Available features

The features that are available in the IBM Spectrum Protect vSphere Client plug-in depend on the version of VMware vSphere that you are using.

If you are using VMware vSphere 6.0 or later, restore, backup, and data protection tagging functions are available.

The following are a few of the features that are available if you are using VMware vSphere 6.0 or later.

Server and local backups

Depending on your vSphere environment, you can back up virtual machines (VMs) to the IBM Spectrum Protect server (server backup); to a persisted snapshot on the hardware storage (local backup); or to both locations.

Local backups are available only for VMs that are stored in a VMware virtual volume (VVOL) datastore. If any virtual disk of the VM is not in a VVOL datastore, a local backup is not allowed.

For VMs that are in datastore types other than VVOL, only server backups are available.

Local backups are always a full VM image snapshot, even if incremental backups are configured for the server. Because no network data movement is needed for local snapshots, backup operations can be faster than server backup operations.

Tip: To ensure full protection, do not use local backups exclusively. If you use only local backups, you might encounter issues such as snapshots that are inadvertently deleted or the VM is corrupted or deleted and the snapshots are not accessible.

Schedules and schedule groups

Schedules are used to automatically back up VMs regularly. You assign schedules to the inventory objects in the VMware vSphere Web Client to back up the VMs that are in that object.

Schedules contain the following key attributes:
  • The scheduled start time
  • The frequency that the schedule is run
  • Specification of the -domain.vmfull=Schedule-Tag option (and no other domain-level options)

Schedules must be compatible with tagging to be used with the IBM Spectrum Protect vSphere Client plug-in.

Multiple schedules can be placed in a schedule group. You can then assign the schedule group to an object in the vSphere Web client rather than an individual schedule. An example of the use of a schedule group is to group multiple daily local backup schedules with a single server backup.

Schedules and schedule groups are created by the IBM Spectrum Protect server administrator. For information about how to create schedules that can be used with the IBM Spectrum Protect vSphere Client plug-in, see Creating a schedule that is compatible with tagging.