For VMware virtual machines that are running Microsoft Windows, you can use the backup-archive client to create file-level
backups. You use include and exclude rules to determine the files
that are included in the file-level backup.
The file-level backup of a virtual machine
is implemented in the following sequence:
- A VMware snapshot is taken of the virtual machine to be backed
up.
- The file systems of the virtual machine are remotely mapped to
the vStorage backup server.
- A file-level progressive incremental backup is run for all of
the file systems.
- The data is stored under the node name that matches the host name
of the virtual machine. The data for each virtual machine is stored
in the node that is associated with the virtual machine.
- The file system mappings are removed and the snapshot is removed.
Complete the following steps to create a file-level backup for
a virtual machine that is running Windows.
- To configure the backup environment, complete the steps
in the following topic:
Preparing the environment for file-level backups of VMware virtual machines
- To start the file-level backup, open the command line of
the vStorage backup server and run the backup vm command with the vmbackuptype option set to file. You can identify the virtual machine
for backing up in several ways, for example:
To back up a list of virtual machines, run the
backup command with the
vmlist option:
dsmc backup vm -vmlist=vm1,vm2 -vmbackuptype=file
To create file-level backups for all of the virtual machines
defined in the
DOMAIN.vmfile option, run the following
command:
dsmc backup vm -vmbackuptype=file
To identify virtual machines by their internet protocol (IP)
address, you must provide the
Tivoli® Storage
Manager node name
for each virtual machine. Use the following syntax in the command:
dsmc backup vm 9.100.45.101[vm1], 9.100.45.102[vm2] -vmbackuptype=file
Verify that you can restore the file-level
backup for one of the virtual machines, by completing the following
steps: - From the command line of the vStorage backup server,
run the following command:
dsmc restore \\my_vm_name\c$\my_docs\ c:\restore_temp\ -sub=yes
-virtualnode=my_vm_name
- Verify that the files are restored for the virtual machine.
By default, the files are restored in the following location:
c:\mnt\tsmvmbackup\my_vm_name\fullvm\RESTORE_DATE_yyyy_mm_dd[hh_mm_ss]
- If the restore fails, view the Tivoli Storage
Manager error log
for more information. The log file is saved to the following location:
c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM\baclient\dsmerror.log
- For more information about restoring files from file-level
backups, see the following topic:
Scenario: Restoring file-level VM backups
