System requirements

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To implement Data Protection for VMware components, your system must meet appropriate system requirements.

Software requirements

Details of the software and operating system requirements can change over time. For current software requirements, see technote 1505139.

Hardware requirements

Hardware requirements vary and depend on the following items:
  • Number of protected servers
  • Number of protected volumes
  • Data set sizes
  • LAN and SAN connectivity
    Note: The recovery agent component does not support operations in a LAN-free environment.

The following table describes the hardware requirements that are needed to install Data Protection for VMware.

Table 1. Hardware requirements for Data Protection for VMware.
Component Minimal requirement Preferred
System IntelPentium D Dual Core processor or compatible Not applicable
Memory 4 GB RAM, 4 GB virtual address space Not applicable
Available hard disk 4.4 GB 9.0 GB
Network 1 GbE 10 GbE
Note: Depending on the number of parallel processes, back ups of virtual machines takes a significant amount of memory.

The memory requirements can be expanded regarding the dsmc backup vm command and can be calculated by the following formula:

Required memory = (DiskSize / MBLKSize) * ReadBufferSize * VMMAXPARALLEL

where:
  • DiskSize is the size of the guest disk currently being processed;
  • MBLKSize is the size of a megablock. It is equal to 128 MB for disks under 2 TB, and equal to 1 GB for disks larger than 2 TB;
  • ReadBufferSize is the size of the IBM Storage Protect internal buffer that is used to accommodate the MBLK information. The buffer size is equal to 256 KB;
  • VMMAXPARALLEL is the maximum number of virtual machines that can be backed up at any one time by a single backup operation process.
For example, to back up 10 guests, each with 40 GB disks and run with VMMAXPARALLEL 2 in a single backup operation process, would require:
  • DiskSize = 40 GB = 41943040 KB;
  • MBLKSize = 128 MB = 131072 KB;
  • ReadBufferSize = 256 KB;
  • VMMAXPARALLEL = 2.
Required memory = (41943040 / 131072) * 256kB * 2 = 163840KB = 160MB.
Note: To back up the same number of guests with 'VMMAXPARALLEL 2' in five parallel backup operation processes, would require (at the maximum) five times more memory than the previous example, or 800 MB.
Restriction: The following restrictions apply to VMware VMDKs that are involved in a backup operation:
  • For incremental-forever incremental backup mode, each individual VMDK involved in a backup operation cannot exceed 8 TB. If a VMDK exceeds 8 TB, the backup operation fails. To increase the size of the VMDK to be larger than the default 2 TB, specify the maximum size with the vmmaxvirtualdisks option. For more information, search for vmmaxvirtualdisks on the IBM® Documentation.
To prevent a failure during either backup mode, you can skip processing the VMDK by specifying vmskipmaxvirtualdisks yes in the data mover options file. For more information, see Vmskipmaxvirtualdisks.