New features in IBM Spectrum Protect for Virtual environment V8.1.0 for easy administration by VMware users.

The IBM Spectrum Protect for Virtual environment V8.1.0 comes with an advanced features which optimize the backup, restore administrative tasks performance. Data Protection for VMware works with the Tivoli Storage Manager backup-archive client which is installed on the vStorage Backup server  to complete full and incremental backups of VMs. The new version of IBM Spectrum Protect for Virtual environment comes with an extension in the VMware vSphere Web Client API which offers new and enhanced features which are explained below.

1) It provides new options for restoring VMs

The Restore a Virtual Machine wizard provides many expanded features that enable you to

• Select the backup that you want to use for the restore operation using a calendar interface.

• Choose the restore type: restore, instant restore, or instant restore with instant access.

• Restore all virtual disks in a VM or just selected disks.

• Select the datastore for the restored VM.

• Select the data mover or mount proxy that you want to use for the restore operation.

Also Read: Taking Virtual Machines backup through CMD & GUI

2) Setting at-risk policies for VMs

VMs can be at risk of being unprotected because of failed or missed backup operations. You can set a policy for a VM that specifies if or when the VM is shown as at-risk if a backup operation does not occur in a specified time interval.

3) Easy viewing of backup information for VMs at the object level

You can view the most recent backup information for all VMs that are in the following vSphere objects. For each VM, you can view information such as the risk status, completion date, duration, and size of the backup.

• Datacenter
• Folder (host, cluster, and VM)
• Host
• Host Cluster
• Resource Pool

 

4)  Data protection tags for tagging support

New data protection tags are added to help you manage virtual machine backup operations with the IBM Spectrum Protect extension in the VMware vSphere Web Client. In addition to using tags to exclude virtual machines from scheduled backup operations and assign retention or management classes, introduced in V7.1.6, you can assign the new tags to vSphere inventory objects to do the following tasks:

• Include virtual machines in scheduled backup operations

• Assign a data mover to a virtual machine

• Specify a list of virtual disks to back up

• Assign a backup schedule to virtual machines in a container

• Specify the data consistency to achieve for snapshot attempts during virtual machine backup operations

• Provide application protection to virtual machines that run Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Exchange Server software

5) Set a default data mover for tagging

You can set a default data mover for protecting virtual machines in vSphere inventory objects that are tagged with data protection tags. New virtual machines that are added to the tagged container and are protected by a schedule but do not have a data mover tag are backed up by the default data mover.

6) VMs can be added to a backup schedule by using the IBM Spectrum Protect extension

You can select a backup schedule for VMs from the IBM Spectrum Protect extension in the VMware vSphere Web Client. The backup schedule specifies how often and when to automatically back up the VMs in a vSphere inventory object.

7) Enhancements for backup and restore performance for VMs

The following enhancements were made for backup and restore operations:

• Optimized backup operations for multiple virtual disks by using parallel sessions, one session for each virtual disk.

• Optimized backup operations for a single virtual disk by using parallel sessions, multiple sessions for each virtual disk.

• Optimized recovery operations for single virtual disk by using multiple sessions, multiple sessions for each virtual disk.

• Updated the common data format to reduce the number of objects that are stored on the IBM Spectrum Protect server for larger virtual disk sizes.

The following options were added:

Vmmaxbackupsessions

The vmmaxbackupsessions option specifies the maximum number IBM Spectrum Protect server sessions that move VM data to the server that can be included in an optimized (parallel) backup operation.

Vmmaxrestoresessions

The Vmmaxrestoresessions option specifies the maximum number IBM Spectrum Protect server sessions that can be included in a restore operation for a virtual disk.

The following video will introduce you the new features in V8.1.0 which will ease the backup and restore tasks for VMware administrators.