The following requirements must be met to protect VMware environments:
Item |
Description |
---|---|
Hypervisor |
The ESX or ESXi server must be a licensed version listed in the Unitrends Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix. Note: Host-level snapshots are not supported with free versions of ESXi. To protect VMs in a free ESXi environment, run backups with the Unitrends agent. Note about restores: VMs with hardware version 10 can be restored only to ESX versions 5.5 and higher. |
vCenter |
Must be a licensed version listed in the Unitrends Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix. |
vCenter or ESX(i) account privileges |
An account with full administrative privileges is required. The user or group must have the role administrator. You supply these credentials when adding the vCenter or ESX server to the backup system. |
Virtual machine configuration |
Verify the following VM configuration settings: • VM hardware versions 4, 7, 8, 9, and 10 are supported. Note: VMware introduced new SATA Virtual Hardware Controllers with vSphere 5.5 and VM Hardware Version 10. These controllers cannot be backed up as they are not recognized by Unitrends 7.3 and older. See KB 1500 for details on selecting the correct controller when creating new VMs in version 5.5. Note about restores: VMs with hardware version 10 can be restored only to ESX versions 5.5 and higher. • To protect VMware clustered environments, make sure the vCenter is registered to your Unitrends appliance. See To create a VMware backup schedule. • VMs configured in a cluster setup with a fault tolerant disk are not supported. • Dynamic MAC addresses are not supported. Verify that MAC addresses are not set to dynamic. • Independent and pass-through disks are not supported and will be automatically excluded from any vProtect backups. If data on these disks needs to be protected, install the agent in the guest operating system and add the VM to the backup system as you would a physical machine. • Virtual-mode raw device mapped disks can be protected. See Raw device mapped disk limitations for details. • VMware tools must be installed in the guest operating system to ensure file system and application consistency. • Sparse disks are not supported and may cause backup errors. This can happen when converting virtual hard drives from VHD to VMDK format. See KB 1167 for details and resolution. |
Unitrends system requirements |
The instant recovery feature for VMware is only supported on 64-bit CentOS 5 or later Unitrends systems running version 6.2.0 or newer. See About > System Information for the current version. |