Things to consider before you use the instant access feature
Note the following about the Instant access virtual machines feature:
This feature is supported with backup copies that are created from protection plans using the web UI. Classic policies that are created with the NetBackup Administration Console also support instant access when the policy uses the VM instance UUID as the Primary VM identifier.
This feature supports only the policy type in NetBackup. For the policy types that the web UI protection plans use, contact the backup administrator.
This feature is supported only for NetBackup appliances.
This feature is limited to 50 concurrent mount points on a Media Server Deduplication Pool (MSDP) media server.
By default, vSphere allows a maximum of eight NFS mounts per ESXi server. Note that NetBackup requires an NFS mount for each instant access VM you create. To remove the NFS mount, remove the instant access VM when you are done with it.
If the NFS limit for an ESXi host has been reached and you try to create another instant access VM, the attempt fails. To increase the maximum NFS mounts per ESXi server, see the following VMware article:
This feature does not support backups of VMs that have independent disks. VMware does not support snapshots of independent disks in a VM, either persistent disks or non-persistent disks. As a result, independent disks are not backed up.
For more information on independent disks and NetBackup, see the following article:
This feature does not support VMs that have disks that were excluded from the backup. On the NetBackup policy's Exclude Disks tab, the option must be selected.
This feature does not support VMs that have a disk in raw device mapping mode (RDM) or that have a disk in Persistent mode.
For Windows single file restore, LDM volumes and the ReFS file system are not supported, and the Access Control Lists (ACLs) are not preserved.
The version of the ESXi server that is used to create a VM using Instant access virtual machines must be equal to or newer than the version of the ESXi server that contains the VM backup images.
This feature supports single file restore of file sizes up to 1 GB. For larger files, you can use the option, or start the VM and copy the required file.
For single-file download with the option, the NetBackup web UI must be able to access the media server with the same name or IP address that the master server uses to connect to that media server. See Error encountered when downloading files from an instant access VM.
If the media server appliance uses a third-party certificate, you need to create certain configurations on the NetBackup master server before you use this feature.
For more information, refer to the "Third-party certificates" and "Implementing third-party SSL certificates" sections in the NetBackup Appliance Security Guide, available here: