Perform Preflight Checks for Your Backup Jobs

Using CA ARCserve Central Host-Based VM Backup › How to Back Up the Virtual Machine Environment › Perform Preflight Checks for Your Backup Jobs

Perform Preflight Checks for Your Backup Jobs

CA ARCserve Central Host-Based VM Backup features a utility called Preflight Check (PFC) which enables you to run vital checks on specific nodes to detect conditions that can cause backup jobs to fail. PFC runs automatically when you perform the following actions:

Import virtual machines from a vCenter Server/ESX Server system
Add nodes from the Discovery result
Update a node

In addition, you can also perform a Preflight Check manually.

Follow these steps:

Log in to the application.
Click Nodes on the Navigation bar to open the Nodes screen.
Do one of the following actions to specify the nodes that you want to run a preflight check from:
- Node level: Click the group containing the nodes that you want to run a preflight check on and then click the check box next to the nodes. Then right-click the nodes and click Preflight Check from the context menu.
- Group level: Right-click the group containing the nodes and click Preflight Check.
A message is displayed, "Starting to preflight check the virtual machine."
Scroll to the PFC Status column and view the status of the Preflight Check.
The following table describes the checks that are performed by PFC:

Item	Description
Changed Block Tracking (CBT)	(CBT) is a feature that tracks disk sectors that are located on a virtual machine that have changed. This helps minimize the size of the backups. This item verifies that CBT is enabled.
VMware Tools	This item verifies that the VMware tools are installed on each virtual machine.
Disk	This item verifies the disks of the virtual machine.
Power State	This item verifies that the virtual machine is powered on.
Credentials	This item verifies that the user credentials are valid.
Applications	This item verifies whether Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server are installed or not.

For more information on resolving errors and warnings for the Preflight Check results, see topic Solutions for Preflight Check Items.