After initial backups for a virtualization client that supports VM-centric operations, you can perform backups for a backup set, for a subclient, or for an individual VM client.
For virtualization clients that are configured for VM-centric operations, when you request a backup for a backup set or subclient, the resulting job appears in the Job Controller with "VM Admin" as the job type, and a separate child job runs for each VM in a subclient.
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If one or more child jobs fail, the parent job status is Completed with Errors.
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If all child jobs fail, the parent job status is Failed.
A VM Admin job is used to coordinate the individual operations for each VM in the subclient, but the actual backup data is associated with each child job rather than the VM Admin job. VM Admin (synthetic full) jobs do not appear in the Job Controller, and you cannot create alerts based on them. These jobs are created only to report job status, and they appear only in the job history and some reports.
If a VM is already being backed up as part of a parent job and a backup is requested for the same VM, you can configure the software to queue the new job until the previous job completes. In the CommCell Console Control Panel > Job Management > General tab, select Queue jobs if other conflicting jobs are active.
If a backup is completed for some VMs as part of a parent job, and a scheduled backup begins for VMs that are already completed in the parent job, the new jobs run in parallel with the previously running parent job.
If you view jobs for a storage policy or for a storage policy copy, only individual VM jobs appear. (For backups that were performed prior to 11.20, both VM admin and individual VM jobs appear.)
The following job types are shown for subclients and for each individual VM:
|
Subclient jobs |
Individual VM jobs |
|---|---|
|
VM Admin (Backup) |
Backup |
|
VM Admin (Snap Backup) |
Snap Backup |
|
VM Admin (Backup Copy) |
Backup Copy |
|
VM Admin (Synthetic Full) |
Synthetic Full |
Incremental Storage Policy
When you enable an incremental storage policy, it initiates a specific backup behavior within the Commvault software. When you add a new virtual machine (VM) to an existing subclient and execute an incremental backup job, the parent job now becomes an incremental backup, and the VM job, considered a child of the parent, transforms into a full backup.
Consequently, the child VM's full backup job aligns with the incremental storage policy rather than the full storage policy. This occurs because the parent job, configured with an incremental backup level, establishes the data pipeline and allocates resources. Therefore, even though one of the VM backup levels is full, the data ultimately resides within the incremental storage.