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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

Troubleshooting for CDP

VAIO stops sending data to the CDP gateway

This happens when the IOFilter encounters problem and hence enters into NOOP (Non-Operational) mode.

Possible reasons:

IOfilter encountered a problem with the datastore.
IOfilter encountered a problem while reading from vmdk on the ESXi server.

Workaround:

Remove the VTSTAP policy from all the disks of protected VMs and reattach.

Error: Storage policy is not detached from one or more virtual disks of the virtual machine.

This happens when the storage policy is not detached from all the virtual disks of the VM. The next backups fail with error code 156.

Workaround:

Remove the Veritas I/O filter-based storage (vtstap) policy from all the disks of the VM that CDP protected previously. You can do this operation on the vCenter.

Error: Failed to retrieve or parse the version of Veritas IO filter.

You may get this error when trying to subscribe one or more VMs to the CDP protection plan. Occurs when the CIM server service on the ESXi server is non-responsive.

Workaround:

Restart the CIM server service on the ESXi server and retry the VM subscription to the CDP protection plan. You can find the CIM server service of the ESXi server, under Configure > Services section of the ESXi.

nbcctd service goes to an inconsistent state. Cannot configure the CDP gateway.

Possible reasons:

When you mount a read-only file system and provide its path in the CDP gateway configuration, the service is configured, but the gateway fails to start.
When you try to configure the gateway again, by giving a read/write path, the service still fails to start.

Workaround: Retry the operation after you remove the nbcct directory from:

<NBU installation path>/netbackup/nbcct in NetBackup 9.1.
<staginglocation>/nbcct in NetBackup 10.0 and later.

CDP-based protection plan fails with the error: Storage policy is not attached to one or more virtual disks of virtual machine to be registered for IO tapping.

Possible reasons:

Currently, NetBackup supports only the vtstap policy as a storage policy for CDP. If you try to subscribe a VM using a hybrid storage policy (encryption + replication) it shows the error.

Workaround: Avoid using a hybrid storage policy (encryption + replication) for CDP-protected VMs.

CDP service does not start after the media server restart or mount path-related changes.

Possible reasons:

The configured staging area is unmounted post reboot or has an unsupported file system. For example, if you configure the CDP gateway using a supported mount like /mnt/stage_area and do not configure auto-mount. After a system restart, this path points to root file system, which CDP does not support, hence the CDP service (nbcctd) cannot start.

Workaround: Ensure that the staging area or the relevant disk mounts are remounted properly, whenever there are changes in the system related to unmount or system reboot.

VM gets unsubscribed in a powered off state and has I/O tapping policies attached to the VMDK. It gives a warning to remove storage policies and then unsubscribe.

Possible reasons:

While removing CDP protection, if the protected VM is powered off, the CDP gateway cannot get the required information of storage policies from VAIO. Hence, though the CDP protection is removed from the VM, the I/O tapping policies are still attached to the VMDK of that VM, it continues to tap the I/O and affect performance.

Workaround: Always detach the storage policy of the VMs before unsubscribing the VMs, irrespective of their powered on or off state.

Subscription to NetBackup protection plan fails, but the backup jobs keep dumping data in the staging area.

Explanation

Occurs when you protect a NetBackup primary server, using the same primary server's protection plan.

Workaround: We do not recommend protecting a NetBackup primary server using a protection plan made using the same primary server. If this error occurs, detach the Veritas storage policy from the NetBackup primary server VM, and unsubscribe the VM from the protection plan.

Cannot delete a CDP protection plan when the CDP gateway is unreachable.

Explanation:

CDP policy is not deleted after removing the entries in case of an unreachable host.

Workaround: The CDP protection plan subscription does not get removed, as we are not deleting the CDP policy before cleaning up the CDP host. So, we need to call the Delete policy API manually after calling the Delete CDP gateway API, to delete the entries of the unreachable gateway.

You can clean up an unreachable CDP gateway using the following API:

To DELETE CDP Gateway

URL : https://netbackup/config/cdp-gateway/force

HTTP Method : DELETE

Headers:

    Authorisation: Bearer <Token>

    Content-Type: application/vnd.netbackup+json;version=9.0;charset=UTF-8

To Delete Policy

URL : https://netbackup/config/policies/policy_name

HTTP Method : DELETE

Headers:

    Authorisation: Bearer <Token>

After the successful execution of the above two APIs, the mapping for the policy and the VM is still visible in the web UI. If you try to remove the protection of that VM through web UI, you can see an error message saying: Subscription ID not found. This is expected behavior.

CDP gateway update operation fails to restart the CDP service (nbcctd) on the gateway

Explanation: The CDP gateway update operation tries to restart the service. If stopping the service takes longer time than usual, then the update operation shows an error, indicating that the CDP service (nbcctd) failed to restart.

Workaround: In this case, check if the nbcctd service is running on the gateway. If the service is running, wait for it to shut down. To manually stop the service, use the command: /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/nbcctd -terminate. When the service has stopped, start it using the command /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/nbcctd -X.

Failed to get version from the Storage Platform Web Service(SPWS). Ensure that Nginx is running and configured correctly on the selected MSDP storage server.

Explanation: While creating a CDP protection plan to use universal share, if you select a storage device that does not have universal share capability, you get this error.

Workaround: You must select a storage device that has universal share capability.

Unsupported CDP gateway version with universal share. Minimum supported version is 10.2.

Explanation: While creating a CDP protection plan to use universal share, if you select a CDP gateway server lower than NetBackup version 10.2, you get this error.

Workaround: To use universal share, the CDP gateway version must be NetBackup version 10.2 or higher.