NetBackup™ Web UI VMware Administrator's Guide
- Introducing the NetBackup web user interface
- Monitoring NetBackup
- Managing VMware servers
- Add VMware servers
- Validate and update VMware server credentials
- Browse VMware servers
- Remove VMware servers
- Create an intelligent VM group
- Remove an intelligent VM group
- Add a VMware access host
- Remove a VMware access host
- Change resource limits for VMware resource types
- Change the autodiscovery frequency of VMware assets
- Discover VMware server assets manually
- Protecting VMs
- Instant access
- Instant rollback
- Continuous data protection
- CDP terminology
- CDP Architecture
- About continuous data protection
- Prerequisites
- Capacity-based licensing for CDP
- Configuring CDP
- Defining the CDP gateway
- Sizing considerations
- Limiting concurrent CDP backup jobs
- Controlling full sync
- Monitoring CDP jobs
- Using accelerators with CDP
- Recovering CDP protected VMs
- Some limitations of CDP
- Troubleshooting for CDP
- VM recovery
- Troubleshooting VMware operations
- Errors when adding VMware servers
- Errors when browsing VMware servers
- Errors for the Status for a newly discovered VM
- Error when downloading files from an instant access VM
- Troubleshooting backups and restores of excluded virtual disks
- Restore fails for a virtual machine with multiple datastores
- Errors when you change the recovery destination
Monitoring CDP jobs
For detailed information on monitoring jobs in web UI See The NetBackup dashboard.
CDP follows the same job hierarchy as the traditional NetBackup agent for VMware. Protection starts with the job 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 gateway. A backup job to move data from CDP gateway to 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 ESXi.
For most CDP activities, you can see notifications in the web UI. These notifications are helpful to know how the IO tapping on the gateway performs. You can see notifications when things have stopped working or 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 staging area to back up storage.
VM full sync has started/suspended/resumed/done.
Partial image is generated.
No space left in the staging area storage.
When there is an error while writing in-memory data to staging area location.
Here are some notifications:
Table: Viewing notifications
Message | Scenario | Severity | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
Temporarily disconnecting VMs 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 the VMs temporarily disconnect from the IO filter. | Critical | High |
Input/Output error occurred for the VM: <uuid> | CDP service is not able to perform IO on staging location due to myriad of reasons like, underlying disk snapped out of storage, or file-system went 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 full for the VM: <uuid>, bearing jobid: ${jobid}. Moving data to backup storage. | During 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 backup destination. | Info | Low |
Cannot move data to backup storage, for the VM: <uuid>. 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, 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 |
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.