> Essential > Virtualization > Information for All Virtualized Platforms > Backups

Performing a Virtual Machine Backup

You can run an immediate backup to capture complete virtual machine information or to capture information that has changed since a previous backup.

Caution

Because OpenShift applications do not have a UUID or GUID to uniquely identify each application, the Commvault software indexes each application with an ID in the form project_name-application_name.
If you delete an application and later create a new application for the project that uses the same application name, the backup history for the new application is indexed using the ID that was created for the original application. In that scenario, restoring from a backup job for the original application might overwrite data for the new application, resulting in data loss.

Note

  • For virtual machines that are hosted on an SMB share, a Microsoft limitation prevents restore operations from reading file and folder information from a snap backup. To enable restores of guest files and folders from Microsoft Hyper-V backups using a server plan, use the Collect file details option for the VM group.

  • You can only back up and restore instances in the root compartment and first-level compartments for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure regions. You cannot back up instances in subcompartments or restore instances to subcompartments. As a workaround, either move the instances to the root compartment or a first-level compartment, or install an agent such as a file system agent on the guest instances.

Procedure

  1. From the navigation pane, go to Protect > Virtualization.

    The Virtual machines page appears.

  2. On the Hypervisors tab, click the hypervisor.

    The hypervisor page appears. The VM groups area displays summary information for any existing VM groups.

  3. In the VM groups area, click the VM group that contains the virtual machines to back up.

  4. In the top right corner of the page, click Backup.

    The Backup options dialog box appears.

  5. For Backup level, select the backup type. (A full backup is always performed for the first backup of any virtual machine.)

    • Full: Perform a full backup for a virtual machine that has previously been backed up. A full backup includes virtual machine configuration files and all virtual machine data disks.

    • Incremental: Selected by default. An incremental backup only backs up changes since the last full backup.

    • Synthetic full: Create a synthesized backup from the most recent full backup and all subsequent incremental backups.

      An incremental backup is performed first to ensure that the synthetic full backup will be up to date.

      The resulting synthetic full backup is identical to a full backup for the VM group. Unlike full and incremental, a synthetic full backup does not actually transfer data from a client computer to the backup media, and does not use any resources on the client computer.

      Note

      You cannot run a synthetic full backup job if no incremental or differential backups were run after the last full or synthetic full backup.

  6. Click OK to begin the backup operation.

Results

The backup operation runs and alerts are triggered based on the success or failure of the backup job. To view the alerts created for your virtual machine backup jobs, go to the Triggered alerts page and filter on the following alert definitions:

  • VM Backup succeeded

  • VM Backup failed

  • VM Backup succeeded with errors

For information about alerts, see Alerts.

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