Veritas NetBackup™ for Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) Administrator's Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup (8.2)
  1. Introduction to NetBackup for Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)
    1.  
      Protect AHV using NetBackup
    2. About the Hypervisor policy type to protect Nutanix AHV VMs
      1.  
        Migrating BigData policy to Hypervisor policy
    3.  
      NetBackup terminology related to the AHV backup
    4.  
      NetBackup for AHV environment
  2. Prerequisites and things to consider before using the plug-in
    1.  
      Prerequisites
    2. Things to consider before using the NetBackup plug-in for Nutanix AHV
      1.  
        NetBackup character restrictions for virtual machine names
  3. Downloading and installing the Nutanix plug-in
    1.  
      Plan the installation for Nutanix AHV
    2.  
      NetBackup server and client requirements
    3.  
      License requirements for the Nutanix AHV
    4.  
      Download the Nutanix AHV plug-in binaries
    5.  
      Install the Nutanix AHV plug-in
  4. Configuring NetBackup communication with AHV
    1.  
      Establishing communication between NetBackup and Nutanix AHV
    2. Configuring secure communication between the Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor server and NetBackup host
      1.  
        About the nb_nutanix-ahv configuration file
      2. Managing SSL certificates through ECA framework
        1.  
          ECA_TRUST_STORE_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
        2.  
          ECA_CRL_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
        3.  
          VIRTUALIZATION_HOSTS_SECURE_CONNECT_ENABLED for servers and clients
        4.  
          VIRTUALIZATION_CRL_CHECK for NetBackup servers and clients
    3.  
      Adding the Nutanix Acropolis Cluster credentials for NetBackup
    4. Adding a backup host to the NetBackup master server
      1.  
        Adding a backup host to the NetBackup master access list
    5.  
      Adding a backup host to the Acropolis Cluster access list
  5. Configuring NetBackup policies for AHV
    1.  
      Creating a backup policy using the NetBackup Policies utility
    2.  
      Creating a backup policy using the NetBackup Command Line Interface
  6. Backup and recovery
    1. Back up the Nutanix AHV virtual machines
      1.  
        Basic phases in a NetBackup backup of an AHV
    2. Overview of the Nutanix AHV virtual machines recovery process
      1.  
        About recovering the Nutanix AHV virtual machines
      2.  
        Planning the recovery of a Nutanix AHV VM
      3.  
        Recovering a Nutanix AHV VM using the Backup, Archive, and Restore console
      4.  
        About recovering AHV VMs from the images that are backed up using NetBackup versions 8.1, 8.1.1, or 8.1.2
      5. Recovering a Nutanix AHV VM using the command line for Hypervisor policy
        1.  
          Creating or modifying the rename file
        2.  
          Using the command line to recover Nutanix AHV virtual machines for Hypervisor policy
  7. Troubleshooting issues
    1.  
      Troubleshooting issues related to AHV backup
    2.  
      NetBackup logs
    3.  
      About errors during policy creation, restore, and validation
    4.  
      NetBackup status codes
  8. Appendix A. NetBackup commands to backup and restore Nutanix AHV virtual machines
    1.  
      NetBackup commands for protecting the AHV
  9. Appendix B. Protect Nutanix AHV virtual machines with BigData policy
    1.  
      Using the BigData policy to backup and restore Nutanix AHV virtual machines
    2. Recovering a Nutanix AHV VM using the command line for BigData policy
      1.  
        Creating or modifying the rename file
      2.  
        Using the command line to recover Nutanix AHV virtual machines for BigData policy

Basic phases in a NetBackup backup of an AHV

The following table provides an overview of the processes that NetBackup undertakes during an AHV backup.

Phase

Description

Phase 1: Validation of the Hypervisor policy

NetBackup validates the Hypervisor policy that you have created to backup the AHV virtual machines.

Phase 2: Initiation of a backup job

A backup job is triggered manually or according to the schedule that you have specified during policy creation.

Phase 3: Discovery of clients and commencing to backup the data on the clients

The backup process triggers three jobs - a parent job. a snapshot job, and a child job.

The parent job runs the nbdiscover process and the nbcs process discovers the VMs for the matching criteria and then starts the snapshot jobs for each of the discovered client.

Once the snapshot job completes, a backup job initiates that mounts the snapshot at the /usr/openv/tmp/ntxmnt location. The backup job then starts the actual read-write operation to backup the data on a disk.

Phase 4: Completion of the backup job

On successful completion of a backup, the NetBackup client on the backup host unmounts and then deletes the snapshot.

NetBackup Accelerator uses Nutanix AHV's changed block tracking mechanism to get the metadata about the blocks that have changed between any two snapshots of a file. Nutanix requires two snapshots to provide this changed block information.

NetBackup provides previous backup snapshot details and the current backup snapshot details to get the changed region information. Once this data is collected, NetBackup deletes the previous backup snapshot and keeps the current backup snapshot for next job to get the changed region.

Based on the schedules in the policy, the following scenarios occur:

  • Full + Differential incremental backup

    Only the current backup job's VM snapshot is retained and the previous backup job's snapshot is removed.

  • Full + Cumulative incremental backup

    Only the last full backup job snapshot is retained and the current backup job snapshot is removed.

  • Full + Differential + Cumulative incremental backup

    Two snapshots are retained (last full and last differential incremental backup job snapshots) and the previously stored snapshots that are no longer needed for getting the changed block are removed.