- 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
Best practices for vCenter server backup and restore
Review the following recommendations and best practices when planning a vCenter server backup and restore.
NOTE: Backups will not save distributed switch configurations.
- It is recommended to schedule the backup of the vCenter server when the load on the vCenter server is low, such as during off-hours, to minimize the impact of vCenter virtual machine snapshot creation and snapshot commit processing overhead.
- Ensure that there are no underlying storage problems that might result in long stun times.
- Keep the vCenter virtual machine and all of its component virtual machines in one single isolated protection policy. The protection policy should not be shared with any other virtual machines. This is to ensure that the backup times of all vCenter server component virtual machines are as close to each other as possible.
- Ensure that the backup start time of the vCenter server does not overlap with any operations for other protected virtual machines being managed by this vCenter server so that there is no impact on other protected virtual machines during snapshot creation and snapshot commit of the vCenter virtual machine.
- If the vCenter server and Platform Services Controller instances fail at the same time, you must first restore the Platform Services Controller and then the vCenter server instances.
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