The Virtual Server Agent (VSA) for VMware provides a unified protection and recovery vehicle for all virtual machine data in your vCenter. In addition to complete protection of entire virtual machines for disaster recovery, the Virtual Server Agent provides granular backup and recovery options.
Note
The Virtual Server Agent may also be referred to as the Virtual Server iDataAgent.
The VSA for VMware enables you to perform backups and restores and manage virtual machine data in complex virtualized environments.
Key Features
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Feature |
Description |
Additional information |
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Agentless backups and restores |
Install the Virtual Server Agent on a machine to act as a VSA proxy. A VSA proxy manages backup and restore operations for guest VMs in your environment, eliminating the need to install agents on guest VMs. |
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"Incremental forever" data protection |
After an initial full backup, you can perform ongoing incremental backups to capture changes for the source VM. |
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Changed Block Tracking |
Commvault uses Changed Block Tracking (CBT) to identify changes for each incremental backup. |
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Restores |
You can restore full VMs, disk files, or guest files and folders, or attach a restored disk to an existing VM. |
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Full integration with VMware technologies |
The Virtual Server Agent builds upon VMware technologies and adds value by providing automation. VSA uses vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) for data protection, with support for all guest operating systems supported by VADP. |
vSAN Support with the Virtual Server Agent for VMware |
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Capabilities for on-premises and multi-cloud environments |
A modern interface provides unified support for modern storage options such as VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols) and cloud technologies. |
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Policy-driven data protection |
Policies drive operations to meet service level agreements (SLAs), with support for VMware policies and virtual machine tags. |
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Disaster recovery |
Replicate VMs to a warm recovery site to ensure that VMs are available in the event of a disaster or other outage. DR orchestration features include planned and unplanned failovers, failback, and test boots. |
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Simplified operational interface |
The web-based Command Center interface uses smart defaults to simplify configuration and support streamlined operations. |
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Self service for end users |
The Web Console provides self service options for end users and groups. |
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VM provisioning |
End users can use the Web Console to provision VMs based on pre-defined templates. |
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Advanced administration |
The CommCell Console provides advanced options for Commvault operations. Using the CommCell Console, you can configure a virtualization client that serves as a single point of administration for a vCenter or ESX server. You can perform backups and restores from the virtualization client, and perform other administrative tasks such as creating schedules and generating reports. |
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Automatic protection for all virtual machines in a vCenter |
By default, all virtual machines in the vCenter are automatically selected for backup, to ensure that all virtual machines are backed up. |
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Application-aware backups |
Perform application-consistent backups without manually installing application agents on virtual machines. From the Command Center, you can use the Auto discover applications option to automatically find applications on servers and install the agents that can back up the applications. (For more information, see Automatic Discovery of Applications in the Command Center.) |
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Automatic discovery |
To back up categories of virtual machines, you can create rules to automatically select virtual machines based on specific criteria. Automatic discovery is useful in environments where virtual machines are frequently added or removed. |
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Customized filters |
To exclude virtual machines from the backup, create rules to filter virtual machines. |
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Detailed status for each virtual machine backup |
You can view detailed information about each backed up virtual machine, including information such as the name of the proxy that performed the backup of the virtual machine, the size of the backup data, and the type of backup. |
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vCloud backup and restore |
You can protect the vCloud-specific attributes of a virtual machine and restore a virtual machine back to a vCloud. |
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VM conversion |
When restoring a VM, you can choose to restore to a different hypervisor. This capability can be used to migrate VMs to a different virtualization platform. |
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Powerful snapshot management framework |
The VSA snapshot management framework uses hardware orchestration to provide enhanced recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs). IntelliSnap backups work in conjunction with hardware snapshot engines. IntelliSnap backup enables you to create a point-in-time snapshot of a virtual machine by temporarily quiescing the data, taking a snapshot, and resuming live operations. |
Commvault Platform Features
The following features are available throughout Commvault and are not limited to the Virtual Server Agent.
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Feature |
Description |
Additional information |
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Block-level deduplication |
Block-level deduplication compares blocks of data during backups. If virtual machines contain identical blocks of data, block-level deduplication eliminates the storage of redundant data and reduces the size of data in storage. |
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Built-in compression |
Commvault storage policies automatically enable compression to reduce the quantity of data sent to storage. |