To exclude a boot disk or data disk, note the following requirements:

• The virtual machine must have more than one disk.

• NetBackup must be able to identify the boot disk.

• The boot disk must not be part of a managed volume (Windows LDM or Linux LVM). The boot disk must be fully contained on a single disk.

The boot disk must include the following:

• The boot partition.

• The system directory (Windows system directory or Linux boot directory).

Important! The exclude disk options are meant only for the following cases:

• Exclude boot disk: Consider this option if you have another means of recreating the boot disk, such as a virtual machine template for boot drives. If Exclude boot disk is enabled, the policy does not back up the boot disk.

  Note:

  When the virtual machine is restored from the backup, the virtual machine data for the boot disk may be missing or incomplete.

  Note the following about Exclude boot disk:

  • If the virtual machine has a boot disk but has no other disks, the boot disk is backed up. It is not excluded.

  • Adding a virtual disk and changing this option before the next backup can have unexpected results.

    See Virtual disk selection options: an example to avoid.

• Exclude data disks: Consider this option if you have a different policy or other backup program that backs up the data disks. If Exclude data disks is enabled in a policy, that policy does not back up the data disks.

  Note the following about excluding data disks:

  • If the virtual machine has only one disk (such as C:), that drive is backed up. It is not excluded.

  • If the virtual machine's boot disk is an independent disk, and the virtual machine has a separate data disk, the boot disk is backed up. The restored boot disk however contains no data, because NetBackup cannot back up the data in an independent disk.

  Note:

  When the virtual machine is restored from the backup, the virtual machine data for the data disk may be missing or incomplete.