NetWorker: How to Configure Concurrent or Parallel VM Backup Sessions

Prior to NetWorker 19.9, VMs with multiple disks backed up with the NetWorker VMware Protection (NVP) vProxy appliance were performed serially, one VMDK at a time. NetWorker 19.9 introduces functionality which allows a backup administrator to configure a VMware Protection Policy's backup action with backup parallelism. This means that if there are available Hot Add or Network Block Device (NBD) sessions available, a VM containing multiple disks can backup multiple VMDKs simultaneously.
 

Considerations:

Parallelism capabilities are determined through the configured vProxy HotAdd or NBD sessions:

Figure 1: Parallelism Capabilities Screen

• When Max Parallelism is enabled, the vProxy appliance must be configured with a minimum of two sessions, this is considered the Threshold Parallelism.

• If the wanted number of sessions is not available, the parallelism count is recursively decreased by one, until the HotAdd NBD sessions become available.
• Max Parallelism default is 12, because the recommended (default) value of HotAdd sessions for vProxy is 13. 

Process:

1. Connect to the NetWorker server through the NetWorker Web User Interface (NWUI): https://NWUI_SERVER_ADDRESS:9090/nwui

2. Create a Protection Policy from Protection > Policies.
3. Under the newly created Policy, create Workflow.
4. Under the newly created workflow, create a new VMware Protection Group, or assign a previously configured (but unassigned) group. 
5. Create the backup action.
   1. Check the Max Parallelism checkbox:

Figure 2: Check the Max Parallelism checkbox:

2. Complete the backup action configuration. 

6. Perform VM backups.

Command Line:

The command nsrvproxy_save backup session-related changes with an additional -k attribute are added in the CLI which triggers the parallelism.

The best vProxy for a backup is selected based on the number of VM disks and available HOT add NBD sessions on the vProxies at selection time.

Syntax: 
nsrvproxy_save -p PolicyName -w WorkflowName -A ActionName [ -s NetworkerServerName ] [ -V vProxy ] [ -j Jobid ] [ -l LogDirectory ] [ -L Level ] -k

Example:
nsrvproxy_save -p Gold -w VMware -A backup -L Incr -k

• Linux: /nsr/logs/policy/PolicyName/WorkflowName/ActionName
• Windows: C:\Program Files\EMC NetWorker\nsr\logs\policy\PolicyName\WorkflowName\ActionName

• Article 206963: NVP vProxy: How to perform parallel (concurrent) recovery of multiple VMDKs