NetBackup 7.1 VMWare VMDK Restore

[WayneCierkowski]

I performed a test yesterday and was a little surprised on one aspect of it. I created a Server 2008 VMWare client as my test subject. Created a SnapShot backup policy for the VMWare client in NetBackup and did my initial full backup of the VMDK.

I then turned around and created a manual snapshot of the client through the vSphere client and then performed an Incremental backup of the VMDK.

Next up was to delete the VM Client and perform a restore from the last Incremental backup. All went well with the restore with this exception.

When I reviewed the client through vSphere I noticed in SnapShot Manager that the manual snapshot that I performed after my full backup and before my incremental backup was gone.

Is this expected behavior when you restore a VMDK? Is there any way to retain tthe manual snapshots that have been taken?

TIA....

[rizwan84tx]

After a VM snapshot is taken; a new VMDK will be created which hold only the changes of that VM, it never copies Original VMDK data. So if you are restoring from incremental, it can be only a File-level restore; therefore the Snapshot manager will not show the snapshot taken before INCR backup.

[Lep]

We have the same issue as described by Wayne, and we have problems accepting the current implementation as a proper solution.

1. We want complete backups of our VM systems
2. Some VMs have snapshots to allow us very easily to run different scenarios without the need for different VMs.
3. The power to restore a snapshot is extremely flexible, and can be granted to separate users without full admin access.

So the current behaviour of BE2010 causes quite an issue:
In the case of a disaster, BE2010 only offers to restore a static environment, containing none of the previous snapshots that may have been created.
A user may choose to still create "personal snapshots", but these apparently cannot be guaranteed.

In fact, the use of personal snapshots seems to be discouraged, which would aggravate the situation even during normal usage:
If the need arises to restore a previous situation, the user would then have to contact the sys-admin to restore the backup from tape.
This is not a one-click process, and may even require tapes being fetched from off-site storage.


Are there any ideas on resolving this?
We acquired BE2010 because the solution we had required us to turn off any VM system before a backup, but at least it would backup the entire directory, including any snapshot made.


Kind regards,
M. Leppink

[pikachu]

"....  So if you are restoring from incremental, it can be only a File-level restore;...."

Enable BLIB and you can do a FULL restore from the previous full with your selected inc backup.