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Druva Documentation

Nutanix AHV backup workflow

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The virtual machines are backed up as per the schedule defined in the backup policy associated with the virtual machine. You can also back up the virtual machines on demand. A Nutanix virtual machine backup involves interaction between Druva components and Nutanix AHV components. The following diagram depicts the data flow during a Nutanix AHV virtual machine backup.

Backupworkflow.png

Step Operation
Step 1 Druva forwards the backup request from a scheduled or manual virtual machine backup to the default Backup proxy pool.
  • Druva automatically identifies the Backup proxy within the default pool that will run the backup request based on a load balancing algorithm.
  • The backup request is queued if the identified Backup proxy is busy. The request is reinitiated when the Backup proxy is available.
Step 2  Depending on where the virtual machines are deployed, the Backup proxy contacts either the Prism Element or Prism Central to locate the virtual machines and their configuration. If you’ve registered Prism Central, then the Backup proxy gets the VM configuration information from Prism Central and the recovery point information from the Prism Element.

Step 3

The Backup proxy queries the Prism Element or the Prism Central to create VM recovery points. Ensure that enough storage is available on the local Storage Container for the VM recovery point.

The Backup proxy uses:

  • Change region tracking to identify changed blocks during incremental backups.

  • Nutanix Guest tools for virtual machine quiescing and application-consistent backups. However, Druva can take a snapshot even without Nutanix Guest Tools resulting in crash-consistent backups.

Step 4

The Backup proxy establishes an iSCSI connection with the vDisks included in the VM recovery point and reads the VM data.

Step 5

The Backup proxy starts reading the virtual machine snapshot.

Step 6

The Backup proxy uploads the changed data to Druva Cloud.

Step 7

After the data transfer completes, Druva Cloud retains only the current job snapshot until the next successful backup job completes.The purpose is to obtain the changed blocks between the previous and current backup.

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