Section 13 - Backup / Restore VMware Virtual Machines

This section describes how to backup and restore virtual machine running on VMware.

13.1.4 Limitations

The following are limitations of the VMware VM backup module:




• VMware ESX or ESXi Server with Raw Device Mapping (RDM) is not supported.

  Snapshots are not available when the Raw Device Mapping (RDM) is used in physical compatibility mode.

• Backup of virtual machine with multiple snapshot root branches is not supported on VMware ESXi Server version 4.0 and 4.1.
• For backup of individual virtual disk, the restored virtual machine does not support the reversion of previous snapshots, if the snapshot contains disks which are not previously backed up by OBM.
• For virtual machines with Independent Disks:


• If Independent Disks are to be included in the virtual machine backup, the virtual machine must be powered off first, before running the backup job.
• If the virtual machine is powered on, the Independent Disk will not be backed up.
  
  

  OBM will skip the snapshot creation of any Independent Disk on the virtual machine.

  
  
  
• If the file name of the virtual machine contains the following special characters, the https access to the files will be failed:
  
  

  ` ^ ~ = ; ! / ( [ ] { } @ $ \ & # % +

  
  
  

  This is due to the percent-encoding specified in the URL standard is not supported for ESXi based HTTP(S) file access. To resolve the issue, please rename the corresponding file to avoid special characters. For instructions on renaming a virtual machine, please refer to the following knowledge base article from VMware:

  http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1026469
  
  
• For the VDDK mode, no VM's snapshot, memory or the suspend status will be able to backup and restore. If the backup and restore of the snapshot, memory or the suspend status is required, do not turn on the. Change Block Tracking. option when you create the ESX/ESXi or vCenter backup set, select [No] for the creating the backup set in non-VDDK mode which allows the backup and restore of the snapshot, memory or the suspend status.
• VDDK mode will not be enabled if the independent disk or raw disk is configured in the VM.
• Once the backup runs in VDDK mode, you need to restore all the files to the hypervisor, raw files of the VM or individual hard disk file cannot be restored by this method.
• Free license on ESX/ESXi are not allowed to run the backup with VDDK mode.
• Once the backup job executed on a VM which change block tracking option was enabled by the VDDK, please do not off this option in the VM for consequence backup jobs. If you need to disable this option, you are suggested to create a new backup set with requires to disable this option.
• Delta merge does not apply to the VM backup with VDDK mode.
• The VDDK mode backup with VM on the NFS datastore is not supported.



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