Having reliable backups is essential for every business. To provide backup integrity and make sure that VMs work properly after they are recovered, it’s important to verify backups. Verification ensures that all applications and files are saved correctly and none are corrupted.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows you to verify backups on several levels. You can enable Block-Level Backup Verification for a Backup Repository or perform a near-instant backup verification by enabling VM Verification for VMware and Hyper-V backup jobs.
Block-Level Backup Verification
Block-Level Backup Verification allows you to inspect each block of data within a Backup Repository by making a hash of each data block and comparing the new hashes to the originals that were calculated during the backup. If they match, it means that the original data blocks and data in the Backup Repository are identical, meaning that the backups are in good order.
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, you can run Block-Level Backup Verification for a single VM, or for all VM backups.
Performing Block-Level Backup Verification
To verify a single or all VM backups, follow the procedure described in the product User Guide. When backup verification is complete, you can check the results by clicking on the corresponding backup repository. If all backups in the backup repository are good, you will see a green check mark next to each backup.
VM Verification
NAKIVO Backup & Replication also allows you to automatically verify Hyper-V and VMware VM backups. VM verification is built-in, and works out of the box. The product offers the following VM Verification options:
- Boot Verification
- Screenshot Verification
Both VM Verification processes rely on the Flash VM Boot feature. Your choice of a VM Verification type will depend on your needs and the size of your infrastructure. If you have a small infrastructure and/or need a detailed report on the condition of your backups, enable Screenshot Verification. If selected, you will receive an email report with the OS screenshots attached. If you have a large environment and do not wish to receive email reports with OS screenshots, enable Boot Verification. This way, the product will verify your backups and display the results in the product's interface and job reports.
Running VM Verification
When the final step of the backup job wizard is complete, the backup process will begin either according to the schedule you've set or when you manually start it. Once it is finished, NAKIVO Backup & Replication will begin the verification process which relies on Flash VM Boot. The product creates a new empty VM with networking disabled on the specified host, mounting the VM disks to the new VM directly from the backup repository as iSCSI targets. This results in an isolated VM with a pass-through disk.
When the VM is powered on, the product waits for the time specified in the settings, checks that the VM is powered on, and takes a screenshot of the user interface of the VM’s operating system (if Screenshot Verification is selected) or checks to see if guest OS agents have been run successfully (if Boot Verification is selected). After the screenshot is taken or tools running are verified for Boot Verification, any changes made within the VM are discarded (for replicas) and the new temporary VM is deleted (for backups).
If Boot Verification is selected, you will be notified about the successful VM verification on the Jobs dashboard.
VM Verification can be enabled on the Options page for the following jobs:
- VMware VM Backup Job
- VMware VM Replication Job
- VMware Flash VM Boot Job
- Hyper-V VM Backup Job
- Hyper-V VM Replication Job
- Hyper-V Flash VM Boot Job
- Backup Copy Job