HP Data Protector A.06.11 Support for VMware vStorage

Full, incremental, incremental, incremental,...

You cannot mix incremental and differential backups within the same backup chain. The

snapshot made at the beginning of a backup session is used to create a consistent state. After

the backup completes, one DP snapshot remains on the snapshot tree. It is needed to track

changes made since the last full or incremental backup. For details, see Snapshot mode: single.

Mixed: Supports full, differential, and incremental backups in all backup chain combinations.

For example:

Full, incremental, incremental, differential, incremental, differential,...

The snapshot made at the beginning of a backup session is used to create a consistent state.

After the backup completes, up to two DP snapshots remain on the snapshot tree. One is needed

to track changes made since the last full backup and the other to track changes made since the

last backup (incremental or differential). For details, see Snapshot mode: mixed.

Backup chain

When performing snapshot operations on a backed up virtual machine, you must be careful not to

break your backup chains. A backup chain gets broken if you do any of the following operations:

Delete a snapshot

Revert to a snapshot

Create a non-Data Protector snapshot

Change snapshot handling mode

Add a new virtual machine disk or rename an existing one

Restore the virtual machine

After making any such changes, you must run a full backup again to start a new backup chain.

Otherwise, subsequent incremental and differential sessions fail.

On supported Windows guest operating systems, it is possible to use the VSS framework to freeze,

or quiesce, the states of the applications running within a VM before a snapshot is created. If

quiescence is selected for a Windows guest operating system, the snapshot process quiesces all

system writers and registered application writers before taking the snapshot of the virtual machine.

During a backup with quiescence enabled, a .zip file is created that contains all the BCD and

writer manifests located in the datastore(s) concerned. Data Protector backs up this file. During a

restore, the file is restored to the same location and then post-restore VSS steps like roll-forward

can be performed manually.

Backup summary

A summary of the backup option/backup type combinations available with the vStorage Image

method is shown in the table below.