Notes on the hotadd transport mode
NetBackup supports several transport modes for sending snapshot data between the VMware datastore and the VMware backup host during a backup or restore. One of those transport modes (hotadd) is used when the VMware backup host is installed in a virtual machine.
Note the following about the hotadd transport mode:
The VMware backup host must be installed in a virtual machine.
The following is a VMware requirement: The virtual machine to back up and the virtual machine that contains the hotadd backup host must reside in the same VMware datacenter. The same VMware requirement applies to virtual machine restore: The virtual machine to restore and the virtual machine that contains the hotadd restore host must reside in the same VMware datacenter.
For hotadd backup, it is recommended at least one hotadd backup host for each datacenter.
NetBackup does not support IDE disks on the virtual machine.
On the virtual machine to back up, no two disks should have the same name. (Identical names can occur if the disks reside on different datastores.)
The ESX server (where the backup-host virtual machine resides) must have access to the datastore of the virtual machines that you want to back up.
The datastore for the backup-host virtual machine must have some free space before the hotadd backup begins. Otherwise, the backup may fail.
Restores that use the hotadd or SAN transport modes do not include the VM's metadata changes in the restore. The status log of the NetBackup job contains messages similar to the following:
07/25/2013 12:37:29 - Info tar (pid=16257) INF - Transport Type = hotadd 07/25/2013 12:42:41 - Warning bpbrm (pid=20895) from client <client_address>: WRN - Cannot set metadata (key:geometry. biosSectors, value:62) when using san or hotadd transport.
Retry the restore with a different transport mode (nbd or nbdssl).
This problem is a known VMware issue..
Locking timeouts in the VMware VDDK may cause simultaneous hotadd backups from the same VMware backup host to fail.
See Simultaneous hotadd backups (from the same VMware backup host) fail with status 13.
For a list of VMware restrictions on the hotadd transport mode, refer to VMware's documentation.