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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

NetBackup for VMware: notes and restrictions

Note the following about NetBackup for VMware:

NetBackup for VMware supports FIPS mode for SSL communication when using VDDK. This can be enabled by adding the VDDK_FIPS_MODE = ENABLED entry to the bp.conf file on VMware access hosts.
NetBackup for VMware does not support the Retain snapshot for Instant Recovery or SLP management option on the policy Attributes tab.
NetBackup supports these features as follows:
- For Instant Recovery, use the nbrestorevm command.
  See About Instant Recovery for VMware.
- For SLP management of snapshots, use Replication Director.
  For more information, see the NetBackup Replication Director Solutions Guide.
NetBackup for VMware cannot back up the data on an independent disk.
See Troubleshooting VMware backups.
NetBackup for VMware does not back up standard iSCSI LUNs that are connected to the virtual machine. If the virtual machine has an iSCSI LUN, the backup succeeds but the drive that represents the LUN is not backed up.
Note: NetBackup for VMware supports datastores over iSCSI.
Several notes and limitations apply to Linux virtual machines.
See NetBackup for VMware: notes on Linux virtual machines.
VMware virtual machine templates are for cloning virtual machines: They cannot be turned on and used as functioning VMs. As a result, VMware has imposed the following restrictions on backup and restore of virtual machine templates:
- A virtual machine template cannot be captured in a snapshot. NetBackup backs up the template to the designated storage unit.
- Block level incremental backup (BLIB) cannot be used when backing up a virtual machine template. As a result of this restriction, NetBackup Accelerator cannot be used to back up VMware virtual machine templates.
- A virtual machine template cannot be backed up over a SAN. You must configure the NetBackup policy to use a local network transfer type, such as nbd. Likewise, the restore of a template must be conducted over a local network. You can use the Query Builder in the NetBackup policy to create rules for automatic selection of virtual machine templates.
NetBackup supports non-ASCII characters in virtual machine objects. Examples of objects are file and folder names, annotations, floppy image name, parallel port or serial port file name, CD-ROM ISO name, and so on.
Support for these characters is as follows:
- The backup host and the restore host may be the same computer.
- Windows operating systems on the NetBackup primary server, the backup host, and the restore host do not assume non-ASCII characters in VM display name if the system locales of Windows hosts are not set to UTF-8. Even if the system locale is not set to UTF-8, a backup of the VMware virtual machine whose display name contains any non-ASCII characters may work. However, a restore from the VMware virtual machine backup that has non-ASCII characters in its display name needs a Linux or UNIX restore host which uses UTF-8 character encoding.
- The UNIX and Linux operating systems on the NetBackup primary server, the backup host, and the restore host must use UTF-8 character encoding.
- The name that NetBackup uses to select a VM for backups cannot contain non-ASCII characters. The Primary VM identifier field in the backup policy identifies the name type that NetBackup uses to select VMs. For example, if you specify the VM display name as the Primary VM identifier, the display name of each VM that you back up cannot contain non-ASCII characters.
  See Primary VM identifier options (VMware).
  VM BIOS UUID and VM instance UUID names never contain non-ASCII characters.
- For security purposes, VM names have some restrictions.
  See NetBackup character restrictions for the Primary VM identifier.
For dual-boot virtual machines, NetBackup does not support the following policy options: Enable file recovery from VM backup, Exclude deleted blocks, Exclude swap and paging files, Exclude boot disk, Exclude all data disks.
NetBackup does not support the following exclude disks options for Replication Director backups: Exclude boot disk, Exclude all data disks, Perform custom attribute based exclusion, Specific disks to be excluded.
To back up a virtual machine while Storage vMotion migrates its files, NetBackup must conduct the backup through the vCenter server.
See Conflict between NetBackup and VMware Storage vMotion with vSphere 5.0 or later.
Several notes and limitations apply to the automatic selection of virtual machines for backup (Virtual Machine Intelligent Policy).
See NetBackup requirements for automatic virtual machine selection.
Several notes and limitations apply to the hotadd transport mode.
See Notes on the hotadd transport mode.
Note the following information about NetBackup for VMware compression and encryption:
- NetBackup's compression or encryption options
  NetBackup for VMware does not support NetBackup's compression or encryption options (in the NetBackup policy attributes).
- Granular file recovery and single file restore (SFR) on the VM
  NetBackup for VMware granular file recovery and SFR supports Windows NTFS file compression but the restored file or folder is uncompressed.
  NetBackup for VMware granular file recovery and SFR supports file-level compression (such as zip or lzh), and the file or folder is restored as the original compressed file.
  NetBackup for VMware granular file recovery and SFR does not support Windows NTFS file encryption nor any type of encryption that is set in the guest OS (such as BitLocker).
- VM volume recovery
  NetBackup for VMware VM volume recovery supports any type of compression or encryption that they are set in the guest OS (such as BitLocker).
For limitations for the Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL Server applications, see the respective guides for those workloads.
Several notes and limitations apply to the VMware restores.
See Restore notes and restrictions.
In vSphere, if your virtual environment has IPv6 addresses, use only the fully qualified domain names (FQDNs) that are mapped to IPv6 addresses on the DNS server.