Enabling application protection for a virtual machine

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You can use application protection that is provided by IBM Storage Protect.

About this task

When application protection is enabled, IBM Storage Protect notifies virtual machine (VM) applications that a backup is about to occur. This action allows an application to truncate logs and commit transactions before the backup operation begins, so that the application can resume from a consistent state when the backup is completed.

You can enable application protection only on VMs. Ensure that you do not exclude a VM disk (with the Disk protection setting) if the disk contains application data that you want to protect.

If you do not enable application protection, the setting in the include.vmtsmvss option is used. This setting cannot be inherited.

Procedure

  1. Select a VM in the vSphere Web Client and complete one of the following actions:
    • Click Actions > IBM Storage Protect > Manage Data Protection.
    • Click Actions > IBM Storage Protect > Configure Data Protection.
    • VMware vSphere 6.0 or earlier: Click Manage > IBM Storage Protect > Edit.
    • VMware vSphere 6.5 or later: Click Configure > IBM Storage Protect > Edit.
  2. On the Server page of the Configure Backup Policies wizard, select Enabled In the Application protection list.
    If both the Server and Local page are provided in the wizard to configure server and local backup options, the selected disk protection setting applies to both server and local backups. The Application protection list is not provided on the Local page.
  3. Optional: If you are backing up a VM that is running a Microsoft SQL Server and want to prevent Microsoft SQL Server logs from being truncated, select Keep Microsoft SQL Server logs if applicable.

    This option enables the Microsoft SQL Server administrator to manually manage the SQL server logs, so that they can be preserved and be used to restore SQL transactions to a specific checkpoint after the virtual machine is restored. The SQL server administrator must manually back up, and possibly truncate the SQL server logs on the guest virtual machine.

  4. If the wizard contains only the Server page, click Finish.

    If the wizard contains the Server and Local pages, click Next and complete the wizard.

  5. Ensure that you complete the following configuration steps on each data mover that you are using to back up VMs:
    1. Store the guest VM credentials to Data Protection for VMware by running the following command from the data mover command line: 
      dsmc set password –type=vmguest vm_guest_display_name guest_admin_ID 
   guest_admin_pw
      where vm_guest_display_name specifies the name of the guest VM as shown in the VMware vSphere Web Client.
      If you use the same credentials to log on to multiple VMs that are enabled for application protection, set the password for the all of the VMs by specifying the allvm parameter on the following command: 
      dsmc set password –type=vmguest allvm guest_admin_ID guest_admin_pw
    2. The command in step 5.a stores the guest virtual machine credentials, which are encrypted on the system that hosts the data mover. Ensure that the following minimum permissions are required for guest_admin_ID guest_admin_pw:
      • Backup rights: Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 and 2016: Organization Management permissions (membership in the management role group, Organization Management)
      • Backup rights: Microsoft SQL Server 2014 and 2016: Organization Management permissions (membership in the management role group, Organization Management)