Backing Up Nutanix AHV VMs

Veeam Availability for Nutanix AHV backs up VMs at the image level. When you start a backup job, the proxy appliance performs the following operations:

1. triggers Nutanix AHV to create a VM snapshot;
2. retrieves VM data block by block from datastores;
3. compresses and deduplicates the VM data;
4. writes the VM data to the backup repository in Veeam proprietary format.

For backup of Nutanix VMs, Veeam Backup & Replication implements the forever forward incremental backup method. During the first backup session,Veeam Backup & Replication copies the whole content of the VM and creates a full backup file (VBK) in the repository. The full backup file acts as a starting point of the backup chain. For details on the backup method, see Forever Forward Incremental Backup.

During the second and further backup sessions, Veeam Backup & Replication copies only those data blocks that have changed since the previous backup session. Changed data blocks are stored as an incremental backup file in the repository. Incremental backup files depend on the full backup file and preceding incremental backup files of the backup chain.

To back up Nutanix AHV VMs, you must configure a backup job in the proxy appliance web UI. For Nutanix AHV VMs, Veeam Backup & Replication creates per-VM backup chains: one backup chain contains data for one VM only. Even if you add several VMs to the backup job, Veeam Backup & Replication will create several backup chains on the backup repository, one per every VM processed by the job.

Backup jobs and backup files created by Veeam Availability for Nutanix AHV are visible in the Veeam Backup & Replication console. However, some of the Veeam Backup & Replication functionality is not available for backups of Nutanix AHV VMs. For details, see Backup Job Limitations.