- Backing up data through pass-through disks--Pass-through disks are physical disks or LUNs that are attached to virtual machines. Pass-through disks do not support some of the functionality of virtual disks, such as virtual machine snapshots. With pass-through disks, you can expect the agent to behave as follows:
- When backing up data, the agent skips the pass-through disks that are attached to the virtual machine.
- When restoring the data, the agent cannot recover the data that was skipped during the backup.
- Running state of the virtual machines--The VMs in the VMware ESX Host must be in a running state when you populate the Arcserve Backup database.
If the VMs are not in a running state, ARCserve VMware Configuration Tool (ca_vcbpopulatedb.exe) and ARCserve Hyper-V Configuration Tool (ca_msvmpopulatedb.exe) cannot populate the Arcserve Backup database with accurate data, and you cannot accurately browse the VMs in VMware ESX Host systems.
- When to run the configuration tools--You must run ARCserve VMware Configuration Tool (ca_vcbpopulatedb.exe) and ARCserve Hyper-V Configuration Tool (ca_msvmpopulatedb.exe) after you add, remove, or change volumes in a VM or a VM in the host system.
Failure to do so can result in inaccurate VM volume data in the Arcserve Backup database, and failed backup jobs will occur at runtime.
- Command Line support--Arcserve Backup does not provide command line support for VM backup and restore operations. For example, ca_backup and ca_restore.
You must use the Backup Manager and Restore Manager to perform all VM based backups and restores.
- Restore by media--You cannot use the Restore by Media method to restore file level and raw (full VM) level backup data.
- Compare utility--The Compare Utility does not support comparing VM backup sessions.
When you try to perform a Compare operation on VM sessions, Arcserve Backup performs a Scan operation instead of a Compare operation.
- Merge utility--Due to limitations in the physical and logical mapping of the volumes in the Arcserve Backup database, the Merge Utility does not support performing a sequential merge.
If you need to merge data about VM sessions into the Arcserve Backup database, you can merge the catalog data.
- Global backup options not supported--The agent does not support the following global backup options:
- Delete files after backup job
- Open file retry
Note: For more information about global backup options, see the Administration Guide.
- Mount path character limitations--The agent does not support specifying a VM Mount Path that contains non-English language-based characters. Garbled characters will appear when the path contains non-English language-based characters.
- Version of Hyper-V--The agent cannot recover Hyper-V virtual machines to an older version of Hyper-V. The version of Hyper-V that is running on the restore destination must be equal to or later than the version of Hyper-V that was backed up.
