vSphere VM Configuration Assessment Report
The vSphere VM Configuration Assessment Report report helps you assess VMs readiness for performing backup with Veeam Backup & Replication. It analyzes configuration of VMs in your virtual environment and identifies VMs that cannot be properly backed up due to configuration limitations.
Note |
This report is available for VMware vSphere environments only. |
The report takes into account the following criteria when analyzing VM configuration:
Criterion | Description |
|---|---|
Application-Aware Image Processing | |
VM Guest OS | The report checks guest OS to detect VMs with Windows Server 2000 guest OS. To create a transactionally consistent backup of VMs running VSS-aware applications, Veeam Backup & Replication uses application-aware image processing. To enable application-aware image processing, it is required that Windows Server 2003 or later OS version is installed inside VMs. |
VMware Tools | The report analyzes your virtual infrastructure to find VMs that do not have VMware Tools installed or running. To enable backup with application-aware image processing, it is required that guest OS running inside your VMs have VMware Tools installed and running. |
Configuration Issues | |
VM Names | The report analyzes your virtual infrastructure to find VMs with @ \ / < > symbols in display names. Processing of VMs with @ \ / < > symbols in VM name is not supported for vCenter 5.1 and earlier. |
Datastore Names | The report analyzes your virtual infrastructure to find VMs on datastores with @ symbols in display names. Processing of VMs on datastores with @ symbols in datastore name is not supported. |
Fault-Tolerant VMs | The report analyzes your virtual infrastructure to find fault-tolerant VMs. Veeam Backup & Replication cannot create snapshots for fault-tolerant VMs for vSphere 5.x or earlier. If you want to back up fault-tolerant VMs, you must upgrade them to the new vSphere 6.0 format. |
Datastore Free Space | |
Datastore Free Space | The report analyzes your virtual infrastructure to find datastores that have less than 10% of free space. When Veeam Backup & Replication backs up a VM, it triggers a VMware snapshot that is normally stored next to VM files on the source datastore. To eliminate the problem of datastores running low on free space during backup, it is required that the free space is more than 10%. |
Virtual Disks | |
Disks Engaged in SCSI Bus Sharing | The report analyzes your virtual infrastructure to find VMs with disks engaged in SCSI bus-sharing. Snapshots are not supported on disks connected to controllers configured for bus-sharing configuration. For more information, see this VMware KB article. |
Independent Disks | The report analyzes your virtual infrastructure to find VMs with Independent disks. Snapshots are not supported on virtual machines with Independent disks. For more information, see this VMware KB article. |
RDM Virtual Disks | The report analyzes your virtual infrastructure to find VMs with RDM virtual disks in the physical mode. Veeam Backup & Replication does not support RDM virtual disks in the physical mode and independent disks (these disks are skipped from processing automatically). To backup VMs with pRDM disks, you should convert these disks to vRDMs. For more information on how to switch a raw data mapping between physical and virtual compatibility modes, see VMware KB article. |
VMware CBT | |
Existing Snapshots | The report analyzes your virtual infrastructure to find VMs with existing snapshots. To use VMware Changed Block Tracking for incremental backup, all existing snapshots should be removed. |
Hardware Version | The report analyzes your virtual infrastructure to find VMs with hardware version 4 or earlier. To use VMware Changed Block Tracking for incremental backup, hardware version of VMs should be 7 or later. |
Sample Usage
This section provides step-by-step instructions that will help you understand how to create a VM configuration assessment report. Consider the following example:
You plan to back up VMs running on a VMware vSphere host. Before adding these VMs to backup jobs, you want to run the configuration assessment report and make sure that the VMs are ready for flawless backup processing.
To create the report, follow these steps: