Knowledge

• Describe different back-up/restore procedures and strategies
  Wow, what a question. There are quite a lot way’s to backup VMs. In general there are two types of backups with per type several implementations. Let’s sun some of them:
  • File level backup
    with this I mean backing up and restoring on a file level in a VM. Some ways to go to achieve this:
    • Install you old-fashioned decent backup agent as an application in you OS. This agent is not aware of the fact that this OS is virtualized.
    • Use a backup proxy to backup you data. With backup proxy I usually mean VCB; VMware Consolidated Backup. This allows a file level backup for some supported guest OSes
  • Image Backup
    an image back up is a copy of the VM files. Those files can be transferred and restored on other location and ESX hosts. Usually this backup method is used for disaster recovery of VMs. A few ways to go:
    • Manually using VMware converter or coping the files from the ESX host (downtime!)
    • Automatically using VMware VCB.
    • Using the new VMware “Backup and Recovery Appliance”
    • Using several thirty party products that are out there.
• Create/Delete/Restore Snapshots
  The new “Backup and Recovery Appliance” VMware provides as a downloadable appliance from there website uses snapshots to create backups. Snapshots are differentials between two points in time. Using this principle VMware can create easy backups. To manually create / delete or restore snapshots you can use the vSphere Client. When right clicking a VM you can use the “Snapshot” menu to create, remove re restore snapshots. There is the Snapshot manager that allows you to revert of delete snapshots and gives an overview of all the snapshot available.
  
  
• Install Backup and Recovery Appliance
  First make sure that you pass all the requirements that this solution requires. Please read here on page 11 and further to check. The appliance can be downloaded from the VMware site. To install you can choose:
  • File
  • “Deploy OVF template…”. This will give you a wizard to install a VM into you environment.
  • Follow all the steps in the wizard to get the VM running
• Install vCenter Data Recovery plug-in
  To manage the appliance you need to install the Data Recovery Plug-in into you vSphere client. This plug-in connect to the Backup and Recovery Appliance over port 22024.
  • Run the plug-in installer VMwareDataRecoveryPlugin.msi
  • Follow the wizard
  • Enable the plug-in in the vSphere client
• Create a backup job with vCenter Data Recovery
  Before you create a back-up job make sure that you have add storage to backup to. Also you need your business input like frequency, Retention time etc. To create a backup job:
  • Open the “VMware Data recovery” option on the vSphere client
  • Click “New Backup Job…”
  • Follow the steps in the wizard.
    
    Remember that backups are only performed when the CPU usage of the host is below 90% and that no more that 8 back-up jobs can run at the same time.

• Perform test and actual restores using vCenter Data Recovery
  Install and play around.

Tools

• VMware Data Recovery Administration Guide
• Product Documentation
• vSphere Client
• Backup and Recovery Appliance
  To download you need a VMware vSpere Enterprise (plus), advanced or essential plus edition or buy it separately in advance to the standard edition.