Hypervisor Support and Requirements for Application-Aware Backups

You can perform application-aware backups for VSA subclients that are configured for backups with the hypervisors listed in Application Support for Hypervisors.

Amazon

Supported with streaming or IntelliSnap VSA backups.

The Virtual Server Agent (VSA) proxy used for an application-aware backup must meet the following requirements:

• The proxy must be a Windows instance hosted in Amazon and must be located in the same region as the instances to be backed up.

  Important

  A list of VSA proxies can be configured at the virtualization client instance or subclient level, with the list of proxies at the subclient taking precedence. Multiple proxies can be added to provide load balancing and failover capabilities. Ensure that all of the proxies that are configured to be available for application-aware backups meet these requirements, including the requirements for streaming VSA backups and IntelliSnap application backups.

For Amazon IntelliSnap backups, the following requirements apply:

• Configure guest VM hostnames using the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for the VM.

  If you use an IP address as the hostname for a guest VM, application-aware backups fail and the operation creates a duplicate client entry in the form hostname_1.

• The VSA Proxy must be able to connect to guest VMs to perform remote installations of agent plug-ins.

• If a guest VM does not have a WMI port opened, install the File System Core package on the guest VM.

• For IntelliSnap backups and restores of application data, the VSA proxy should be an AWS instance.

Microsoft Azure

Supported with streaming or IntelliSnap VSA backups.

You can perform application-aware backups only on VMs that meet the following requirements:

• The VMs must be created using the Azure Resource Manager deployment model.

• The VMs must reside on either Managed Identity-enabled VSA clients or VSA clients that do not have Managed Identity enabled. If the VSA client has Managed Identity enabled, then you must also enable Managed Identity at the guest VM level. For more information, go to Setting Up Managed Identity Authentication for Azure Resource Manager.

The following installation requirements apply:

• Install Commvault software on Azure access nodes.

• For remote installations, choose one of the following methods:

  • If you have configured Azure ExpressRoute, then the Commvault software successfully performs a remote install. You do not need to configure firewall and network settings.

  • If a guest VM does not have network ports opened, then complete the following tasks:

    1. Open the required network ports. For more information, see Review Firewall and Network Port Requirements.

    2. Install the File System Core package on the guest VM. For instructions, go to Enabling Remote Installation for Firewalled Environments.

Microsoft Hyper-V

Supported with streaming or IntelliSnap VSA backups.

For IntelliSnap backups, only supported for non-persistent snap engines.

The VSA proxy must be a Hyper-V server.

Nutanix AHV

Supported with streaming or IntelliSnap VSA backups.

You can only perform application-aware backups for VMs with disks on Nutanix storage. You cannot perform an application-aware backup for a VM that has disks on a different storage array. LUNs configured outside of the Nutanix array are not supported.

Volume groups are not supported.

You cannot perform application-aware backups for VMs with names that include special characters.

The Virtual Server Agent must be installed on a virtual machine in the Nutanix AHV cluster.

OpenStack

Supported with streaming VSA backups.

The VSA proxy must be a supported instance that is deployed in the OpenStack environment, and must be part of the same project as the instance that is included as subclient content for application-aware backups.

Ensure that the operating system of the VSA proxy is consistent with the operating systems of the VMs being backed up. Use Windows proxies for a subclient that includes only Windows VMs, and Linux proxies for a subclient that includes only Linux VMs.

SSH authentication to guest VMs is not supported for application-aware backups of OpenStack instances. To enable remote installs of application plug-ins, ensure that you configure guest VM credentials with the root user and password.

Oracle VM

Supported with streaming VSA backups.

The VSA proxy must be a supported virtual machine.

Ensure that the operating system of the VSA proxy is consistent with the operating systems of the VMs being backed up. Use Windows proxies for a subclient that includes only Windows VMs, and Linux proxies for a subclient that includes only Linux VMs.

Red Hat Virtualization

Supported with streaming VSA backups.

The VSA proxy must be a supported Windows virtual machine.

VMware

Supported with streaming or IntelliSnap VSA backups.

• For streaming backups, the proxy can be a VM or a physical machine.

• You can choose to include Raw Device Maps (RDMs) and independent disks in application-aware backups performed as part of IntelliSnap VSA backups, if applications are running on a VM hosted on ESX 5.5 or later. To include RDMs or independent disks, configure the Virtual Server subclient as described in Enable IntelliSnap Backup Operations for RDM and Independent Disks.

• If you configure the VMware subclient to perform application-aware backups using IntelliSnap with a software snap engine, such as the Virtual Server Agent Snap engine or the Cisco HyperFlex Snap engine, you must create a secondary copy that can be used for restores. You cannot restore from the primary snap copy when a software snap engine is used for the IntelliSnap backup.

• VMware does not support snapshots for virtual machines containing SCSI adapters that are configured for bus sharing (physical or virtual). Such virtual machines cannot be included in application-aware backups that are initiated as streaming or IntelliSnap VSA backups.

  For more information, see the VMware article on Snapshot Limitations.

• For backups of Oracle database on Linux, use a Linux proxy that has the Virtual Server Agent installed.

  The Linux proxy is also used to mount application snapshots for restores.