Administrator Guide

snapshot creation. If a failure occurs, use the vSphere Client to change the value of the disk.EnableUUID

parameter to FALSE. For further instructions, see: HTTP://KB.vmware.com/KB/1031298

• Backing up virtual machine memory

By default, a backup of a VMware virtual machine does not include machine memory. To include a dump of the virtual machine

memory at the time of the backup, use the Include virtual machine memory in vSphere snapshot backup set option. Including

machine memory causes the backup to take more time to complete. For more information, see: HTTP://KB.vmware.com/KB/

1007532

Data Recovery for VMware

Replay Manager provides two data recovery actions: Expose and Restore. The VMware backup extension selected for the Replay

Manager job determines which data recovery actions are available.

Expose Action for VMware

The Expose action is supported by both VMware backup extensions. This action presents a View of the exposed Replay back to the

vSphere cluster in order to recover data at either the image or file level.

Although exposing the volume is managed by Replay Manager, the act of data recovery is not. The administrator must manually register

the virtual machine on the View volume and power it on for an image level recovery, or add its .vmdk disk file back to the original (or

surrogate) virtual machine's virtual inventory to perform file level recovery.

Restore Data with VSS Consistency

If data is required to be restored with VSS consistency, take the following steps for each virtual machine being recovered:

1. Register the virtual machine in inventory.

2. From VMware, Revert to Snapshot.

3. From VMware, Delete Snapshot.

Although the Expose action requires some manual steps, it is the fastest way to recover data at both the file and image levels while

maintaining storage efficiency and while preserving the data progression history. Experienced users of vSphere and Dell storage should

use the Expose action whenever possible to ensure the fastest recovery and most efficient use of raw storage.

Restore Action for VMware

Instead of exposing the datastore for large scale or rapid image level recovery, the Restore action automatically deletes the existing virtual

machines being restored and then restores the virtual machines individually by using a copy operation from a View volume back to its

original location. The Restore action is only supported by the VMware Virtual Machines backup extension and is fully automated.

Because Restore is a bulk copy operation, available blocks are written to as new according to the storage profile applied to the volume.

Using the Storage Center defaults, the virtual machines are copied into Tier 1 storage regardless of where the blocks existed previously.

The main benefit of this method is that it provides automated virtual machine recovery at the expense of storage efficiency and Recovery

Time Objective (RTO).

vSphere Site Recovery Manager

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) provides an automated disaster recovery solution for vSphere virtualized datacenters. When

integrated with Dell Storage Center, Replays are used by SRM to register and power on virtual machines during the recovery process at

the remote site and as such Replays effectively represent the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for virtual machines.

NOTE: When creating Replay Manager job schedules, RPO and expiration should always be considered.

SRM can leverage Replays created by Replay Manager, however, the following points should be considered to ensure that the disaster

recovery design meets expectations during testing or execution of the recovery plan:

• Replays created by Replay Manager will contain vSphere snapshots. By default, when SRM recovers these virtual machines, they will

still be in a vSphere snapshot state.

• The application and data consistency through VSS is frozen in the read-only snapshot.

• Any data written after the snapshot occurred and before the volume Replay was created will not be application or data consistent.

Rather, the data will be crash consistent.

Replay Manager Best Practices