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Veritas NetBackup™ for VMware Administrator's Guide

Last Published: 2018-02-16

Product(s): NetBackup (8.1.1)

Browse for VMware virtual machines

When you configure a NetBackup policy, you can use the Browse for Virtual Machines screen to select virtual machines for backup. You can enter the virtual machine's host name manually or browse and select it from a list.

As an alternative, NetBackup can automatically select virtual machines based on a range of criteria.

See About automatic virtual machine selection for NetBackup for VMware.

Enter the VM display name (or VM hostname, VM BIOS UUID, VM DNS Name, VM instance UUID)
Click this option if you want to manually enter the name or other identifier of a virtual machine. The format of the name depends on your system. It may be the fully qualified name or another name, depending on your network configuration and how the name is defined in the guest OS. If NetBackup cannot find the name you enter, policy validation fails.
Note:
The type of name to enter depends on the Primary VM identifier setting on the VMware tab of the policy.
To enter a name, make sure that Browse for Virtual Machines is not selected.
Browse for Virtual Machines
Click this option to discover vCenter servers, clusters, data centers, vApps, and ESX servers (shown in the left pane). You can select virtual machines from a list (in the right pane).
NetBackup uses the following icons for vSphere objects:
vCenter server
Datacenter
Cluster
vApp
ESX server
Virtual machine (powered off)
Virtual machine (powered on)
Virtual machine template
The virtual machines that are contained in a VMware vApp are displayed in the right pane along with other virtual machines.
The virtual machine names that are listed may be derived from a cache file. Use of the cache file is faster than rediscovering the virtual machines on the network if your site has a large number of virtual machines.
If NetBackup cannot obtain the IP address of the virtual machine, the host name and IP address are displayed as NONE.
Note that virtual machine host names or display names must be unique within a master server's policies:
Last Update
To update the cache file and re-display virtual machines, click the refresh icon to the right of the Last Update field. This field shows the date and time of the most recent cache file that contains the names of virtual machines.
For NetBackup to access the virtual machines, note the following:
- The NetBackup master server must have credentials for the VMware vCenter or ESX server(s).
- DNS problems may prevent or slow down discovery of the virtual machines.
- To limit the search to particular vCenter or ESX servers, you can create a BACKUP registry entry as an exclude list. Excluding unneeded servers can dramatically speed up the search for virtual machines.
- The browsing time out value must not be set too low.

VM hostname, Display Name, DNS Name, Instance UUID, etc.

When you select an ESX server in the left pane, information about its virtual machines appears in columns in the right pane.

You can change the arrangement of these columns by right-clicking in the right pane:

The columns are the following:

VM hostname	The host name of the virtual machine.
Display Name	The display name of the virtual machine.
Instance UUID	The UUID of the virtual machine.
BIOS UUID	The BIOS UUID of the virtual machine.
Dns Name	The VMware "DNS Name" of the virtual machine. In vSphere Client, this name appears on the virtual machine's Summary tab. See Primary VM identifier options (VMware).
IP Address	The IP address of the virtual machine.
Operating System	The guest OS system as defined when the virtual machine was created.
DataStore	The datastore where the virtual machine configuration files are stored. If the datastore is in a datastore cluster, NetBackup displays the name of the datastore (not the name of the cluster).
Powered	The power on/off status of the virtual machine when it was last discovered.
RDM Status	Shows whether the virtual machine has a physical disk in raw device mapping mode (RDM) or has an independent drive.
Change Tracking Support	Shows whether the virtual machine supports the VMware Changed Block Tracking feature (for BLIB). Changed Block Tracking requires ESX server 4.0 and a virtual machine at vmx-07 or later.
Virtual Center Name	The vCenter server that manages the ESX server (also appears in the left pane).
Template	Shows whether the virtual machine is a template.

The virtual machines you selected are listed in the Clients tab.

More Information

Adding NetBackup credentials for VMware

Changing the browsing timeout for virtual machine discovery