Configure a VMware policy
You can create a NetBackup policy (full or incremental) to back up the virtual machine.
Note:
To configure a policy for Replication Director, see the NetBackup Replication Director Solutions Guide.
To configure a policy to back up the virtual machine
- On the left, select Protection > Policies.
- Enter a name for the policy.
- For Policy type, select VMware.
VMware backup options are available on the VMware tab (described later in this procedure).
- Select a policy storage unit or storage unit group.
- In most cases, you can leave the Disable client-side deduplication option at the default (cleared).
- To enable the Accelerator, select Use Accelerator.
This action selects the Enable block-level incremental backup option on the VMware tab.
- To define a schedule, select the Schedules tab and select Add.
For assistance with the Accelerator forced rescan option:
See Accelerator forced rescan for virtual machines (schedule attribute).
On the Attributes tab, you can select Full backup, Differential incremental backup, or Cumulative incremental backup.
Note that incremental backups require one of the following selections on the VMware tab of the policy:
Enable file recovery from VM backup
Enable block-level incremental backup
This option requires an ESX server 4.0 and a virtual machine at vmx-07 or later.
More information is available for incremental backups.
- Select the Clients tab to select the virtual machines to back up.
Note:
If you change the Virtual machines for backup option from manual selection to intelligent policy (or vice versa), the next backup of the VM is a regular full backup. This action occurs even if a backup already exists for that VM. For a policy that uses Enable block-level incremental backup (BLIB) or BLIB plus Accelerator, the backup processing is not limited to changed blocks only.
The options for selecting virtual machines are as follows:
Select manually, and select Add.
You can type the host name in the Enter the VM hostname field, or select Browse virtual machines.
Select automatically through VMware intelligent policy query
With this option, NetBackup can automatically select virtual machines for backup based on the filtering criteria that you enter. The following topics explain how to specify the criteria:
See About automatic virtual machine selection.
See Configure automatic virtual machine selection.
Enable VMware Cloud Director integration
Enables backup of the virtual machines that reside in a vCloud environment. With this option, the policy selects for backup only the virtual machines that vCloud manages: it skips the virtual machines that are not in vCloud.
NetBackup host to perform automatic virtual machine selection
This option displays when you select Select automatically through VMware intelligent policy query. This host discovers virtual machines and automatically selects them for backup based on the query rules.
- Select the VMware tab to set VMware-related options.
- To exclude disks from the backups, select the Exclude disks tab.
See Exclude disks tab.
- Select Create.