PowerProtect Data Manager 19.13 Virtual Machine User Guide

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.

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
• 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)
• Virtual machines with Site Recovery Manager enabled.

Full synchronization performed under certain conditions

The following conditions will result in a full synchronization operation for TSDM-enabled virtual machine protection policy backups:

• PowerProtect Data Manager is updated from a previous release.
  NOTE: The full backup completes successfully but with exceptions to indicate that the backup was forced to maintain the integrity of the data in the backup chain.
• The full synchronization is scheduled as part of a PowerProtect Data Manager protection policy.
• A manual backup is performed of the protection policy using Backup Now in the PowerProtect Data Manager UI.
• The most recent virtual machine backup has been deleted.
• Disks were added to the virtual machine.
• Disks that were previously marked as excluded are added to the protection policy backup.
• The VMware DPD service was removed and then readded to the virtual machine. This can occur, for example, when the virtual machine is removed from a TSDM-enabled policy and then added to the same or a different TSDM policy, or when the virtual machine protection mechanism is manually changed from TSDM to VADP and then back to TSDM.
• The ESXi host, virtual machine, or daemon becomes unresponsive and crashes.
• The vSphere version is updated to 8.0 or later on the vCenter/ESXI hosts.
• A restore to a managed snapshot.
• The virtual machine encryption/decryption setting is changed.

Manual removal of lastSdmDiskBackupPath.json file required before deleting the storage unit of the virtual machine backup

During a TSDM-enabled virtual machine backup, a file named lastSdmDiskBackupPath.json, which contains snapshot metadata, is created in the virtual machine. This file is required to perform in-place backups of the virtual machine, but does not get automatically removed when the virtual machine is no longer included in the protection policy. As a result, the storage unit containing these virtual machine backups cannot be deleted.

When deleting the storage unit where the virtual machine backups are located, ensure that you manually remove the lastSdmDiskBackupPath.json file.

Site Recovery Manager unsupported for TSDM-protected virtual machines

Enabling of VMware's Site Recovery Manager (SRM) for virtual machines that are protected in PowerProtect Data Manager with TSDM is not supported. Ensure that you disable SRM protection for any virtual machines that use the TSDM protection mechanism, or manually configure any SRM-enabled virtual machines to use the VADP data mover instead.

Asset copy size reported differently for TSDM backups with thin-provisioned disks in release 19.10 and later

An increase in the asset copy size of TSDM backups with thin-provisioned disks might be observed due to the manner in which asset copy size is reported in PowerProtect Data Manager 19.10 and later. For thin-provisioned disks, the asset copy size now reflects the capacity (provisioned size) of the disks instead of the used size. No actual increase in size has occurred.

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 (fixed in vSphere 7.0 U3f and later)

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, or update to vSphere version 7.0 U3f or later.

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 VMware DPD service 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 configuring virtual machine protection policies to use TSDM

A PowerProtect Data Manager virtual machine protection policy cannot be configured to use the TSDM protection mechanism when the virtual machine already contains managed snapshots. When a managed snapshot already exists on the virtual machine, TSDM and the DPD service cannot be enabled or disabled. 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.

Once a virtual machine has been configured for TSDM protection, you can create managed snapshots on the virtual machine with no impact to data protection operations.