Introducing the Agent › Backup and Restore Limitations on Virtual Machines

Backup and Restore Limitations on Virtual Machines

The limitations that follow affect VM backup and restore operations:

• The VMs in the VMware ESX Host must be in a running state when you populate the CA ARCserve Backup database.

  If the VMs are not in a running state, ARCserve VMware Configuration Tool (ca_vcbpopulatedb.exe) and ARCserve Hyper-V Configuration Tool (ca_msvmpopulatedb.exe) cannot populate the CA ARCserve Backup database with accurate data, and you cannot accurately browse the VMs in VMware ESX Host systems.

• You must run ARCserve VMware Configuration Tool (ca_vcbpopulatedb.exe) and ARCserve Hyper-V Configuration Tool (ca_msvmpopulatedb.exe) after you add, remove, or change volumes in a VM or a VM in the host system.

  Failure to do so can result in inaccurate VM volume data in the CA ARCserve Backup database, and failed backup jobs will occur at runtime.

• CA ARCserve Backup does not provide command line support for VM backup and restore operations. For example, ca_backup and ca_restore.

  You must use the Backup Manager and Restore Manager to perform all VM based backups and restores.

• You cannot use the Restore by Media method to restore file level and raw (full VM) level backup data.
• The Compare Utility does not support comparing VM backup sessions.

  When you try to perform a Compare operation on VM sessions, CA ARCserve Backup performs a Scan operation instead of a Compare operation.

• The agent does not support the following global backup options:
  • Delete files after backup job
  • Open file retry

  Note: For more information about global backup options, see the Administration Guide.

• Due to limitations in the physical and logical mapping of the volumes in the CA ARCserve Backup database, the Merge Utility does not support performing a sequential merge.

  If you need to merge data about VM sessions into the CA ARCserve Backup database, you can merge the catalog data.

• The agent does not support specifying a VM Mount Path that contains non-English language-based characters. Garbled characters will appear when the path contains non-English language-based characters.