Notes on Replication Director for virtual machines
Note the following about Replication Director for virtual machines:
For supported vCenter versions and datastores, see the NetBackup Software Compatibility List available from the following location:
For additional support details, see the following Cohesity tech note:
Support for NetBackup 7.7.x, 8.x, and 9.x in virtual environments
Replication Director for virtual machines does not support Accelerator.
Instant Recovery supports disk storage units only. To use Instant Recovery to restore a VM that was backed up with Replication Director for virtual machines, note: The virtual machine backup must have been copied to a disk storage unit.
Although applicable to Replication Director for physical computers, NDMP backup does not apply to Replication Director for virtual machines.
Replication Director supports virtual machines on NetApp NFS datastores only.
To create virtual machines on the NFS datastore, enter anon=0 in the
/etc/exportsNetApp file on the NetBackup storage server. The anon=0 entry is the equivalent of the no_root_squash option. See the following VMware document for more information on the anon=0 entry:Best Practices for running VMware vSphere on Network Attached Storage
The NetApp OnCommand Unified Manager (formerly DataFabric Manager) must be able to resolve the host name that was used to mount the vCenter datastore. Hardware snapshots cannot succeed if the OnCommand server is unable to resolve the host name
If the NetBackup primary and media server are UNIX and the backup host is Windows, the backup host must have a fully qualified domain name. Otherwise, the backup fails.
You must have a valid NFS export (share) for each qtree that is mounted as an NFS datastore.
Supports restore of virtual machines and of individual files in virtual machines. Does not support volume-level rollback restore. (In the Replication Director Solutions Guide, references to rollback restore do not apply to virtual machines.)
If the datastore name contains special characters, the datastore name in the backup image contains @ followed by the value of the special character. For example, a datastore that has the name "NFS datastore1" (with a space) appears in the NetBackup catalog as NFS@20datastore1.
If changes occur to virtual machine configuration (such as adding, deleting, or moving VMDKs), it may be necessary to set to 0. ( is on the policy Clients tab.) With a setting of 0, NetBackup rediscovers the virtual machines and their configuration each time the policy runs. Note: If the vmdk files are reconfigured and the next backup runs without rediscovery, NetBackup is not aware of the vmdk changes. It attempts to back up the virtual machines in their previous configuration. The result may be an incorrect backup.
VMware vSphere uses the Space Efficient Virtual Disk (SEsparse) for snapshots of the disks that are larger than 2 TB. VMware's VDDK however does not support backup or restore of SEsparse disks with the host-based file transport mode. Because Replication Director for VMware requires host-based file transport, Replication Director cannot support the vmdk files that are larger than 2 TB. To back up the vmdk files that are larger than 2 TB, use NetBackup for VMware without Replication Director.
When restoring from Replication Director backups, note the following:
If you select more than one image in the Backup, Archive, and Restore interface, it may take longer than expected to display the image contents. NetBackup performs a separate browsing operation for each selected image. You should select one image at a time when browsing for restore.
Do not select files or folders from two different images. The NetBackup Backup, Archive, and Restore interface do not support restoring data from two different images in the same restore job. Restore from one image at a time.
When you use the Backup, Archive, and Restore interface to browse for an image to restore, only the primary copy is made available for restore. In the NetBackup Administration Console, use the node to select a different copy (such as a backup image or replica) as the primary copy.
Note:
NetBackup automatically selects the correct hardware (datastore) snapshot to restore, based on the virtual machine snapshot that is designated as the primary copy. Make sure the virtual machine snapshot that you want to restore is set as the primary.
See Configure a policy for virtual machines to use Replication Director.