackup for VMware
Troubleshooting VMware operations
1. NetBackup logging for VMware
  1. NetBackup logs for Accelerator with virtual machines
  2. Configuring VxMS logging
  3. Format of the VxMS core.log and provider.log file names
  4. Configuring the VDDK logging level
2. Troubleshooting VMware backups
3. Troubleshooting the restore of VMware and restores of files
4. Troubleshooting the adding of VMware servers
5. Troubleshooting the browsing of VMware servers
6. Troubleshooting the status for a newly discovered VM
7. Troubleshooting policy configuration
8. Troubleshooting the download of files from an instant access VM
9. Troubleshooting backups and restores of excluded virtual disks
10. How to determine the ESX network that NetBackup used for the backup or restore
11. Preventing browsing delays caused by DNS problems
12. Changing the browsing timeout for virtual machine discovery
13. Changing timeout and logging values for vSphere
14. Credentials for VMware server are not valid
15. Snapshot error encountered (status code 156)
  1. The origin of the snapshot failure: NetBackup or VMware?
16. Conflict between NetBackup and VMware Storage vMotion with vSphere 5.0 or later
17. Backup or restore job hangs
18. VMware SCSI requirements for application quiesce on Windows
19. VMware virtual machine does not restart after restore
20. A restored VM may not start or its file system(s) may not be accessible
21. NetBackup job fails due to update tasks on the VMware server
22. The vSphere interface reports that virtual machine consolidation is needed
23. Linux VMs and persistent device naming
24. For a VMware virtual machine with Windows dynamic disks, a restore from incremental backup fails with a Windows restore host and the hotadd transport mode
25. Simultaneous hotadd backups (from the same VMware backup host) fail with status 13
26. Troubleshooting VMware tag usage
27. Ensuring that guest customizations can be restored in vCloud Director
28. Troubleshooting vmdk restore to existing VM
29. Troubleshooting backups of virtual machines on Virtual Volumes (VVols)
30. Issues with the CA certificate during installation of the NetBackup client on VMware Cloud (VMC)
Appendix A. Configuring services for NFS on Windows
1. About installing and configuring Network File System (NFS) for Granular Recovery Technology (GRT)
2. About configuring services for NFS on Windows 2012 or 2016 (NetBackup for VMware)
  1. Enabling Services for Network File System (NFS) on a Windows 2012 or 2016 media server (NetBackup for VMware)
  2. Enabling Services for Network File System (NFS) on a Windows 2012 or 2016 restore host (NetBackup for VMware)
3. Disabling the Server for NFS (NetBackup for VMware)
4. Disabling the Client for NFS on the media server (NetBackup for VMware)
5. Configuring a UNIX media server and Windows backup or restore host for Granular Recovery Technology (NetBackup for VMware)
6. Configuring a different network port for NBFSD (NetBackup for VMware)
Appendix B. Backups of VMware raw devices (RDM)
1. About VMware raw device mapping (RDM)
2. Configurations for backing up RDMs
3. About alternate client backup of RDMs
4. Requirements for alternate client backup of RDMs
5. Configure an alternate client backup of RDMs

Monitoring CDP jobs

More information is available on monitoring jobs in the web UI.

CDP follows the same job hierarchy as the traditional NetBackup agent for VMware. Protection starts with the job of discovering the VM and its attributes. A child job called Preparing for Backup follows it. This child job determines the changed blocks based on previous images and current data available on the gateway. A backup job, to move data from the CDP gateway to the destination storage unit, follows the child job.

If there is not enough space for each VM, on the gateway, the backup image may not be fully recoverable. Such images are referred to as partial non-recoverable images and are not available to restore from the web UI. But the subsequent backup jobs, create recoverable backup images. If an image is non-recoverable, NetBackup triggers a backup job automatically when it receives consistent data from the ESXi.

Viewing notifications

For most CDP activities, you can see notifications in the web UI. These notifications are helpful to know how the I/O tapping on the gateway performs. You can see notifications when things have stopped working or if any action is required from your side. The following are some important scenarios when you can see notifications:

While backing up data. When a backup job moves data from the staging area to backup storage.
VM full sync has started/suspended/resumed/done.
Partial image is generated.
No space left in the staging area for storage.
When there is an error while writing in-memory data to the staging area.

Here are some notifications:

Table: Viewing notifications

Message	Scenario	Severity	Priority
Temporarily disconnecting from the IO filter to the Continuous data protection service on the gateway. Either the allocated staging area is almost full, or the memory usage is at maximum.	The staging space allocated to CDP is almost full, and CDP service temporarily disconnects from the I/O filter. This may also happen, if backup jobs cannot move data from the CDP gateway staging database to the backup storage. Check the backup job failure reasons and STU's underlying storage.	Critical	High
Input/Output error occurred for the VM: <uuid>	CDP service cannot perform I/O on staging location due to many reasons, like the underlying disk snapped out of storage, the file system going into read-only mode, and so on.	Error	High
Terminating the Continuous data protection service, as the staging area memory is full.	If the staging space is less than 1 GB, CDP raises this error and terminates the service.	Critical	High
Data storage quota is full for the VM: <uuid>, bearing jobid: ${jobid}. Moving data to the backup storage.	During the VM's data transfer, if the total data crosses the configured VM quota, then a backup job is triggered to move the staging data to the backup destination.	Info	Low
Cannot move data to the backup storage, for the VM: <uuid>. The storage quota for the VM is full.	Data movement from the gateway to the backup location failed.	Error	High
Full sync started for the VM: <uuid>.	Initiated the full sync process for this VM.	Info	Low
Full sync resumed for the VM: <uuid>.	Full sync for the VM is resumed after some unexpected interruption.	Info	Low
Full sync completed for the VM: <uuid>.	The initial full sync for VM is complete.	Info	Low
Full sync suspended for the VM: <uuid>.	Full sync operation fails, for some reason like, a network glitch.	Info	Low
Backup image generated for the VM: <uuid> is not recoverable.	When a VM sync is in progress, if the VM quota is reached, a backup job is triggered. When the backup job is completed, the image may not be recoverable, as NetBackup is moving the intermediate data generated on the guest VM.	Info	Low

Viewing jobs

CDP uses the activity monitor to display the following job information:

Parent backup job - discovery job to discover the VM information.
Preparing for backup - identify the point-in-time data for the VM.
Backup - move data from the staging path to the backup storage.