NetBackup 7 vSphere 4.1 Single-threaded VM backups

[djarjosa]

Currently using NetBackup 7 on Windows Server 2008 R2, backing up vSphere 4.1 VMs with block level incremental backups to tape.

We currently house a virtual infrastructure with about 50 VMs.  I need a way to backup the VMDKs along with being able to restore individual files within them.  I acquired a temp license key from our vendor in order to test out NetBackups method of using the vStorage API.  The issue I am currently having is that NetBackup only decides to work on one VM at a time which drastically increases our backup window.  I have followed the setup doc provided by NetBackup down to the T and haven't came up to solution or if this is even by design.  Any feedback would be appreciated.  Thanks.

[RiaanBadenhorst]

Hi,

Don't know if the following is relevant. From the VMware guide "Include in a single NetBackup policy those virtual machines that use the same datastore. This practice lets you control the amount of backup-related I/O that occurs per datastore, to limit the backup effect on the target virtual machines."

To me this would indicate that NetBackup will only take one backup at a time from a certain datastore? This is actually a recommendation to ensure you don't overload the ESX host. Dont know if it should be read inconjunction with the bullet point just above it that states you could limit the "Jobs per policy" setting. Then again, they dont talk about setting it to 1.

If possible, maybe see if it start more than one if they're in different datastores.

All theoretical :)

[djarjosa]

Thanks Riaan, I have tried making multiple policies backing VMs from multiple datastores with the same issue.  NetBackup still only backs up one VM and queues the rest of the jobs.  

[djarjosa · Accepted solution]

Looks like I found the issue.  In NetBackup Management > Storage > Storage Units the storage unit I was using had its "Maximum concurrent jobs" set to 1.  Once I changed that, restarted the Policy.  All was well.

[RiaanBadenhorst]

Well done