NetBackup VM Selection of a powered off VM

Recently ran into an issue with NetBackup while selecting a VM that was powered off. As this was a one off situation I created a new policy and manually selected only the VM. Set other values as expected, but when I ran the backup I received a status 4239 when at the snapshot phase. I attempted to remove and re-add the VM with no luck. I also turned off quiescing, changed transport mode, and modified other settings trying to determine the root cause.

Come to find out, the issue was the result of the "Primary VM identifier". It was set to the default, which was "VM hostname". This requires information provided by VMware Tools, which are not running obviously on a powered down VM.

Selection options available as identifiers are:
VM hostname
VM display name
VM BIOS UUID
VM DNS Name
VM instance UUID

Both the "VM hostname" and "VM DNS Name" require VMware tools to be running. You also don't want to use "VM BIOS UUID" as there can be multiple instances in the case of a duplicated VM.

"VM instance UUID" is unique even if the VM is duplicated, so best methods for selection are either using "VM instance UUID" or "VM display name". When you selection one of these options, you WILL need to remove and reselect the client as the information will change.

Once I corrected these errors the 4239's went away and backups of the powered down VM was successful.

Hope this helps!
Charles
@whitehattechs