Configuring Data Protection for VMware

You must configure Data Protection for VMware to preserve Microsoft VSS metadata information during a virtual machine backup for systems that are hosting Microsoft SQL Server data.

About this task

Data Protection for VMware provides application consistency when you back up virtual machines that are hosting Microsoft SQL Servers. With these backups, you can recover the virtual machine with Microsoft SQL Server in a consistent state.

To recover only select databases from this type of backup with Tivoli® Storage Manager, without having to recover the entire virtual machine, preserve information about the state of the Microsoft SQL Server at the time of the virtual machine snapshot and backup. This information is collected as part of the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) interaction that occurs during a virtual machine snapshot.

For Data Protection for VMware to collect the Microsoft VSS metadata for Microsoft SQL Server, you must configure Data Protection for VMware to obtain this information from the virtual machine during the backup operation.

Procedure

  1. Configure Data Protection for VMware to preserve the Microsoft VSS metadata information during a virtual machine backup for systems that are hosting Microsoft SQL Server data.
    1. Locate the options file for the Data Protection for VMware data mover. On Windows systems, the options file is dsm.opt. On Linux systems, the options file is dsm.sys.
    2. Specify the INCLUDE.VMTSMVSS option for the virtual machine. You must set this option for virtual machine backups to preserve the Microsoft VSS metadata information. Example: INCLUDE.VMTSMVSS vm_display_name OPTions=KEEPSqllog If you specify the OPTions KEEPSqllog parameter in an INCLUDE.VMTSMVSS statement, the SQL Server logs are not truncated and Tivoli Storage Manager does not back up the SQL Server log files. You must back up the log files so that you can preserve the SQL Server logs and use the logs to restore SQL Server transactions to a specific checkpoint, after the virtual machine is restored.
    3. Verify that the Virtual Machine Disks (VMDK) that host the Microsoft SQL Server database are not being excluded from the virtual machine backup operation. Repeat this step for all data movers that protect virtual machines that are hosting Microsoft SQL Server.
  2. On each data mover, for example, datamover10, store the guest virtual machine credentials to Data Protection for VMware by running the following command from the Tivoli Storage Manager backup-archive client command line: 
    dsmc set password –type=vmguest vm_guest_display_name 
guest_admin_ID guest_admin_pw
    This command stores the guest virtual machine credentials, which are encrypted on the system that hosts the data mover.

What to do next

You can verify the virtual machine backup configuration and ensure that the VMDKs are included. In addition, you can view other parameters by issuing the backup command with the preview option from the backup-archive client, for example: 
dsmc backup vm vm_display_name -preview -asnode=datacenter_node
You can also use the Tivoli Storage Manager scheduler to schedule periodic backups of your virtual machines. You can also back up the virtual machine that is hosting the Microsoft SQL Server by using the backup-archive client command line: 
dsmc backup vm vm_display_name -asnode=datacenter_node