About the exclude disk options for virtual disk selection
The default setting for Virtual disk selection is Include all disks. You should use this setting in most cases.
The other options are Exclude boot disk and Exclude data disks. These options are intended for the virtual machines that have multiple virtual disks. You should use these options with care.
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.
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.
Caution:
The exclude disk options can have unintended consequences if these rules are not followed.
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