PowerProtect Data Manager 19.10 Virtual Machine User Guide

Unsupported virtual machine platforms and configurations

TSDM virtual machine protection is not supported for the following virtual machines, configurations, and platforms:

• Physical RDMs
• Virtual RDMs
• Encrypted virtual machines
• Fault Tolerant virtual machines
• Azure VMware Solution (AVS) on Microsoft Azure
• Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• VMware Cloud (VMC) on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

VADP restore of TSDM backup restores disks as thick-provisioned in some circumstances

If VADP data path is used to restore a virtual machine that was backed up using the TSDM protection mechanism, the disks are restored as thick-provisioned instead of thin-provisioned. PowerProtect Data Manager uses VADP data path for restores in the following circumstances:

• The virtual machine is restored in a vSphere environment running with a version previous to 7.0 U3.
• The virtual machine is restored to an ESXi host that does not have the TSDM vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) installed.
• The virtual machine is restored directly to the ESXi host, since the vCenter server is not used for a Direct Restore to ESXi.

Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) limit for virtual machines protected with TSDM

TSDM-based protection supports a maximum of 40 VMDKs per virtual machine. If this limit is exceeded, backups are queued for a longer time, and must be canceled manually.

For virtual machines with more than 40 VMDKs, you can override the protection mechanism at the asset level to use VADP. The section Migrating assets to use the Transparent Snapshot Data Mover provides more information.

Size of thin provisioned files created by vSphere during TSDM operations does not reflect the true size written to file system

VMware vSphere creates files that are displayed as two times larger than the VMDK files of the virtual machines that are protected by TSDM. The names of these files end in -flat.ses, and the files are located in the same VMFS volume and directory as the VMDK files of the protected virtual machines.

These are thin-provisioned files and part of normal TSDM operations. To determine the real amount of data that is written to the file system, use the du command.

vMotion of TSDM protected virtual machines

vSphere disables the vMotion migration of virtual machines to an ESXi host version previous to 7.0 U3 when the virtual machine is protected with TSDM. In order to migrate the TSDM protected virtual machine to an ESXi version that does not support TSDM, you must disable the Lightweight Delta (LWD) filter that is attached to the virtual machine during the initial protection policy configuration. To disable the filter, remove the virtual machine from the TSDM protected virtual machine protection policy. Once the virtual machine is removed from the policy, a job is automatically initiated to disable the filter.

Once the vMotion completes, you can re-add the virtual machine to the protection policy. This virtual machine is then protected by the VADP protection mechanism, since the new ESXi/cluster host version is lower than the version required by TSDM.

Removal of managed snapshots required before running virtual machine protection policies

A PowerProtect Data Manager virtual machine protection policy cannot be configured to use the TSDM protection mechanism when the virtual machine contains managed snapshots. Verify that no managed snapshots exist for the virtual machine, and then retry the configuration job from the System Jobs window of the PowerProtect Data Manager UI.

TSDM only available for virtual machine crash-consistent policies

Use of the TSDM protection mechanism is only supported for crash-consistent virtual machine protection policies. Also, the virtual machine crash-consistent policy must have the swap file exclusion and quiescing options disabled.