Backup and Recovery
Backup and Recovery 7.1
Backup and Recovery 7.1
  • Storware Backup & Recovery documentation
    • Table of Contents
  • Changelog
  • Overview
    • Main Features
    • Storware Backup and Recovery concepts
      • Support Matrix
      • Architecture
      • Components
      • Backup types
      • Typical Scenarios
    • Licensing
    • Product Life Cycle
  • Deployment
    • Component requirements
    • Supported platforms requirements
    • Sizing Guide
      • Small
      • Medium
      • Large
    • Installation
      • ISO-based installation
      • Quick Installation using all-in-one script
      • Installation using Ansible playbook
      • Installation with RPMs
      • Deployment in Microsoft Azure
      • Virtual Appliance
        • RHV/oVirt/OLVM Virtual Appliance
        • Citrix Hypervisor | XCP-ng Virtual Appliance
        • VMware Virtual Appliance
        • Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)
    • Initial Configuration
    • Backup Destinations
      • File System
        • Synthetic File System
          • XFS
          • DD Boost
        • isoLayer (Synthetic)
        • File system
          • Virtual Data Optimizer (VDO)
        • Catalogic Software vStor
      • Deduplication Appliances
        • Dell EMC Data Domain
        • Huawei OceanProtect
        • HPE StoreOnce
        • Exagrid
        • Neverfail HybriStor
      • Object Storage
        • Alibaba Cloud OSS
        • AWS S3 or S3-compatible
        • Ceph Rados Gateway
        • Cloudian S3
        • Wasabi
        • Google Cloud Storage
        • IBM Cloud Object Storage
        • Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
        • Nutanix Objects
        • OpenStack SWIFT
        • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage
        • Scality RING
      • Enterprise Backup Providers
        • Dell EMC Avamar
        • Dell EMC Networker
        • IBM Spectrum Protect
        • Micro Focus Data Protector
        • Veritas NetBackup
        • Rubrik Managed Volumes
      • Tape Pools
    • High Availability
      • 2 Node Cluster
      • 3 Node Cluster
    • Common tasks
      • Staging space configuration
      • Enabling HTTPS connectivity for nodes
      • LVM setup on Storware Backup & Recovery Node for disk attachment backup mode
      • Full versions of libvirt/qemu packages installation
      • SSH public key authentication
      • Enabling HTTP(S) Proxy for Storware Backup & Recovery
  • Protecting Virtual Environments
    • Virtual Machines
      • VMware vSphere/ESXi
      • Microsoft Hyper-V
      • Azure Stack HCI
      • Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)
      • Red Hat Openshift Virtualization
      • Red Hat Virtualization
      • oVirt
      • Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager
      • Oracle VM
      • Proxmox VE
      • KVM/Xen
      • OpenStack
      • OpenNebula
      • Virtuozzo
      • Verge
      • Citrix Hypervisor (XenServer)
      • XCP-ng
      • Huawei FusionCompute
      • HPE SimpliVity
      • SC//Platform
    • Cloud
      • Amazon EC2
      • GCP GCE
      • Azure Cloud
    • Containers
      • Kubernetes
      • Red Hat OpenShift
      • Proxmox VE
    • Backup & Restore
    • v2v migration
  • Protecting Microsoft 365
    • Microsoft 365 organization management
      • Configure Microsoft 365 access
      • Add Microsoft 365 organization manually
      • Add Microsoft 365 organization using the Setup Assistant
      • Account auto-synchronization
    • Backup & Restore
    • Suppoted Sharepoint templates, and limitations
  • File Level Backup and Restore - OS Agent
  • Protecting Applications
    • Applications
      • MSSQL
      • MySQL/MariaDB
      • PostgreSQL
      • DB2
      • Oracle
      • Relax and Recover - ReaR
      • Git
      • oVirt/RHV/OLVM
      • Kubernetes/OpenShift etcd
    • Backup & Restore
  • Protecting Storage Providers
    • Storage Providers
      • Ceph RBD
      • Nutanix Files
      • Nutanix Volume Groups
    • Backup & Restore
  • Administration
    • Dashboard
    • Virtual Environments
      • Instances
        • Backup on-demand
        • Restore on-demand
        • Snapshot Management
      • Virtualization Providers
      • Backup SLAs
        • Policies
        • Schedules
      • Snapshot SLAs
        • Policies
        • Schedules
      • Recovery Plans
        • Policies
        • Schedules
      • Mounted Backups (File-level Restore)
    • Storage
      • Instances
        • Backup on-demand
        • Restore on-demand
      • Infrastructure
      • Backup SLAs
        • Policies
        • Schedules
      • Snapshot SLAs
        • Policies
        • Schedules
      • Mounted Backups (File-level Restore)
    • Cloud
      • Instances
      • Service Providers
      • Backup SLAs
        • Policies
        • Schedules
      • Download
    • Applications
      • Instances
      • Execution Configurations
      • Backup SLAs
    • Endpoints
      • Environment
      • Administrators
      • Endpoints Server Management
        • Dashboard
        • Packages
        • Organizations
      • Endpoints Administrator
        • Dashboard
        • Users
          • Local users
          • LDAP users
        • Devices
          • Devices list view
          • Device status
        • Backup SLA
          • Create a Backup SLA
            • GENERAL
            • WINDOWS
            • MAC OS (technical preview)
            • EMAIL CLIENTS
          • Backup SLA management
          • Backup SLA removal
        • Restore Jobs
        • Client Deployments
    • Reporting
      • Virtual Environments
      • Storage
      • Microsoft 365
      • Applications
      • Notifications
      • Audit Log
    • Nodes
      • Instances
      • Node Configurations
    • Access Management
      • Users
      • Groups
      • Roles
      • OS Credentials
    • Settings
      • Global Settings
      • Internal DB Backup
      • Notification Rules
      • Mailing Lists
      • Endpoints Global Settings
    • Upgrade
    • CLI Reference
    • CLI v2 Reference
  • Integration
  • Integration Plugins
    • Red Hat Virtualization UI Plugin
    • oVirt UI Plugin
    • Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager UI Plugin
    • OpenStack UI Plugin
  • Troubleshooting
    • Enable DEBUG mode in Storware Backup and Recovery
    • Collecting logs
    • External log targets
    • Disaster Recovery
  • Known software issues and limitations
  • Glossary
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On this page
  • Backup process
  • Full Backup
  • Incremental Backup
  • Transport types
  • Hot-Add
  • Network Block Device (NBD)
  • Adding a hypervisor manager
  • Instant restore
  • Live migration
  1. Protecting Virtual Environments
  2. Virtual Machines

VMware vSphere/ESXi

PreviousVirtual MachinesNextMicrosoft Hyper-V

Storware Backup & Recovery supports agent-less data protection for VMware vSphere and ESXi environments. Both full and incremental backups are supported.

Backup process

Full Backup

A full backup contains entire virtual machine data (and metadata) each time the backup action is executed. It is available for every guest operating system supported by VMware. At the same time, it is the most time- and resource-consuming type of backup.

Incremental Backup

Incremental backups consume less space and fewer resources than full backups because they include only the pieces of data that have changed since the last backup. Consider the following scenario, where we want to protect 3 files:

The first request for the incremental backup will always result in full backup (all data is considered as new), so all three files are backed up. At some point in time File1 changes while File2 and File3 remain untouched.

At the next execution of the backup schedule, only File1 will be backed up as it's the only one that has changed. Afterward, only File3 changes its contents, so this portion of the data will be backed up at the next scheduled backup. Again, File3 changes for the second time, which means the subsequent incremental backup will contain File3 only. Finally, the data taken at the next full backup will contain the third version of File2, the second version of File1, and the (original, unchanged) version of FIle1.

Now that we know how we can back up our data, it is time to explain how we can transport the data to our backup destination, which brings us to the next step.

Note:

  • in order to execute incremental backups, you need to have at least one schedule with incremental backup selected, and only then must you execute full backup - this will result in a CBT change of the set IDs of record, which is needed for the next incremental backup.

Transport types

There are 2 transport modes supported by Storware Backup & Recovery:

  • Hot-Add

  • Network Block Device (NBD)

Transport modes are detected and selected automatically depending on the deployment configuration.

Hot-Add

This is the default transport mode if you choose to deploy a Proxy VM (Storware Backup & Recovery Node in a VM) inside your VMware cluster. During backup, a cloned VM is created from the backup snapshot, then these disks are hot-added to our Proxy VM and transferred to the backup destination. This approach eliminates data transfer over LAN during backup and restore.

Here is an example where the Storware Backup & Recovery Server is installed anywhere in your infrastructure (accessible to the nodes) and the node is installed inside a VM in the VMware environment:

The server and node can also be installed together:

Network Block Device (NBD)

This transport mode is used when Hot-Add is not available for some reason (i.e. you decided to deploy the Node outside of the VMware environment). NBD is a Linux-style kernel module that handles remote storage as a block device and passes it over TCP/IP connection.

In this example, the Storware Backup & Recovery Server and Node are deployed outside of the VMware environment:

Note:

  • this transport, although simpler to set up, is not as efficient as the previous method because in this case, NBD transport is used so data will travel using LAN.

Adding a hypervisor manager

  1. The backup user must have the following privileges for the backup/restore procedure:

    • VirtualMachine > Change Configuration

    • VirtualMachine > Edit Inventory

    • VirtualMachine > Provisioning

    • VirtualMachine > Snapshot management

    • Datastore > Browse datastore

    • Datastore > Update virtual machine files

    • Datastore > Update virtual machine metadata

    • Resource > Assign virtual machine to the resource pool

    • Tasks > Create task

  2. You must have ports 443/TCP and 902/TCP open from the ESX/vCenter to the Storware Backup & Recovery node to run the backup.

  3. Add your vCenter as a Hypervisor Manager in the Web UI - https://vcenter.hostname.or.ip

If you have stand-alone ESXi hosts - add all hypervisors separately on the Hypervisors tab - simply provide their hostnames or IPs and credentials.

Instant restore

To use an instant restore feature, backup destination from which VM will be restored, has to be of a synthetic type. The restore process creates a NFS share on the Storware Backup & Recovery node, later this share is attached to the vCenter as a new data store. Then it creates a new virtual machine and attaches the disks from the newly created data store to it.

To use instant restore you have to click the restore button in the instances list and choose the option instant restore.

Live migration

You can enable the live migration option during instant restore. It will automatically start the disks migration to the chosen storage after the VM is restored and powered on.

A very important thing to note here is the usage of Change Block Tracking technology, which dramatically increases performance and reduces backup time as it sends only those pieces of information that have changed at the block level. You can refer to for a more detailed description of how CBT works.

VMware KB