Introducing Arcserve Backup Agents and Options › Using Agents › Agent for Virtual Machines › Populating the Arcserve Backup Database › How Virtual Machine Names Affect Jobs

How Virtual Machine Names Affect Jobs

Arcserve Backup distinguishes VMs based on their VM name (DNS name) in conjunction with their host name or the name of the backup proxy system. Arcserve Backup populates the Arcserve Backup database with this information when you execute Arcserve VMware Configuration Tool and Arcserve Hyper-V Configuration Tool.

Arcserve VMware Configuration Tool and Arcserve Hyper-V Configuration Tool let you retain or remove information about the VMs in the Arcserve Backup database by enabling and disabling the Retain VM Information option. This design lets you retain information about the VMs that are in a powered off state when you execute the above tools.

Arcserve VMware Configuration Tool and Arcserve Hyper-V Configuration Tool rely upon the VM name to determine the state of a VM (for example, the VM is powered off). If Arcserve VMware Configuration Tool and Arcserve Hyper-V Configuration Tool cannot locate a VM by its VM name, the tools search for VMs by their host name or the name of the backup proxy system.

Example: How VM Names Affect Jobs

Consider the following VM environment:

• You create an environment that consists of one VM.
• The host name of the VM is VM1.
• The VM name is VM_one.

The events that follow occur:

1. You execute Arcserve VMware Configuration Tool or Arcserve Hyper-V Configuration Tool.

   Arcserve Backup populates the Arcserve Backup database with the information about the data contained within VM1.

2. You submit a scheduled backup job of VM1.

   Arcserve Backup runs the job and it completes successfully.

3. You rename VM1 to VM2, but you do not change the VM name.
4. You execute Arcserve VMware Configuration Tool or Arcserve Hyper-V Configuration Tool and enable the Retain VM Information option.

   Arcserve Backup populates the database with information about the data contained within VM2.

   Note: The backup data relating to VM2 is the data that is contained within VM_one.

5. You submit a scheduled backup job of VM2, and then power off VM2.
6. Arcserve Backup runs both jobs and the results that follow can be observed:
   • The backup of VM1 completes successfully. The backup data consists of the data contained within VM2.
   • The backup of VM2 completes successfully. The backup date consists of the data contained within VM2.

Observations:

• In this example, the user changed the host name of the VM and did not change the VM name.
• Arcserve Backup cannot discover a VM using its host name (for example, VM1 and VM2) when the VM is in a powered off state. In this scenario, Arcserve Backup searches for the VM name (for example, VM_one) that corresponds with the host name.
• When both VMs are powered off, they maintain the same identity in the Arcserve Backup database. As a result, When the VM1 job runs, Arcserve Backup does not back up the correct VM.