Microsoft Azure

You can use Commvault to back up and recover Azure VMs, to convert VMs to a different hypervisor, and to provision and manage VMs.

Key Features

Feature	Description	Additional information
Agentless backups and restores	Install the Virtual Server Agent on a machine to act as a VSA proxy. A VSA proxy manages backup and restore operations for guest VMs in your environment, eliminating the need to install agents on guest VMs.	Deployment System Requirements
"Incremental forever" data protection	After an initial full backup, you can perform ongoing incremental backups to capture changes for source VMs.	Backups
Changed Block Tracking	Commvault uses Changed Block Tracking (CBT) to identify changes for each incremental backup and to reduce the time required for incremental backups.	Changed Block Tracking
Restores	You can restore full virtual machines or guest files and folders, or restore a VM disk and attach it to an existing Azure VM.	Restores
Disaster recovery	Replicate VMs to a warm recovery site to ensure that VMs are available in the event of a disaster or other outage. DR orchestration features include planned or unplanned failovers and failbacks.	Replication
Simplified operational interface	The web-based Command Center interface uses smart defaults to simplify configuration and support streamlined operations.	Command Center
Self service for end users	The Web Console provides self service options for end users and groups.	Web Console
VM provisioning	End users can use the Web Console to provision VMs based on pre-defined templates. This feature is available only for Azure Classic.	VM Lifecycle Management
Advanced administration	The CommCell Console provides advanced options for Commvault operations. Using the CommCell Console, you can configure a virtualization client that serves as a single point of administration for an Azure subscription. You can perform backups and restores from the virtualization client, and perform other administrative tasks such as creating schedules and generating reports.	Creating a Microsoft Azure Client
Automatic protection for all virtual machines	By default, all virtual machines are automatically selected for backup, to ensure that all virtual machines are backed up.	Default Subclient Coverage
Application-aware backups	Perform application-consistent backups without manually installing application agents on virtual machines. From the Command Center, you can use the Auto discover applications option to automatically find applications on servers and install the agents that can back up the applications. (For more information, see Automatic Discovery of Applications in the Command Center.)	Application-Aware Backups
Cost management	Reduce costs by using storage tiering, deduplication, and power management.	Tiered Storage for Extended Retention using Cloud Libraries Cloud MediaAgent Power Management
Automatic discovery	To back up categories of virtual machines, you can create rules to automatically select virtual machines based on specific criteria. Automatic discovery is useful in environments where virtual machines are frequently added or removed.	Automatic Discovery and Filtering
Customized filters	To exclude virtual machines from the backup, create rules to filter virtual machines.	Defining Filters
VM conversion	When restoring a VM, you can choose to restore to a different hypervisor. This capability can be used to migrate VMs to a different virtualization platform.	Virtual Machine Conversion
Report	You can view detailed information about each backed up virtual machine, including information such as size of the data, guest operating system, and the host on which the virtual machine is running.	Reports for Virtual Server Agents
Snapshot support	Use Azure snapshots to capture virtual machine data quickly, with minimal impact on the source VM, and use the snapshot as a source for backup copies.	IntelliSnap for Microsoft Azure

Commvault Platform Features

The following features are available throughout Commvault and are not limited to the Virtual Server Agent.

Feature	Description	Additional information
Policy-driven data protection	Policies drive operations to meet service level agreements (SLAs).	Schedule Policies Storage Policies Subclient Policies Monitoring Policies
Block-level deduplication	Block-level deduplication compares blocks of data during backups. If virtual machines contain identical blocks of data, block-level deduplication eliminates the storage of redundant data and reduces the size of data in storage.	Deduplication Overview
Built-in compression	Commvault storage policies automatically enable compression to reduce the quantity of data sent to storage.	Data Compression Data Compression for VSA

Feature

Description

Additional information

Policy-driven data protection

Policies drive operations to meet service level agreements (SLAs).

Block-level deduplication

Block-level deduplication compares blocks of data during backups. If virtual machines contain identical blocks of data, block-level deduplication eliminates the storage of redundant data and reduces the size of data in storage.

Deduplication Overview

Built-in compression

Commvault storage policies automatically enable compression to reduce the quantity of data sent to storage.

Data Compression

Data Compression for VSA