You can use the backup-archive client to back up and restore a VMware virtual machine (VM). Full backups of the virtual machine operate at a disk image level. Incremental backups copy only the data that is changed since the previous full backup.
Table 1 lists the backup and restore capabilities
for VMware virtual machines that the backup-archive client can implement
on Linux platforms.| Capability | Comment |
|---|---|
Full VM backup: |
Creates an image backup of the virtual machine. |
Incremental VM backup: |
Requires the IBM® Tivoli® Storage Manager for Virtual Environments licensed product. Backs
up all changes that occurred since the previous backup of the virtual
machine, whether the backup was a full backup, or another incremental
backup. For this backup mode, you must schedule full backups of the
virtual machine to occur periodically so the historical data can be
expired. Historical data is expired from a full backup and all incremental
backups that depend on the full backup. Restoring data from incremental
backups is not convenient or efficient because the process must automatically
complete the following tasks:
|
Full VM incremental-forever backup: |
Requires the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments licensed product. A full VM backup is required before you can create incremental backups. If you schedule incremental-forever backups, this backup type is selected automatically for the first backup if a full backup was not already created. Data from incremental backups is combined with data from the full backup to create a synthetic full backup image. Subsequent full VM incremental-forever backups read all used blocks and copy those blocks to the Tivoli Storage Manager server. Each full VM incremental-forever backup reads and copies all of the used blocks, whether the blocks are changed or not since the previous backup. You can still schedule a full VM backup, although a full backup is no longer necessary. For example, you might run a full VM backup to create a backup to a different node name with different retention settings. You cannot use this backup mode to back up a VMware virtual machine if the client is configured to encrypt the backup data. |
Incremental-forever-incremental VM backup: |
Requires the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments licensed product. Requires you to create a full VM backup one time only. The full VM backup copies all of the used disk blocks owned by a virtual machine to the Tivoli Storage Manager server. After the initial full backup is complete, all subsequent backups of the virtual machine are incremental-forever-incremental backups. Each incremental-forever-incremental backup copies only the blocks that are changed since the previous backup, irrespective of the type of the previous backup. The server uses a grouping technology that associates the changed blocks from the most recent backup with data already stored on the server from previous backups. A new full backup is then effectively created each time changed blocks are copied to the server by an incremental-forever-incremental backup. The incremental-forever-incremental backup
mode provides the following benefits:
You cannot use this backup mode to back up a VMware virtual machine if the client is configured to encrypt the backup data. |
Item recovery for files and folders from a full backup of the virtual machine: |
Requires the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments licensed product. Provides the capability to recover files and folders from a full backup of a virtual machine. Item recovery is available only with Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments Data Protection for VMware Recovery Agent. |
Full restore of the virtual machine: |
Restores all of the file systems, virtual disks, and the virtual machine configuration. |
Table 2 lists the backup and restore operations
for VMware virtual machines that the backup-archive client can implement
on Windows platforms.| Capability | Comment |
|---|---|
Full VM backup: |
Backs up a
full virtual machine. The following types of full VM backup are possible:
|
Incremental VM backup: |
Requires the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments licensed product. Backs
up all changes that occurred since the previous backup of the virtual
machine, whether the backup was a full backup, or another incremental
backup. For this backup mode, you must schedule full backups of the
virtual machine to occur periodically so the historical data can be
expired. Historical data is expired from a full backup and all incremental
backups that depend on the full backup. Restoring data from incremental
backups is not convenient or efficient because the process must automatically
complete the following tasks:
|
Full VM incremental-forever backup: |
Requires the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments licensed product. A full VM backup is required before you can create incremental backups. If you schedule incremental-forever backups, this backup type is selected automatically for the first backup if a full backup was not already created. Data from incremental backups is combined with data from the full backup to create a synthetic full backup image. Subsequent full VM incremental-forever backups read all used blocks and copy those blocks to the Tivoli Storage Manager server. Each full VM incremental-forever backup reads and copies all of the used blocks, whether the blocks are changed or not since the previous backup. You can still schedule a full VM backup, although a full backup is no longer necessary. For example, you might run a full VM backup to create a backup to a different node name with different retention settings. You cannot use this backup mode to back up a VMware virtual machine if the client is configured to encrypt the backup data. |
Incremental-forever-incremental VM backup: |
Requires the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments licensed product. Requires you to create a full VM backup one time only. The full VM backup copies all of the used disk blocks owned by a virtual machine to the Tivoli Storage Manager server. After the initial full backup is complete, all subsequent backups of the virtual machine are incremental-forever-incremental backups. Each incremental-forever-incremental backup copies only the blocks that are changed since the previous backup, irrespective of the type of the previous backup. The server uses a grouping technology that associates the changed blocks from the most recent backup with data already stored on the server from previous backups. A new full backup is then effectively created each time changed blocks are copied to the server by an incremental-forever-incremental backup. The incremental-forever-incremental backup
mode provides the following benefits:
You cannot use this backup mode to back up a VMware virtual machine if the client is configured to encrypt the backup data. |
Item recovery for files and folders from a full backup of the virtual machine: |
Requires the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments licensed product. Provides the capability to recover files and folders from a full backup of a virtual machine. Item recovery is available only with Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments Data Protection for VMware Recovery Agent. |
Full restore of the virtual machine: |
Restores all of the file systems, virtual disks, and the virtual machine configuration. |
| File-level backup: | Uses the VMware vStorage API for Data Protection and VMware vStorage backup server to create backups of individual files in the virtual machine. You create include and exclude rules to identify the files to back up. For file-level backups, files are backed up as individual files rather than as an image backup. |
| File-level restore of the virtual machine: | The restore approach depends on the type
of backup of the virtual machine:
|
For releases before Tivoli Storage Manager version
6.3, the backup-archive client was able to use VMware Consolidated
Backup (VCB) to back up data on virtual machines. From Tivoli Storage Manager version
6.3, the use of VCB for backups is no longer available. The backup-archive
client now backs up data by using the VMware vStorage API for Data
Protection. You can use the restore VM command
to restore backups that were created by using VCB. Using the vStorage
API, the backup-archive client can create either full backups or file-level
backups of VMware virtual machines. The vStorage API provides the
following benefits:- Less storage is needed on the vStorage backup server because a temporary directory is not needed to contain the backup.
- Backups that are created by using the vStorage API do not require the VMware converter tool to restore the virtual machine.
| Capability | Full backups |
File-level backups |
|---|---|---|
| VMware vStorage API for Data Protection functions: | Yes | Yes |
| Create backups for virtual machines that are running on an operating system other than Microsoft Windows: | Yes | No |
| Create incremental backups of the virtual machine: | Yes | Yes |
| Restore a complete virtual machine: | Yes | No |
| Restore individual files from the backup: | Yes | Yes |
| Use the same backup format as progressive incremental backup, and allow for file and folder restore by using the backup-archive client: | No | Yes |
| Define file-level include and exclude rules: | No | Yes |