VMWare backups 1

[kobus7102]

I tried to setup for VMWare backups with Legato, but no luck.

The environment that I am assisting with consists of 2 data centres.

DC1 is home to Networker server and several physical hosts from about 8 different domains.

DC2 has a Storage Node, VCenter, ESX Servers and a whole lot of VMs.

These VMs are also from different domains.

I got as far as discovering the VMs in NMC and that's it.

My question: What needs to communicate with what?

I know from experience that Networker has to communicate thoroughly with all clients, but I am not sure in the VM environment how it should work. Common sense tells me if I want to install a networker client on a client then I would have to ensure proper communication between client and Server, but how does this work for VMs.

Does Networker server have to communicate with ESX servers? and VMs? or is it sufficient to communicate with the vcenter?

I am mainly looking at image level backups (VADP?), if I want to do file level, do I need to install client?

Please help, as the documentation is not that clear to me.

Thanks in advance.

 

[a060463xyz]

To my knowledge the vadp proxy host nust be able to reach the VC and the esx servers on port 443.
In most cases this proxy host is the networker server or a storage node. It must have a windows operating system.
I assume you have read the manual so you know how to configure a Hyperviser-ressource and the vadp proxy.
If you have any problems please post a few more details and not the general "it si not working" complain.

cheers

 

[gb0407]

You will need communication with the Vcenter host documentation states that you should create a client for you Vcenter host in networker but you do not have to back it up just needs to be present under clients.

You do not need to install a client on any of the machines you plan on backing up with VADP you just need to install a client on the proxy host. This is not to say that you cannot install the client but it will not be used for backup purposes only for restores. If you only install the client on the proxy when you perform a a file level restore you will restore to the proxy and then copy the restored file to the client. For a full image restore you will not need a client you restore back into Vcenter you will need an account in VCenter with the proper rights to perform a restore, the IP address of the esx host you want the image to be restored to, the transport mode you will be using and the datastore location you will be restoring the vm files to.

Also what I found is that the names of your vm's must match the names within VCenter basically whatever the DNS name comes back as it should have that name in VCenter.

 

[gb0407]

One more thing that really important, make sure all your drives on the host you are targeting for backups have drive letters associated with them. Windows 2008 R2 servers creates a system reserve disk without a drive letter if not the VADP process with continue to perform fulls but will not perform incremental backups. Also be aware that dynamic disk are not supported with VADP backups.

One other thing the Networker server must be zoned to see all of your storage used by your VMware environment. We zoned in all the storage to my Networker server but made all the drives presented read only so they would never be formatted by mistake they just have to be there.

Your proxy server must have enough space to accommodate your largest VM for example my largest VM is 1TB so 4 virtual proxy servers (NBD transport mode) and the mnt directory on each one is 2TB just to be safe.