NetBackup™ Web UI VMware Administrator's Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup & Alta Data Protection (9.1)
  1. Introducing the NetBackup web user interface
    1.  
      About the NetBackup web UI
    2.  
      Terminology
    3.  
      Sign in to the NetBackup web UI
    4.  
      Sign out of the NetBackup web UI
  2. Monitoring NetBackup
    1.  
      The NetBackup dashboard
    2.  
      Monitoring jobs
    3.  
      Filter jobs in the job list
  3. Managing VMware servers
    1.  
      Add VMware servers
    2.  
      Validate and update VMware server credentials
    3.  
      Browse VMware servers
    4.  
      Remove VMware servers
    5.  
      Create an intelligent VM group
    6.  
      Remove an intelligent VM group
    7.  
      Add a VMware access host
    8.  
      Remove a VMware access host
    9.  
      Change resource limits for VMware resource types
    10.  
      Change the autodiscovery frequency of VMware assets
    11.  
      Discover VMware server assets manually
  4. Protecting VMs
    1.  
      Working with VMware policies in the web UI
    2. Protect VMs or intelligent VM groups
      1.  
        Protect SQL Server data with a VMware backup
    3. Edit protection settings for a VMware asset
      1.  
        Schedules
      2.  
        Backup options and Advanced options
      3.  
        Exclude disks from backups
      4.  
        Snapshot retry options
    4.  
      Remove protection from VMs or intelligent VM groups
    5.  
      View the protection status of VMs or intelligent VM groups
  5. Instant access
    1.  
      Create an instant access VM
    2.  
      Restore files and folders from a VM backup image
    3.  
      Download files and folders from a VM backup image
    4.  
      Things to consider before you use the instant access feature
    5. Instant access Build Your Own (BYO)
      1.  
        Prerequisites of Instant Access Build Your Own (BYO)
      2.  
        Hardware configuration requirement of Instant Access Build Your Own (BYO)
      3.  
        Frequently asked questions
  6. 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
  7. Continuous data protection
    1.  
      CDP terminology
    2.  
      CDP Architecture
    3.  
      About continuous data protection
    4.  
      Prerequisites
    5.  
      Capacity-based licensing for CDP
    6.  
      Configuring CDP
    7.  
      Defining the CDP gateway
    8.  
      Sizing considerations
    9.  
      Limiting concurrent CDP backup jobs
    10.  
      Controlling full sync
    11.  
      Monitoring CDP jobs
    12.  
      Using accelerators with CDP
    13.  
      Recovering CDP protected VMs
    14.  
      Some limitations of CDP
    15.  
      Troubleshooting for CDP
  8. VM recovery
    1.  
      Recover a VM
    2.  
      About VMware agentless restore
    3.  
      Prerequisites and limitations of VMware agentless restores
    4.  
      Recover files and folders with VMware agentless restore
    5.  
      About restricted restore mode
  9. Troubleshooting VMware operations
    1.  
      Errors when adding VMware servers
    2.  
      Errors when browsing VMware servers
    3.  
      Errors for the Status for a newly discovered VM
    4.  
      Error when downloading files from an instant access VM
    5.  
      Troubleshooting backups and restores of excluded virtual disks
    6.  
      Restore fails for a virtual machine with multiple datastores
    7.  
      Errors when you change the recovery destination

Controlling full sync

When you subscribe a VM to a CDP enabled protection plan, NetBackup initiates full sync, to get the entire data of the newly protected VM. For a newly subscribed VM, NetBackup does not have any data to apply the incremental backup features, hence full sync is initiated. During a full sync, NetBackup captures the entire data of the VM, from the underlying VMDKs to the CDP staging location, and subsequently to the NetBackup STUs.

Full sync is normally triggered when you subscribe a new VM to a CDP enabled protection plan, but in certain scenarios, you can manually trigger a full sync:

  • Accidental corruption or deletion: CDP maintains backed up data of the VMs at the staging location in proprietary format files. If these files for a VM are accidentally deleted or corrupted, the subsequent backup job for the VM fails citing data integrity mismatch. In this case, you can initiate a force rescan schedule backup, and subsequently a full sync of the VM takes place.

  • Following a manually triggered force-rescan schedule.

  • CDP service can trigger full sync to receive VM data whenever necessary.

During full sync, data flows from the ESXi to the CDP gateway. Depending on the data size of the VMs, the volume of this data can be substantially large that can consume a lot of resources like network, memory, processing power, and storage. This also affects the backup operations of the VMs subscribed earlier.

If you subscribe more than 5 VMs at a time, say 7, then, full sync is initiated for 5 VMs, and 2 are in wait state.

Therefore, it is recommended to limit the number of concurrent full sync operations to optimize system resources. The default number of concurrent full sync is 5. This allows 5 VMs to perform full sync concurrently. Other VMs needing full sync need to wait in a queue. This way, the system resources are managed optimally.

Recommendation for controlling full sync:

  • Subscribe the VMs in batches of five or less.

  • Once a subscribed VM completes full sync, you can see message in the UI, then you can proceed to subscribe the next batch.

Configuring full sync in the nbcct.conf file

You can configure the number of concurrent full sync operations by specifying a value for the CCT_MAX_FULL_SYNC_REQS parameter, in the nbcct.conf file. For example, CCT_MAX_FULL_SYNC_REQS=7