After installing the application, Vembu VMBackup has to be configured accordingly in order to protect the VMs in your network.
A good configuration of the Backup and Restore jobs allows to minimize data loss assuring the business continuity and reducing the service downtime.
Blog series
Vembu BDR Suite 3.7 overview and setup - pt.1
Vembu VMBackup 3.7 backup and restore - pt.2
Vembu VMBackup 3.7 replication and offsite copy - pt.3
Backup VMware VMs
To obtain best performance, you should assign one vCPU or core to handle around eight concurrent backup jobs. Vembu recommends to assign minimum of four cores/vCPUs for hassle free usage. Since backup performance depends also on storage IOPS, higher IOPS will improve the overall performance.
On storage targets, Vembu uses a proprietary filesystem VembuHIVE which works on top of any existing file system and provides the following features:
- Compression
- Encryption (AES 256 Bit encryption algorithm)
- Deduplication (Block level deduplication applied in each backup job)
- Version controlling (Advanced forward & reverse incremental)
The backup mode is forever-incremental then you have a full backup the first time you run the backup job and next backups will be incremental.
Add hosts to Vembu
To backup VMware VMs, you need to specify the ESXi/vCenter that manages the VM to backup. From the Dashboard menu select Backup > VMware vSphere.
On the left side, click Add VMware vSphere Server.
Enter the ESXi or vCenter Server name and specify the credentials to use. Click Save to save the configuration.
The vCenter Server has been added successfully.
Configure a backup job
Access the Backup > VMware vSphere section and click Backup in the configured vCenter Server.
Clusters and ESXi hosts managed by the specified vCenter Server are displayed. Select the VMs to backup and click Next.
Specify when the backup has to be executed. Since it is not a recommended practice to have one full backup and forever incremental only, the Additional Full Backups option allows to configure full backups every once in a while and run incremental backups in between.
Specify the Retention Policies, that is how many recovery points the system retains prior purging the older incremental backups. Click Next to continue.
Enable Application Aware Process option to create consistent backups if you are backing up VMs like DCs, Exchange, MS-SQL or SharePoint servers. If enabled, you need to specify the VMware Guest Credentials in order to perform application-aware image processing. Latest VMware Tools are required. Click Next.
Enter The Job Name and click Next.
Click OK to confirm.
Click on the rocket icon to start the backup immediately.
Click Yes to confirm.
When the backup job starts, click on the green triangle to display the backup progress details.
When the backup job has been completed, select Reports > Backup Status Report from the menu to access the backup info.
Select the executed backup to display the backup Status.
Restore the VMware VMs
Vembu offers five options to recover VMs:
- Quick VM Recovery
- Live Recovery to ESX(i) server
- File Level Recovery
- Disk Level Recovery
- Download
Quick VM Recovery
Quick VM Recovery allows the administrators to boot the VM directly from the backup repository with a minimal downtime making VMs instantly available.
From the Dashboard select Recovery item from main menu.
Click the Restore icon in the Backup job with the VM to recover.
Choose Quick VM Recovery as restore type and click Next.
Select the restore version to use and the VM to recover then click Next.
Quick VM recovery gives three choices of instant boot software:
- VMware - available in both Windows and Linux servers as an alternate software for instant boot
- Hyper-V - default chosen software for Windows and available only on Windows servers
- KVM - default chosen software for Linux and available only on Linux servers
Choose the platform to use (i.e. VMware) from the drop down menu. Click Next.
Specify the target to recover the VM and click Next.
After reviewing the parameters, click Restore now to proceed with Instant Booting the VM.
Click OK to confirm.
Click the green triangle icon to check the restore progress.
The VM has been restored successfully.
In VMware vSphere Web Client you can see the recovered VM up and running in the specified ESXi host.
Once done with requirement, shutdown and turn off VM before unmounting backup data. This will resume backup job, so that incrementals will run as per schedule.
Live Recovery to ESX(i) server
Select Live Recovery to ESX(i) server option to restore VMs to vSphere environment and click Next.
Select the restore version to use and the VMs to recover then click Next.
Specify Target Server, Datastore and VM Name then click Next.
After reviewing the parameters, click Restore now to proceed with the restore of the selected VM.
Click OK to confirm.
Click the green triangle icon to check the restore progress.
The VM has been restored in the specified ESXi host.
Instant File Recovery
Instant File Recovery allows to attach backup data to disk management as a VHD/VHDX file and proceed with file level restore. The VHD/VHDX file is created by virtual mounting backup data.
As restore type, select File Level Recovery option and click Next.
Specify Restore Version, Restore Options then click Restore Now. Users can access backup data via disks attached on disk management.
Disk Level Recovery
Users can restore specific disk from existing VM backup to a target virtual machine.
Specify Restore Version, Restore Options then click Restore Now. While performing Disk Level restore, target VM will be turned off.
The recovered disk can be attached and accessed by the target VM.
Download
Download option allows users to download backup data as an offsite copy of their preferred file format.
After specifying the Restore Version, enter the path in the Restore to field and specify the Virtual Disk Format. Click Next to continue.
Click Restore Now to restore the selected virtual disk.
Once the backup and restore configuration has been completed, additional features are available in Vembu to provide a better protection for your environment. Part 3 will cover Replication and Offsite Copy configuration.
