1. Copyright © 2014 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec and the Symantec logo are trademarks of Symantec Corporation. All other brands and products
are trademarks of their respective holder/s. 01/2014
Symantec Backup and Recovery Technical Brief
Feature Description – Virtual Machine Intelligent Policy (VIP)
Historically backups have been defined and referenced by the hostname of the physical system
being protected. This has worked well when the relationship between the physical host and the
operating system was a direct, one to one relationship. Backup processing impact was limited to
each physical client and the biggest concern was saturating the network with backup traffic. This
was easily managed by limiting the number of simultaneous client backups via a simple setting
within the NetBackup policy.
Virtual machine technologies have changed this physical hardware dynamic. Dozens of operating
systems (virtual machines) can now reside on a single physical (ESX) host connected to a single
storage LUN with network access through a single NIC. When using traditional policy configurations,
backup processing randomly occurs with no regard to the physical location of each virtual machine. As backups progress, a subset of
ESX servers can be heavily impacted with active backups while other ESX systems sit idly waiting for their virtual machines to be
protected. The effect of this is that backups tend to be slower than they need to be and backup processing impact on the ESX servers
tends to be random and lopsided. Standard backup policy definitions simply do not translate well into virtual environments.
The NetBackup Virtual machine Intelligent Policy (VIP) feature is designed to solve this problem and more. With Virtual machine
Intelligent Policy, backup processing can be automatically load balanced across the entire virtual machine environment. No ESX
server is unfairly taxed with excessive backup processing and backups can be significantly faster. Once configured, this load balancing
automatically detects changes in the virtual machine environment and automatically compensates backup processing based on these
changes. Virtual machine Intelligent Policy places virtual machine backups on autopilot.
NetBackup Overview
The NetBackup Platform is a complete backup and recovery solution that is optimised for virtually any workload, whether physical,
virtual, arrays, or big data, and delivers truly flexible target storage options, whether tape, 3rd party disk, appliances, including the
NetBackup Deduplication Appliances and Integrated Backup Appliances, or cloud. Symantec NetBackup 7.6 with V-Ray Technology
delivers the performance, automation, and manageability necessary to protect virtualised deployments at scale – where thousands of
Virtual Machines and petabytes of data are the norm today, and where software-defined data centres and IT-as-a-service become the
norm tomorrow. Enterprises trust Symantec.
 Comprehensive – As a single solution to protect all of your data assets, NetBackup provides support for virtually every
popular server, storage, hypervisor, database, and application platform used in the enterprise today.
• Scalable – High performance, elastic automation, and centralised management based on a flexible, multitier architecture
enables NetBackup to adapt to the growing needs of a fast-paced, modern enterprise data centre.
• Integrated – From backup appliances to big data platforms, NetBackup integrates at every point in the technology stack to
improve reliability and performance. OpenStorage Technology (OST) provides even tighter integration with third-party
storage and snapshot solutions.
 Innovative – With hundreds of patents awarded in areas including backup, recovery, virtualisation, deduplication, and
snapshot management, NetBackup continues a long tradition of bringing advanced technologies to market first.
 Proven – For over a decade, NetBackup has led the industry as the most popular enterprise data protection software by
market share and is used by many of the largest enterprises on the planet. When you need your data back, you can trust
NetBackup.
Key Features
 One platform, one console unifies virtual and physical global data protection
 Unified global management of snapshots, replicated snapshots, backup, and recovery
 Scalable, global deduplication across virtual and physical infrastructures
 V-Ray one pass backup, instant image and single file restore for virtual and physical
 Automated virtual data protection and load balanced backup performance
Key Benefits
 Virtual Machine Auto
Discovery
 Virtual Machine Logical
Definitions
 Faster Backups
 Load Balancing Backup
Processing across entire
vSphere environment

2. Copyright © 2014 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec and the Symantec logo are trademarks of Symantec Corporation. All other brands and products
are trademarks of their respective holder/s. 01/2014
Symantec Backup and Recovery Technical Brief
Key Benefits
 Unified, enterprise-class virtual and physical data protection eliminates point products, offers better visibility, leverages
resources, and reduces cost, complexity, and risk when virtualising mission-critical applications
 V-Ray technology lets you search and recover a single file from an image backup in minutes instead of a manual mount,
search, and restore that can take hours or even days
 Simplified management and faster recovery of snapshots and replicated snapshots from anywhere in the backup
environment
 “Always on” protection of new, moved, or cloned VMs eliminates uncertainty and overloading of hosts during backups
 NetBackup intelligent deduplication reduces storage costs with deduplication rates as high as 98% while optimising backup
performance and resources with flexible “end-to-end” deployment options
Business Value
Virtual machine Intelligent Policy automatically load balances backup processing across the largest of virtual machine
environments. Besides reducing the impact that backups have on the ESX server, Virtual machine Intelligent Policy
provides other significant advantages as well. These include:
 Virtual machine auto discovery. Newly introduced virtual machines can be automatically selected and protected.
This includes virtual machines that have been cloned, created from template or have been migrated into the
VMware environment.
 Storage affinity. With the advent of advanced VMware storage technologies such as Storage VMotion, virtual
machines can not only be moved across ESX servers but they can also be moved from datastore to datastore.
Virtual machine Intelligent Policy can automatically detect this movement and adjust backup processing
accordingly.
 Protecting advanced VMware technologies. VMware has created sophisticated virtual machine technologies
such as VMware high availability (HA), cluster pools, resource pools, vApps, distributed resource scheduling (DRS),
VMotion and many others. Virtual machine Intelligent Policy can be configured to automatically detect and
protect virtual machines based on any combination of these VMware-specific designations.
 Virtual machine logical definitions. Virtual machines can also be automatically selected for backup by logical
definitions including VMware datacenters, folders, resource pools, virtual machine power state and more. Simply
associate a virtual machine to one of these attributes and it is automatically backed up. This provides the ability
to automatically prioritize virtual machine backups based on a specific or mission critical VMware attribute.
 Faster backups. By spreading the backup load evenly across the physical VMware environment backup
processing can be much faster because more simultaneous backups can be safely applied without unduly
impacting any physical component.
 Resource Limits. You can control the number of simultaneous backups that can be performed on a VMware
resource type. Resource Limit screen applies only to policies that use automatic selection of virtual machines
(Query Builder). Figure 3 shows how to apply the setting.
 vCloud Director integration. The NetBackup Virtual Machine Intelligent Policy Query builder has been enhanced
to be able to enter keywords to search for vCloud Director Objects. Also, the NetBackup VIP and vCloud Director
integration allows for the vApp or Virtual Application metadata to be collected.
These are just a few of the selection methods that can be used to protect virtual machines. Virtual machines can be
selected for backup based on over 34 different VMware attributes.

3. Copyright © 2014 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec and the Symantec logo are trademarks of Symantec Corporation. All other brands and products
are trademarks of their respective holder/s. 01/2014
Symantec Backup and Recovery Technical Brief
Underlying Principles
Recent studies have indicated that the number of systems and applications running on virtual machines will soon eclipse
those running on physical hardware. This change mandates that backup applications adjust to the physical and logical
changes that virtual machine environments introduce. Standard backup designs do not translate well with virtual
machine backups. Virtual machine Intelligent Policy is designed specifically for virtual machine environments but is also
engineered to take advantage of new backup opportunities that virtual machine technologies offer.
Before the virtual machine backup policy begins, Virtual machine Intelligent Policy queries the vCenter server and obtains
a detailed and current snapshot of the virtual machine environment. Any changes to the environment that may have
occurred since the previous backup run are automatically detected. Once collected, Virtual machine Intelligent Policy
uses this information to determine which virtual machines will be protected. If a virtual machine has been added, moved
or changed in any way, these changes are detected and virtual machine backups are automatically adjusted to take this
new information into account. Virtual machine Intelligent Policy automatically adjusts for any other changes that
VMware technologies such as Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS), VMotion, Storage VMotion, etc. have made to every
virtual machine.
Virtual machine Intelligent Policy also throttles and evenly distributes backup jobs across the entire ESX environment.
This works for environments with either single or multiple vCenter servers. When each backup job is initiated, Virtual
machine Intelligent Policy automatically limits backups based on six different VMware objects including the vCenter
server, ESX server, ESX datastore and VMware cluster.
By defining simple backup instructions, virtual machines are automatically selected and backup processing is evenly
distributed across large and complex VMware environments. Backup load on each ESX server is minimized yet overall
backup performance is maximized. Fewer backup servers can protect more virtual machines in shorter backup windows.
Test Drive
Virtual machine Intelligent Policy (VIP), available starting in version 7.1, appears in the NetBackup clients policy tab
(Figure 1). Virtual machines can either be statically selected for backup or automatically selected using Virtual machine
Intelligent Policy.
Figure 1 - VIP Query

4. Copyright © 2014 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec and the Symantec logo are trademarks of Symantec Corporation. All other brands and products
are trademarks of their respective holder/s. 01/2014
Symantec Backup and Recovery Technical Brief
If automatic selection is desired, the user defines a query that specifies the virtual machine selection criteria. Virtual
machines can automatically be selected for backup based on 34 different VMware, vCenter, virtual machine and ESX
server attributes. This powerful query generator walks you through the entire process.
Once the query is defined, it can be tested to ensure that it is working properly and the correct virtual machines are
selected for backup. The “Test Query” button (Figure 2) initiates a search based on the previously defined selection
criteria and provides a list of virtual machines that will be selected for backup using that query. If necessary, adjustments
to the query can be made before actual backup processing is initiated.
Figure 2 – VIP Test Query Report
Global resource or backup processing limits can be set as shown in Figure 3. Six different VMware resource types can be
individually used or defined in combination to ensure that the backup process is both fast and efficient. These resource
limits ensure that no single virtual machine object is unfairly impacted by backup processing.
Figure 3 - VIP Resource Limit Properties

5. Copyright © 2014 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec and the Symantec logo are trademarks of Symantec Corporation. All other brands and products
are trademarks of their respective holder/s. 01/2014
Symantec Backup and Recovery Technical Brief
Summary
The NetBackup Virtual Machine Intelligent Policy (VIP) is a very useful tool for both VMWare and Backup Administrators
to use. This tool provides various benefits and capabilities to ensure the Virtual Machine backup and recovery
environment is adequately protected.
For more Information on VIP
Description Link
NetBackup Requirements for Automatic Virtual machine Selection http://www.symantec.com/doc
s/HOWTO70976
NetBackup for VMWare Administrator’s Guide http://www.symantec.com/doc
s/DOC6461
For More Information on NetBackup
Link Description
http://www.netbackup.com/ NetBackup Home Page
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH59978 NetBackup Compatibility Information
http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC6488 NetBackup Documentation
http://www.symantec.com/support Symantec Support Portal