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VMware virtual machine backup workflow
VMware virtual machine backup workflow
Updated over 11 months ago

Enterprise Workloads Editions: ✅ Business | ✅ Enterprise | ✅ Elite

Overview

Druva performs backup on virtual machines based on the schedule defined in the backup policy, that virtual machine is a part of or an on-demand backup triggered from Management Console. This involves the interaction of Druva components and VMware components.

The following diagram depicts the data flow at the time of backing up virtual machines.

Virtual machine backup workflow

Step

Operation

Step 1

Virtual machine backup request is initiated based on,

  • Schedule defined in the backup policy.

  • Manual backup

Druva forwards the backup request to the backup proxy pool.

  • Based on the load balancing algorithm, Druva automatically identifies the backup proxy that will run the backup request.

  • If the identified backup proxy is busy, the backup request is queued and initiated when the backup proxy becomes free.

Step 2

  • In an environment where virtual machines are deployed on ESXi hosts managed by vCenter server, backup proxy contacts vCenter Server to locate the virtual machine and obtains its configuration.

  • In an environment where virtual machines are deployed on standalone ESXi hosts, backup proxy contacts ESXi host to obtain the virtual machine configuration.

Step 3

In case of application-aware backup:

  1. Druva injects a temporary binary inside the VM to perform SQL app-aware backup

  2. The binary is responsible for querying the SQL data and taking a VSS recovery point of the SQL data.

The backup proxy queries the ESXi hypervisor or the vCenter server to create VM recovery points that contain VMDK files and the VMX files of the virtual machines. Ensure that enough storage is available on the local datastore for the VM recovery point.

The backup proxy uses:

Step 4

Backup proxy establishes a VDDK connection to the VM recovery point using a transport mode to read the VM data.

Step 5

Backup proxy starts reading the virtual machine recovery point.

Step 6

The backup proxy reads the virtual machine recovery point and prepares to send the backup data to CloudCache (if configured) or Druva Cloud.

Step 7

Backup proxy transfers the deduplicated backup data to the Druva Cloud.
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After the transfer completes, the backup proxy deletes the virtual machine recovery point.

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