- Notes, cautions, and warnings
- Preface
- PowerProtect Data Manager for Virtual Machines Overview
- Enabling Virtual Machine Protection
- About asset sources, assets, and protection storage
- About vCenter server asset sources and virtual assets
- Prerequisites for discovering asset sources
- Enable an asset source
- Adding a vCenter Server asset source
- Protecting virtual machines in a VMware Site Recovery Manager environment
- VM Direct protection engine overview
- Requirements for an external VM Direct Engine
- Protection engine limitations
- Add a VM Direct Engine
- Additional VM Direct actions
- Transparent Snapshots Data Mover protection mechanism
- vSphere Installation Bundle for Transparent Snapshots Data Mover protection
- Install or update the vSphere Installation Bundle
- Disable or re-enable the vSphere Installation Bundle
- Supported versions of VIB and installing PowerProtect Data Manager update packages
- Migrating assets to use the Transparent Snapshots Data Mover
- Managing Virtual Machine Assets and Protection
- Protection policies for virtual machine protection
- Supported protection policy purposes
- Supported protection policy objectives
- Replication triggers
- Roadmap for planning a protection policy
- Before you add a protection policy for virtual machine protection
- Add a protection policy for virtual machine protection
- Add a service-level agreement
- Managing virtual machine backups
- View available backup copies
- Copy Management
- Add and remove the credentials for virtual machine assets
- Add or remove assets in a protection policy
- Enable or disable Changed Block Tracking (CBT)
- Edit the retention period for asset copies
- Delete virtual machine backup copies
- Snapshot freeze scripts and thaw scripts for virtual machine backups
- Extended retention for protection policies
- Protection rules
- Creating tags in the vSphere Client for virtual machine protection policy rules
- Add a protection rule
- Manually run a protection rule
- Edit or delete a protection rule
- View assets applied to a protection rule
- Change the priority of an existing protection rule
- Move assets across policies using protection rules
- Configure protection rule behavior
- Protection policies for virtual machine protection
- Restoring Virtual Machine Data and Assets
- Prerequisites to restore a virtual machine
- Self-service restores
- View available backup copies for restore
- Restoring a virtual machine or virtual machine disk
- Restoring a virtual machine backup with the storage policy association
- Image-level restores
- Instant Access virtual machine restore
- File-level restores
- File-level restore to the original virtual machine
- File-level restore to alternate virtual machine
- Virtual machine file-level restore from a search
- File level restore as a domain user
- Manually install the VM Direct agent on Linux as a root user from the command line
- Manually install the VM Direct agent on Linux as a non-root user from the command line
- Manually install the VM Direct agent on Windows from the command line
- Restore an application-aware virtual machine backup
- Quick recovery for server DR
- Restore plans
- Protecting Virtual Machines Using the Transparent Snapshots Data Mover
- Overview of Transparent Snapshots Data Mover
- vSphere Installation Bundle monitoring and management
- Transparent snapshots data mover system requirements
- Prerequisites to virtual machine protection with the Transparent Snapshots Data Mover
- Transparent Snapshots Data Mover unsupported features and limitations
- Transparent Snapshots Data Mover performance and scalability
- PowerProtect Functionality Within the vSphere Client
- PowerProtect functionality within the vSphere Client
- Overview of the PowerProtect plug-in for the vSphere Client
- vSphere Client PowerProtect plug-in requirements
- Monitor PowerProtect Data Manager virtual machine protection copies
- Perform a manual PowerProtect-policy backup in the vSphere Client
- Perform an image-level restore of a PowerProtect backup in the vSphere Client
- File-level restores of a PowerProtect backup in the vSphere Client
- Overview of VASA and VMware Storage Policy Based Management
- VMware Cloud (VMC) on Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- PowerProtect Data Manager image backup and recovery
- VMware Cloud on Dell
- Supported PowerProtect Data Manager and DDVE deployment configurations
- Deployment and configuration best practices and requirements
- Configuring the VMC-on-AWS portal
- Interoperability with PowerProtect Data Manager features
- vCenter server inventory requirements
- Creating a dedicated cloud-based vCenter user account
- Add a VM Direct Engine
- Unsupported operations
- Azure VMware Solution (AVS) on Microsoft Azure
- PowerProtect Data Manager image backup and recovery
- Supported PowerProtect Data Manager and DDVE deployment configurations
- Deployment and configuration best practices and requirements
- Configuring the AVS-on-Azure portal
- vCenter server inventory requirements
- Creating a dedicated cloud-based vCenter user account
- Add a VM Direct Engine
- Unsupported operations
- Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- PowerProtect Data Manager image backup and recovery
- Supported PowerProtect Data Manager and DDVE deployment configurations
- Deployment and configuration best practices and requirements
- Configuring the GCVE-on-GCP portal
- vCenter server inventory requirements
- Creating a dedicated cloud-based vCenter user account
- Add a VM Direct Engine
- Unsupported operations
- Oracle VMware Cloud Solution (OCVS) on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
- PowerProtect Data Manager image backup and recovery
- Supported PowerProtect Data Manager and DDVE deployment configurations
- Deployment and configuration best practices and requirements
- vCenter server inventory requirements
- Creating a dedicated cloud-based vCenter user account
- Protection mechanisms
- Supported operations
- Unsupported operations
- Backing Up and Recovering a vCenter Server
- Backing up and recovering a vCenter server
- vCenter deployments overview
- Protecting an embedded PSC
- Protecting external deployment models
- vCenter Server Appliance with one external PSC where PSC fails
- vCenter Server Appliance is lost but the PSC remains
- vCenter Server Appliance with multiple PSCs where one PSC is lost but one remains
- vCenter Server Appliance remains but all PSCs fail
- vCenter Server Appliance remains but multiple PSCs fail
- vCenter Server Appliance fails
- vCenter server restore workflow
- Platform Services Controller restore workflow
- Additional considerations
- Command reference
- Backing Up VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) on VxRail
- Backing up VCF on VxRail
- VCF and VxRail overview
- VCF components and backup methods
- Check VMware certification
- Backup prerequisites
- The backup script
- Quick protection
- Selective protection: SDDC and NSX-T Managers
- Selective protection: vCenter servers
- Selective protection: vRSLCM, VxRail Manager, Workspace ONE Access, and vRealize Suite virtual machines
- SFTP password change: SDDC and NSX-T Managers
- SFTP password change: vCenter servers
- Backup-script troubleshooting
- Virtual Machine Best Practices
- Software and hardware requirements
- Scalability limits for vCenter server, VM Direct Engine, and DD systems
- PowerProtect Data Manager resource requirements in a VMware environment
- Best practices and additional considerations for the VM Direct Engine
- VM Direct Engine performance and scalability
- Transport mode considerations
- Change the limit of instant access sessions
- Configuring a backup to support vSAN datastores
- Configuration checklist for common issues
- Adjust the VMDM connection timeout and read timeout default values when network latency issues occur
- Steps required prior to updating to PowerProtect Data Manager 19.13 and later when VMDM is running with increased heap memory
- Disable vCenter SSL certificate validation
- Uninstalling the VM Direct agent
- Updating the Microsoft Application Agent and VM Direct agent software
- Supported file-level restore platforms and OS versions
- File-level restore and SQL restore requirements and limitations
- Virtual disk types not supported
- Virtual machine data change rate
- VM Direct Engine data ingestion rate
- VM Direct Engine limitations and unsupported features
- VM Direct Engine selection with virtual networks (VLANs)
- Deploying a VM Direct Engine to a datastore cluster is unsupported
- Best practices for vCenter server backup and restore
- Changing the vCenter server FQDN
- Replacing security certificates
- Support for backup and restore of encrypted virtual machines
- Virtual Machine Troubleshooting
- Troubleshooting installation and operation
- Troubleshooting network setup issues
- Troubleshooting virtual machine storage-policy changes
- Troubleshooting virtual machine backup issues
- Backup completes with a non-quiesced snapshot warning
- Backup fails when names include special characters
- Backup fails with an ABV0006 error
- Deleting vCenter asset sources or moving ESXi to another vCenter server
- Failed to lock virtual machine for backup: Another vProxy operation 'Backup' is active on VM
- Lock placed on virtual machine during backup and recovery operations continues for 24 hours if VM Direct Engine fails
- Managing command execution for VM Direct agent operations on Linux
- PowerProtect plug-in and portlet for vSphere display errors after replacing security certificates
- SQL Server application-consistent backups fail with error "Unable to find VSS metadata files in directory"
- TSDM backup fails with an ABV0016 error
- Troubleshooting virtual machine restore issues
- Troubleshoot virtual machine SQL application consistent policy issues
- Troubleshooting vSphere Plugin deployments
- VMware knowledge base articles and product documentation
- Glossary
PowerProtect Data Manager 19.16 Virtual Machine User Guide
Additional considerations
Review the following additional considerations when backing up and restoring the vCenter server and PSC.
- Backing up the vCenter server will not save the Distributed switch (vDS) configuration as it is stored on the hosts. As a best practice, back up the vDS configuration by using a script that can be used after restoring the virtual center.
- After restoring the PSC, verify that replication has been performed as designed by using the following commands to display the current replication status of a PSC and any of the replication partners of the PSC:
- For vCSA, go to /usr/lib/vmware-vmdir/bin and type ./vdcrepadmin -f showpartnerstatus -h localhost -u administrator -w Administrator_Password
- For Windows, open a command prompt and type cd "%VMWARE_CIS_HOME%"\vmdird\
- For the vCenter server or PSC, do not select advanced quiesce-based backup options. Selecting these options will result in application quiescing on virtual machines, which impacts the overall environment due to stunning.
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