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VMotion
VMotion moves a virtual machine's state and configuration to another host while the machine's disks
remain in the same location on shared storage. VMotion is fully supported for both Agent for
ESX/ESXi Virtual Appliance and the virtual machines being backed up by the agent. Migration of
either the virtual appliance or a machine can take place during backup.
Storage VMotion
Storage VMotion moves a virtual machine disks from one datastore to another. Migration of Agent
for ESX/ESXi Virtual Appliance with Storage VMotion is possible unless a backup or recovery is in
progress. During migration, the agent postpones any backup that has to start. It starts the backup
after the migration has been completed.
Migration of a virtual machine with Storage VMotion during backup is possible, but the backup may
fail or succeed with warnings. The agent will not be able to delete the snapshot taken before
migration because the machine is gone. To avoid this situation, do not migrate a virtual machine until
its backup is completed.
Performance considerations
It is critical to understand that backup performance degrades when Agent for ESX/ESXi does not have
direct access to the storage where the backed up disks are. In this case, the agent cannot attach the
disks. Instead, it obtains data from these disks through LAN. This process is much slower than
obtaining data from directly attached disks.
So the best practice is that Agent for ESX/ESXi Virtual Appliance be hosted on a host for which all
shared storages of the cluster are accessible. In this case, backup performance remains optimal,
wherever (within the shared storages) a virtual machine or the virtual appliance migrates. Once a
machine migrates to a local storage of a different host, its backups will run slower.
7.1.4.6
Privileges for VM backup and recovery
Once Agent for ESX/ESXi is deployed to a vCenter's host or cluster, any user of the vCenter Server can
connect a management console to the agent. The scope of available operations depends on the
privileges a user has on the vCenter Server. Only those actions are available that the user has
permission to perform. The below tables contain the privileges required for backup and recovery of
ESX virtual machines and, additionally, for virtual appliance deployment.
If the agent was deployed directly to an ESX/ESXi host or manually imported to the host, and you
want the vCenter users to be able to connect to the agent and the below privileges to take effect,
connect the agent to the vCenter Server rather than to the ESX/ESXi host. To change the connection,
access the virtual appliance GUI using the vSphere Client and specify access credentials for the
vCenter Server in the ESX(i)/vCenter setting.
Privileges on vCenter Server or ESX/ESXi host
Outlined in the below table are the privileges a vCenter Server user must have to perform operations
on all the vCenter hosts and clusters.
To enable a user to operate on a specific ESX host only, assign the user the same privileges on the
host. In addition, the Global > Licenses privilege is required to be able to back up virtual machines of
a specific ESX host.
