NetBackup™ for VMware Administrator's Guide
- Introduction
- About NetBackup for VMware
- About the virtual machine backups that include database data
- About the NetBackup appliance as a VMware backup host
- NetBackup for VMware components
- Appliance as backup host: component overview
- Media servers as backup or discovery hosts
- Overview of the VMware backup process
- NetBackup for VMware terminology
- Required tasks: overview
- Configuring RBAC roles for VMware administrators
- RBAC roles for the VMware administrator
- Assigning permissions at specific VMware object levels
- Create a custom role for a VMware server or datacenter
- Create a custom role for an Organization VDC administrator
- Create a custom role to manage specific VMs
- Manage permissions for a datacenter
- Manage permissions for a single VM
- Apply RBAC role permissions for a VM to other VMs
- Notes and prerequisites
- NetBackup for VMware: notes and restrictions
- Notes on VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols)
- NetBackup IPv6 parameter required for backups in VMware IPv6 environments
- NetBackup for VMware: notes on Linux virtual machines
- Notes on the NetBackup appliance as a VMware backup host
- NetBackup for VMware support for SAN multi-pathing
- NetBackup for VMware support for fault tolerant VMs
- NetBackup character restrictions for the Primary VM identifier
- In the policy Query Builder, display names, resource pool names, and vApp names are case-sensitive
- Notes on the hotadd transport mode
- Notes and limitations for tag usage in VMware Intelligent Policy queries
- Notes and limitations for the backup and restore of VMware tag associations
- Notes and limitations for the backup and restore of VMware storage policies
- Support for LVM thin pool based volumes
- VMware vSphere privileges
- About VMware vSphere privileges
- VMware vSphere privileges for virtual machine backups
- VMware vSphere privileges for a full VM restore
- VMware vSphere privileges to create an instant access VM
- VMware vSphere privileges for NetBackup plug-in operations
- VMware vSphere privileges for instant rollback
- VMware vSphere privileges for agentless SFR privileges
- VMware vSphere privileges for individual vmdk restore privileges
- VMware vSphere privileges for vApp restore and vApp restore to template
- Optional permissions for better integration with VMware vSphere
- Managing VMware servers
- About VMware discovery
- 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
- Setting privileges for posting events to vCenter
- Authentication token for the NetBackup vSphere plug-ins
- Validating VMware virtualization server certificates in NetBackup
- Configuring backup policies for VMware
- Configure a VMware policy
- Limit jobs per policy on the Attributes tab (for VMware)
- Backup options on the VMware tab
- Exclude disks tab
- Browse for VMware virtual machines
- Limiting the VMware servers that NetBackup searches when browsing for virtual machines
- Virtual machine host names and display names should be unique if VMs are selected manually in the policy
- Primary VM identifier option and manual selection of virtual machines
- About incremental backups of virtual machines
- Configuring incremental backups
- Storage Foundation Volume Manager volumes in the virtual machine
- Configuring a VMware Intelligent Policy
- About automatic virtual machine selection for NetBackup for VMware
- Support and use of VMware tag associations
- The basics of a NetBackup query rule
- Important notes on automatic virtual machine selection
- NetBackup requirements for automatic virtual machine selection
- Automatic virtual machine selection: Task overview
- Options for selecting VMware virtual machines
- About the Reuse VM selection query results option
- Configure automatic virtual machine selection
- Editing an existing query in Basic mode
- Using the Query Builder in Advanced mode
- AND vs. OR in queries
- Examples for the NetBackup Query Builder
- The IsSet operator in queries
- About selecting virtual machines by means of multiple policies
- Order of operations in queries (precedence rules)
- Parentheses in compound queries
- Query rules for resource pools
- Query rules for datacenter folders (host folder)
- Query rules for duplicate names
- Query rules for tags
- Query Builder field reference
- Test Query screen for VMware
- Test Query: Failed virtual machines
- Effect of Primary VM identifier parameter on Selection column in Test Query results
- Effect of Primary VM identifier parameter on VM Name column in Test query results
- Refreshing the display of virtual environment changes in the Query Builder
- Reducing the time required for VM discovery in a large VMware environment
- Use Accelerator to back up virtual machines
- About the NetBackup Accelerator for virtual machines
- Accelerator: full vs. incremental schedules
- How the NetBackup Accelerator works with virtual machines
- Accelerator notes and requirements for virtual machines
- Accelerator forced rescan for virtual machines (schedule attribute)
- Accelerator requires the OptimizedImage attribute
- Accelerator backups and the NetBackup catalog
- Accelerator messages in the backup job details log
- About reporting the amount of Accelerator backup data that was transferred over the network
- Replacing the Accelerator image size with the network-transferred data in NetBackup command output
- Configuring protection plans for VMware
- Malware scan
- Instant access
- Instant rollback
- Continuous data protection
- About continuous data protection
- CDP terminology
- CDP architecture
- Prerequisites
- Capacity-based licensing for CDP
- Steps to configure CDP
- Removing VMs from the CDP gateway
- 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
- Backing up virtual machines
- VM recovery
- VMware agentless restore
- Restoring Individual files and folders from VMware backups
- Using NetBackup to back up Cloud Director environments
- About NetBackup for vCloud Director
- Notes on creating a NetBackup policy for vCloud
- Notes on restoring virtual machines into vCloud Director
- Recover VMware Cloud Director virtual machines
- Restore a vApp template that has multiple virtual machines
- Reducing the time required for VM discovery in a large vCloud environment
- Restore virtual machines with Instant Recovery
- About Instant Recovery for VMware
- Task overview for Instant Recovery for VMware
- Performance recommendations for Instant Recovery for VMware
- Requirements for Instant Recovery for VMware
- Notes on Instant Recovery for VMware
- Restarting the Client for NFS service on a Windows restore host
- Instant Recovery options on the nbrestorevm command
- Restoring a virtual machine with Instant Recovery for VMware
- Restoring a virtual machine to a different location with Instant Recovery for VMware
- Restoring individual files with Instant Recovery for VMware while the current virtual machine is running
- Job types for Instant Recovery for VMware
- Reactivating a restored virtual machine with Instant Recovery for VMware
- Protecting VMs using hardware snapshots and replication
- About virtual machines and hardware snapshots
- Deployment and architecture
- Features and applications supported
- Prerequisites for hardware snapshot and replication
- Operations supported with hardware snapshot
- Configuring a VMware policy to use hardware snapshots
- Configuring a VMware policy to use NetBackup snapshot manager replication
- Jobs in the Activity Monitor that use hardware snapshot for VMs
- Notes and limitations
- Troubleshooting with VMware hardware snapshot and replication operations
- Best practices and more information
- Troubleshooting VMware operations
- NetBackup logging for VMware
- Troubleshooting VMware backups
- Troubleshooting the restore of VMware and restores of files
- Troubleshooting the adding of VMware servers
- Troubleshooting the browsing of VMware servers
- Troubleshooting the status for a newly discovered VM
- Troubleshooting policy configuration
- Troubleshooting the download of files from an instant access VM
- Troubleshooting backups and restores of excluded virtual disks
- How to determine the ESX network that NetBackup used for the backup or restore
- Preventing browsing delays caused by DNS problems
- Changing the browsing timeout for virtual machine discovery
- Changing timeout and logging values for vSphere
- Credentials for VMware server are not valid
- Snapshot error encountered (status code 156)
- Conflict between NetBackup and VMware Storage vMotion with vSphere 5.0 or later
- Backup or restore job hangs
- VMware SCSI requirements for application quiesce on Windows
- VMware virtual machine does not restart after restore
- A restored VM may not start or its file system(s) may not be accessible
- NetBackup job fails due to update tasks on the VMware server
- The vSphere interface reports that virtual machine consolidation is needed
- Linux VMs and persistent device naming
- 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
- Simultaneous hotadd backups (from the same VMware backup host) fail with status 13
- Troubleshooting VMware tag usage
- Ensuring that guest customizations can be restored in vCloud Director
- Troubleshooting vmdk restore to existing VM
- Troubleshooting backups of virtual machines on Virtual Volumes (VVols)
- Issues with the CA certificate during installation of the NetBackup client on VMware Cloud (VMC)
- Appendix A. Configuring services for NFS on Windows
- About installing and configuring Network File System (NFS) for Granular Recovery Technology (GRT)
- About configuring services for NFS on Windows 2012 or 2016 (NetBackup for VMware)
- Disabling the Server for NFS (NetBackup for VMware)
- Disabling the Client for NFS on the media server (NetBackup for VMware)
- Configuring a UNIX media server and Windows backup or restore host for Granular Recovery Technology (NetBackup for VMware)
- Configuring a different network port for NBFSD (NetBackup for VMware)
- Appendix B. Backups of VMware raw devices (RDM)
Create an intelligent VM group
You can create an intelligent VM group based on a set of filters called queries. NetBackup automatically selects virtual machines based on the queries and adds them to the group. You can then apply protection to the group. Note that an intelligent group automatically reflects changes in the VM environment and eliminates the need to manually revise the list of VMs in the group.
Note:
The web UI must discover the VMs on each server before the query can select from them. If a VMware server was recently added in the web UI, its VMs may not have been discovered.
See Change the autodiscovery frequency of VMware assets.
To discover the VMs immediately:
Note:
Intelligent VM groups are not supported for VMware Cloud Director VMs.
To create an intelligent VM group
- On the left, click Workloads > VMware.
- Click the Intelligent VM groups tab and then click Add.
- Enter a name and description for the group.
- Select the appropriate VMware server.
Perform one of the following:
Select Include all VMs.
This option uses a default query to select all VMs that currently reside in the vCenter or ESXi for backup when the protection plan runs.
To select only the VMs that meet specific conditions, create your own query: Click Add condition.
- To add a condition, use the drop-downs to select a keyword and operator and then enter a value.
The options are described after this procedure: Query options for creating intelligent VM groups.
Examples are also available: Example queries
To change the effect of the query, click Condition and click AND or OR, then select the keyword, operator, and value for the condition. For example:
You can also add sub-queries to a condition, if necessary. Click Sub-query and click AND or OR, then select the keyword, operator, and value for the sub-query condition. For example:
- To test the query, click Preview.
The query-based selection process is dynamic. Changes in the virtual environment can affect which VMs the query selects when the protection plan runs. As a result, the VMs that the query selects later when the protection plan runs may not be identical to those currently listed in the preview.
- To save the group without adding it to a protection plan, click Add.
To save and add it to a protection plan, click Add and protect, select the plan, and click Protect.
Note:
When you click Preview or you save the group, the query options are treated as case-sensitive when the VMs are selected for the group. Under Virtual machines, if you click on a VM that was not selected for the group, the Member of virtual machine groups field reads
none.However, when you add the group to a protection plan, some of the query options are treated as case-insensitive when the protection plan's backup runs. As a result, the same VM may now be included in the group and is backed up.
For the case behavior of each option, see Query options for creating intelligent VM groups.
Note the following for intelligent VM groups
When using queries in Intelligent VM groups, the NetBackup web UI might not display an accurate list of VMs that match the query if the query condition has non-English characters. However, during the backup, the correct VMs are selected even though the VM attributes are non-English.
Using the not equals filter condition on any attribute returns assets including those that have no value (null) present for the attribute. For multi-value attributes such as tag, the assets that do not match at least one of the values of the attribute are not returned
When the server of an Intelligent VM group is updated, all existing access definitions configured for that Intelligent group are removed because the intelligent group is now registered with the new server namespace. You need to add new access definitions for the updated Intelligent group.
Table: Query keywords
Keyword | Description | Case-sensitive when protection plan runs |
|---|---|---|
annotation | The text that is added to VM annotations in a vSphere client. | Yes |
connectionState | The status of the VM connection to the ESX server. For example, if a virtual machine's ESX server is down, that virtual machine is not connected. | No |
cluster | The name of the cluster (group of ESXi servers) where the VMs reside. | No |
datacenter | The name of the datacenter. | No |
datacenterPath | The folder structure that defines the path to a datacenter. Use this option if the datacenter name that you want to filter on is not unique in your environment. | Yes |
datastore | The name of the datastore. | Yes |
displayName | The VM's display name. | Yes |
host | The name of the ESXi server. The ESXi host name must match the name as defined in the vCenter server. | No |
dnsName | The VM's DNS name in vSphere Client. | No |
guestOS | The VM guest OS type that is recorded in the vSphere client. | Yes |
hostName | The VM name that is derived from a reverse lookup of its IP address. | No |
instanceUuid | The VM's instance UUID. For example: | No |
networkName | The name of the network switch (on an ESX server) or distributed switch. | No |
powerState | The power state of the VM. | No |
tag | The name of the VM's tag. | Yes |
template | Indicates if the VM is a virtual machine template. | No |
version | The VMware version of the virtual machine. For example, vmx-04, vmx-07, vmx-08. | Yes |
vmFolder | The name of the VM folder (within a datacenter), which includes the path to the folder that contains the VMs. See VMFolder examples. | No |
vmxDatastore | The name of the VMX datastore (sometimes called the vmx directory or configuration datastore). | Yes |
vmxDatastoreType | The type of the VMX datastore. Values are NFS or VMFS. | No |
Table: Query operators
Operator | Description |
|---|---|
Starts with | Matches the value when it occurs at the start of a string. For example: If the value you enter is |
Ends with | Matches the value when it occurs at the end of a string. For example: If the value you enter is |
Contains | Matches the value you enter wherever that value occurs in the string. For example: If the value you enter is |
= | Matches only the value that you enter. For example: If the value you enter is |
!= | Matches any value that is not equal to the value that you enter. |
In this example, the query adds to the group any VM that has prod in its display name.
To change the effect of the query, click and click or , then select the keyword, operator, and value for the condition. For example:
This example uses to narrow the scope of the query: it selects only the VMs that have prod in their display name and that also have a tag named eng. If a VM does not have prod in its display name as well as a tag named eng, that VM is not added to the group.
To broaden the scope of the query, use :
In this example, causes the query to add the following to the group:
The VMs that have
prodin their display name (regardless of any tags).The VMs that have a tag named
eng(regardless of the display name).
You can also add sub-queries to a condition, if necessary. Click and click or , then select the keyword, operator, and value for the sub-query condition. For example:
In this example, the sub-query causes the query to narrow the scope further. From the VMs that have both prod in their display name and a tag named eng, only the VMs in clusters that start with clust are selected.
For example, assume the following VM folders containing a total of 65 VMs:
vm\VM_backup_prod1 (contains 5 VMs)
vm\VM_backup_prod1\cluster1(contains 10 VMs)
vm\VM_backup_prod2 (contains 50 VMs)
To include the VMs in vm\VM_backup_prod1 but not the VMs in cluster1 or in any other folder:
VMFolder Equal "vm\VM_backup_prod1"
To include the VMs in vm\VM_backup_prod1 and in its subfolder cluster1:
VMFolder Equal "vm\VM_backup_prod1"
OR
VMFolder StartsWith "vm\VM_backup_prod1"
The first backslash is an escape character that causes the following backslash to be interpreted as a literal character.
To include all 65 VMs: VMFolder StartsWith "vm\VM_backup_prod"
Any VM that is in a path that begins with vm\VM_backup_prod is included.