NetBackup™ for VMware Administrator's Guide

Virtual machine quiesce

This option is enabled by default. In the great majority of cases, you should accept the default.

I/O on the virtual machine is quiesced before NetBackup creates the snapshot. Without quiescing file activity, data consistency in the snapshot cannot be guaranteed. If not consistent, the backed-up data may be of little or no value.

If this option is disabled, the snapshot is created without quiescing I/O on the virtual machine. In this case, you must perform your own analysis for data consistency in the backup data.

Caution: Veritas does not recommend that you disable quiesce. In most cases, this option should be enabled.

Ignore Instant Recovery VMs

If this option is enabled (the default): NetBackup skips any virtual machine that was restored with Instant Recovery for VMware if the virtual machine is running from a NetBackup NFS datastore.

When the virtual machine data files have been migrated to the production datastore, the virtual machine can be backed up.

If the virtual machine meets all these criteria, it is not backed up if this option is enabled.

If this option is disabled: NetBackup backs up the virtual machine even if it is running from the NetBackup NFS datastore.

Treat Tags as unset if unable to evaluate

Tags were introduced with VMware vCenter Version 5.1. The APIs to interface with the tagging service were not released until VMware vCenter Version 6.0. NetBackup for VMware supports the tags that are assigned to virtual machine objects starting with VMware vCenter Version 6.0.

If you have a mixed vCenter environment, such as 5.1, 5.5, and 6.0: you can use this configuration parameter to modify how NetBackup treats tags for vCenter Version 5.1/5.5. This configuration parameter also applies to all versions of ESXi hosts whose credentials were added to the Virtual Machine Servers list.

This option is disabled by default. If you use the tag field in the VMware Intelligent Policy query and your policy searches for virtual machines across a mixed vCenter environment, note: NetBackup reports the virtual machines that are discovered from vCenter Server 5.1/5.5 and ESXi hosts as failed if it needs to evaluate the tag portion of the query to make an include or exclude decision.

When you enable this option NetBackup treats tags as unset. If you use the tag field in the VMware Intelligent Policy query and your policy searches for virtual machines across a mixed vCenter environment, note: NetBackup evaluates the tag part of the query as if no tags were set on the virtual machines that are discovered from vCenter Server 5.1, 5.5, and ESXi.

Ignore diskless VMs

If this option is enabled:

NetBackup does not back up a replicated (passive) VM in a vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) environment if that VM has no vmdk files. NetBackup skips that VM and backs up the corresponding active VM, which has vmdk files.

Note that virtual machines without vmdk files can occur in a vCenter SRM environment. If a replicated virtual machine has never been active, it is in passive mode and may have no vmdk files.

If this option is disabled:

NetBackup attempts to back up a virtual machine regardless of whether it has vmdk files. If the virtual machine has no vmdk files, the backup fails with status 156.

Multiple organizations per policy

This option is disabled by default. If it is enabled, the query rules can select virtual machines from different vCloud Director organizations and back them up to the same storage unit.

If you do not want backups of virtual machines from different organizations to be stored on the same drive, leave this option disabled.

Continue VIP discovery if one vSphere login fails

When this option is set to Yes: For a VIP policy's discovery job, NetBackup ignores a failed logon to a vCenter and attempts to log on and discover VMs on other vCenters. On any vCenter that NetBackup can log on to, the VMs that match the VIP policy's query are backed up.

When this option is set to No (the default): If the attempt to log on to a vCenter fails, the discovery job fails and no VMs are backed up for any vCenters.

More information is available on the types of NetBackup jobs for VMware:

See Using the Activity monitor to monitor virtual machine backups.

Post vCenter events

Enables NetBackup to send backup related events to the vCenter server. The events appear in vSphere Client under Home > Inventory > Hosts and Clusters, Tasks & Events tab.

See Viewing NetBackup activity in vSphere Client (HTML5).

Further information on Post vCenter events is available:

See Post vCenter events option (VMware advanced attributes).

VMware server list

Specifies a colon-delimited list of virtual machine servers that NetBackup communicates with for this policy. In large virtual environments, you can use this list to improve backup performance: NetBackup communicates only with the servers that are in this list. For example, exclude from the list any vCenter or vCloud servers that do not contain virtual machines to be backed up by this policy. Also, if a duplicate of the virtual machine exists on a different server: the duplicate is not backed up if it resides on a server that is not included in this list.

Important: IPv6 addresses are not supported in the VMware server list field. Use fully qualified domain names or host names.

This option does not affect either of the following: the list of all possible values in the Query Builder for automatic selection of virtual machines, or browsing of virtual machines for manual selection.

If the list is blank (the default), NetBackup communicates with any servers in the virtual environment.

VMDK compression

Used to specify the vmdk compression method. When this option is set to none (default) compression is not used during the backup job.

NetBackup uses the preferred vmdk compression method when it opens VMDKs. Backup jobs automatically set the compression method to none if NetBackup is unable to read the vmdk with the preferred method.

Snapshot parameters

Snapshot retry count

Sets the number of times the snapshot is retried. The default is 10. The range is 0 to 100.

This option and the snapshot time-out and snapshot creation interval provide flexibility in the creation of snapshots. For most environments, the default values are usually best. In special circumstances, it may be helpful to adjust these settings. Example considerations are the size of the virtual machine and the processing load on the VMware server.

Snapshot timeout (minutes)

Sets a time-out period (in minutes) for completion of the snapshot. The default is 0, which means no time-out.

If snapshots do not complete, set this option to a specific period to force a time-out. Consider using the snapshot creation interval to retry the snapshot at a later time.

Snapshot creation interval (seconds)

Determines the wait time (in seconds) before the snapshot is retried. The default is 10 seconds. The range is 0 to 3600.

Perform snapshot without quiescing if quiesced snapshots fail

This option is disabled by default. If it is enabled and a quiesced snapshot cannot be created, the snapshot is created without quiescing I/O on the virtual machine. The resulting snapshot is referred to as crash consistent. In this case, you must perform your own analysis for data consistency in the backed-up data. The associated snapshot job completes with a status of 0 (Success). You can configure this job to return status 1 (Partial success). Add the policy name to the VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE_STATUS configuration setting in bp.conf on the media server and the backup host machines.

See the NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I for details.

If this option is disabled, the backup fails if a quiesced snapshot cannot be created.