How to add & Manage Storage In Vembu BDR

Topic Outline: 

Background:

• Undo Failover
• Permanent Failover
• Failback

1. Go to Vembu BDR login screen under manage replicas click on restore option.

• Undo Failover
• Permanent Failover
• Failback

Topic Outline:

 Restore File/Files

 Recover particular one file/files and folder/folders from FLR backup in Vembu BDR.

To restore specific file/files or folder/folders from image backups without restoring the entire disk(s), we can use “File Level Recovery” option by attaching the backup disk(s) to the Disk Management and then copying the required files or folders from the attached volume.

Follow the below steps to perform File Level Recovery from Vembu Network Backup Server

• Login Vembu Network Backup web console and check the last successful backup.
• Navigate to Recovery -> Restore (for the particular backup) -> File Level Recovery and click “Next” button to proceed.

Now Go to Restore tab and Click on Restore button which is highlighted in blue.

In the below screen we have three files for demo purpose, first i will delete one file and then we will restore it.

Case scenario: If a user deletes any file or folder accidentally in production environment, in that case FLR is good option.

You need to right click on the file and click delete.

Even you also have versioning control for restore points.

Now Select version to restore file and you can have multiple restore points here.

In this section select Files/Folders to restore > select the file.

In Restore Settings Section; if file is password protected then need to provide password.

There are some more settings like:

Restore to Same Machine

Restore Deleted files only, include deleted files or skip deleted files.

Under Restore to option > you can restore this file on Original location or different location.

For different location you have to click on folder option and provide the path.

Under Advanced Options you have three options:

a) Rename the restored file with a .SG extension and keep the existing file as it is. [Recommended]

b) Rename the existing file with a .SG extension and restore the backed up file as it is.

c) Overwrite the existing file with the restored file. If the existing file is different from the backed up file being restored, the contents of the existing file will be lost. [Not Recommended]

Note: If the original file is already present in the restore location, then the restored file will be saved with an extension SG (eg. a.doc will be saved as a.doc.sg).

Final step click on restore and check the location of file as per your selection by reviewing the configuration. Click on restore now button.

Click Yes.

Finally your file has been restored within few clicks.

On Vembu Network Backup server you can check the status of last backup restored.

Topic Outline:

 VM Replication.

 Source and Destination ESXi host.

 Scheduling.

 Host Selection.

 Datastore Selection.

 Network Selection.

 Re-IP.

Backup, replication and Disaster Recovery software is a key component of any organisation now a days. Replicating your virtual machines in VMware/Hyper-V plays a very important role in it. Vembu BDR Suite a Backup and Disaster Recovery software will be a key solution to manage replicas of your servers in environments like VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Backup is the process of making a secondary copy of data that can be restored to use if the primary copy becomes lost or unusable. Backups usually comprise a point-in-time copy of primary data taken on a repeated cycle– daily, monthly or weekly. It has its own suite of products which includes VM Backup for VMware, ImageBackup, Network Backup, and OnlineBackup. Vembu BDR Suite when trying to install in your backup server works in both physical and virtual environment i.e., a Windows/Linux based server machine.

Vembu VMBackup uses VMware replication technique to replicate virtual machines from one ESXi host to another ESXi host. VMware replication in Vembu VMBackup allows a user to get hold of their most critical VMs stays periodically synced as an original. It ensures data integrity and high-speed data transfer from production host to DR host.It simply helps you achieve Hyper-Availability for ALL your virtual, physical and cloud-based workloads. With a single console, you can manage fast, flexible and reliable backup, recovery and replication of all your applications and data.

During vSphere replication, the exact copy of VMs from the primary host will be created in secondary host. VMware replication makes Vembu VMBackup a reliable solution in getting best RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) values in the industry. With VMware vSphere replication enabled, Vembu VMBackup ensures business continuity and high availability by offering failover and failback as DR options. During disaster scenarios, users can failover the replicated VMs to get auto-started on DR host and the failover can be either temporary or permanent based on a scenario. Later, failback can be achieved by the primary host or to a different host. VMware replication allows a user to map production host network and IP Address with the DR host network.

Steps to configure VMware Replication:

1. Login into Vembu BDR server > Go to VM Replication option and under that select VMware vSphere.

2. You can see all the VMware hosts or vCenter under VM Replication option.

3. Under VM replication option click on the list of VMware servers and then click on number 4 that is VM Replication hyperlink.

4. After clicking on VM Replication hyperlink, you will get few more options to select and we will got through all the options one by one. Lets start with the first option which is Configure VMs. Here you can see your ESXi host and VMs running on that hypervisor. You can select any VM which you want to protect.

5. You can also select VM Disk option.

6. Under Guest Processing option you can select application aware settings and VMware Guest Credentials. We also get the transaction logs truncate option.

In Application Aware settings which is optional here has two options :

• Require successful application processing.
• Ignore application processing failures.

7. Under configure scheduling tab, you get three options :

• Run every hour and you can also select specific days if don’t want it to be scheduled on daily basis.
• Run daily
• Run weekly.

8. Under Target replication host tab > you have to select VMware server from drop down list which we have added before.

9. After that select the datastore from drop down list where you want to keep the replicas/ copies, it’s destination datastore.

10. After that provide replica suffix name so that you can easily identify that it’s a replica VM. You can also select retention count from drop down list for the replicated VM.

11. It’s time to select virtual machine network for both the sites source and destination. when this will failover in case of DR then it will go ahead and use this selected Target network.

12. When you click on search icon, it will show you all the networks created in vCenter Server/ESXi host.

First you have to select from Source location. Click OK.

13. After that select for Target site network and search the network from there.

Note: Network must be created before VM replication setup.

14. Under Network Re-IP Mapping option >

Re-Ip rules can be helpful if the IP addressing scheme in the production site differs from that in the DR site scheme. In this situation, you can configure ‘n’ number of re-IP rules for the replication job.

• Re-IP Mapping rule will be applied during Failover. When failed over, the replica will be powered on with the configured Re-IP Mapping rules.
• If you wish to configure Network Re-IP Mapping, do enable the Network Re-IP Mapping checkbox. (Reference: vembu.com)

15. Here you can provide all the Source and target Network details for Network re-ip mapping.

16. Now Provide the Job name and save it. You can also configure to run the job immediately right after saving the VM replication.

17. After successfully saving replication job it will pop-up a successful message.

18. Now under List of replication jobs you can see the progress for newly created replication job. You can also suspend or resume the job, check the status for successfully completed or failed etc.

19. After job creation you may want to edit, for that you need to select the job then click on more and under that click on edit option to make modifications.

20. Here we can create new jobs, edit the existing job settings as per our requirement and also list the replicas.

21. After successful replication you can view this VM under ESXi host.

22. Below is the Primary and Secondary site examples.

Topic Outline:

 Adding VMware ESXi or vCenter Server.

 Taking Backup of VM.

 Disk Settings

 Guest Processing

 VMware Guest Credentials

 Schedule Backup Job

 Retention Policies

 Final Job Status

1. Open Vembu BDR server https://vembu BDR server IP:6060.

2. Go to > Backup > VMware vSphere > Click on Add VMware vSphere Server.

3. Provide VMware vCenter Server or ESXi IP/FQDN.

4. Username and password.

5.  Keep the default port for vSphere.

6. Click on save.

7. After click on save, it will show you successful message.

8. Now if you click on “List VMware Servers” you can see all the added servers and their list.

9. Now adding second ESXi host and you need to follow the same process.

10. After adding VMware servers it’s time to take backup of VMs or a single  VM which is running on these vCenter/ESXi.

11. On below screen you can see ESXi host and all the VMs. Now you have to select VM for which you want to configure the backup.

12. To test how quickly a VM can be showed up or can be searched in Vembu environment, after creating a VM on vsphere environment. The result is as quickly as you will create a VM in your VMware environment, right after creation,  you will have the VM in Vembu BDR for it to be searched.

13. While selecting VM, you can also select a specific VM’s disk in exclusion setting option, if you don’t want to take backup of a specific Disk you can easily exclude that.

14. Click on Pencil symbol and select from below options.

15. These are the options for Disk Exclusion are given below:

a) No disk excluded.

b) Include only system disks for Backup. Exclude others (typically disk 0:0).

c) Select type of disk to exclude.

Note : Removal of already configured exclusion rules will have effect only from next additional full backup. It will not have the affect on the current full Backup.

16. As per your requirement select the option and Click on add.

17. After selected the disk for exclusion then click on save button.

Note: By default No disks excluded option will be selected.

Host level Disk Exclusion- This exclusion type is possible when you opt to configure host level backup job. Under ‘Exclude Disk(s)’ tab, you will find the configured host(s) listed.

18. Once you saved the configuration for exclusion, it will prompt you a message with successfully saved and click on Next.

19. Here you can select Application aware settings that are optional.

a) Application Aware process.

b) Require successful application processing.

c) Ignore application processing failures.

Application-Aware VMware Backups:

VMware backups using VMware APIs, utilize application-specific VSS writers (SQL Server, Exchange) to take application-consistent backups and truncate exchange log files to free up the space.

Enabling application aware process, gives users two choices to choose:

Require successful application processing: Choosing this option lets Vembu BDR track application consistency and triggers backup process, only when all the VSS writers in the VM are in stable state.
Ignore application processing failures: This option, lets Vembu BDR trigger backup jobs whenever the job is scheduled, despite the success/failure of application processed.

Truncate the transaction logs:

Enabling this option lets Vembu BDR truncate the exchange server logs before initiating backup process. It purges and commits log files along with the .edb files and reduce storage space consumed.

Application Aware Image Process Prerequisites:

Backup jobs enabled with application-aware image process option requires that your guest OS has latest VMware Tools, all the latest packages and patches installed.
To perform application-aware image processing, you must provide guest OS login credentials for the selected VM(s) running MS Exchange server, MS SQL Server, MS SharePoint Server, MS Active Directory.(Reference vembu.com)

20. If you select VMware Guest credentials option then you can select VM and provide user name and password, when you click next, it will check the OS password to authenticate.

21. In my case, I intentionally provided wrong password and it prompt me an error given below.

22. You can also schedule this job as per your convenience like Every Hour on selected days or Daily and Weekly basis.

23. You can also select retention policies like basic retention or advanced retention.

24. Here are some Advanced retention examples.

25. Finally Provide Backup Job name and save the backup Job. You can also run the job immediately after saving it.

26. Job Name is a mandatory field which means you can’t skip this step.

27. Now here you can check the backup status in progress.

28. Click on Dashboard > under that you will see the Active jobs with a progress status.

29. Under recent job you will see the job’s end time with status whether it’s failed or successfully completed.

Taking backups of all the files or folders might not be an efficient solution for some enterprises, so its very important that we understand the requirement of an enterprise. For Example Some business requirements involve taking backup of only the critical files and applications and these critical data needs to be protected on a near-continuous basis. In Such requirements taking a disk image backup containing all the OS configurations might not be considered an efficient backup policy. It’s very important to have a backup solution that can be tailored to your needs by offering you control over data.

Vembu NetworkBackup ensures protection to all your business critical data across file servers, application servers, and workstations.

• Backup Files/Folders
• Backup System State, Active Directory & Registry
• Backup Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint & Outlook
• Encrypt your data, both at-rest and in-flight
• Retain files that you need along with its versions, spanning years

Topic Outline:

 Registration VM with Vembu BDR backup server

 Selecting files and options

 Configuration Scheduling

 Configure Retention

 Review Configurations

 Details

1. After network backup setup installation in my previous article of installation of network file recovery, We will look into Backup and Recovery of your files and applications.

http://localhost or IP:4040/ after this provide username and password (if you have customized this during installation then use that customized username and password)

2. Select Time Zone as per your region.

3. Click on Yes.

4. Here you have to provide your Vembu BDR server IP.

5. Now at this point on the left-hand side, you can see local machine drives and other folders for which you can configure the backup (File Level Backup).

6. On below screen, you can see My Documents, Internet Explorer Settings, Desktop etc when you select “My Documents” and trying to select other files it will show you an error that selected items could not be combined so you have to configure backup separately for these.

7. After that, you can configure or schedule timing for backup like hourly or define the time as per your requirement along with days like Sunday or Monday.

There are few more options available like you can run this backup Daily, Weekly, Continuous or Just Once.

8. On the right-hand side, you can select Vembu BDR server if you have more than one then select from a drop-down list.

9. We can also schedule the backup for seed backup and click on the second option for Seed backup server.

Seed Backup migration is very efficient feature when it comes to copying a large backup initial data from a client machine to a backup server which helps in fastening the backup process and this can be taken in an external local drive connected to the client machine and then this drive can be easily moved to the remote backup server’s environment to migrate the data into the backup server. After performing the client side Seed Backup Migration steps, data migration and incremental backups can run directly from the client to the remote backup Server. (Reference storgrid.com)

10. Here you can select the drive where you will keep this backup.

Seed backup migration is one of the key features in the Vembu BDR suite, where a user can get the initial full backup data stored locally and get it transferred over a storage medium (HDD/USB) to a backup server.

Advantages:

• This will be helpful for users with low bandwidth network and large backup size.
• At most times, reduce bandwidth and time consumed.

11. Now we have two options on the left-hand side.

A) Backed up files

B) For deleted files

12) Backed up files -> under this you have two options.

i) Version Based retention: here you can keep up to 99 versions and default is 5.

ii) Time-based retention: Maximum up to 10 and default is 5 with Days, Weeks, Months and Year.

Restrict the maximum number of versions that can be created within this retention period to Default 5 and Max 99.

13) Now Deletion Policy :

1. Version-Based Retention.
2. Time-Based Retention.
3. Don’t retain deleted files.

i) Time-Based Retention of deleted files – The versions of a file will be retained for the specified time period after the file has been deleted in the client machine.

ii) Don’t retain deleted files – If files are deleted in the client machine, ALL versions of these files will be deleted from the server as well.

iii) If you click on Additional full backup then you can see below screen.

14. In Advanced option, you have two choices :

a) Advanced backup schedule settings

b) Pre & Post backup commands

15. If you have any script or command which you want to run before and after backup then configure here.

16. Now Type Job name is a mandatory field and after that Save this job.