Managing VMware virtual machines for remote recovery using NetBackup images
When you want to protect your assets that are being backed up using NetBackup, you need to organize them into a resiliency group and apply the service objective where the data availability mode is Copy.
To manage virtual machines for remote recovery using NetBackup images
- Prerequisites
Ensure that you have completed the NetBackup configuration tasks and the Local and remote service objective, with data availability as Copy, is activated.
See Prerequisites for integrating NetBackup with Resiliency Platform.
Ensure that the virtual machine configuration prerequisites are met.
See Prerequisites for configuring VMware virtual machines for recovery using NetBackup images.
- Navigate
Assets (navigation pane) > Resiliency Group(s) tab > Manage & Monitor Assets
You can also launch the wizard from the Unmanaged or Overview tabs.
- Select the virtual machines:
Select Host as the asset type, select the data center, and select other filters as needed to display a list of virtual machines.
Select the virtual machines that are backed up using NetBackup. You can identify the assets based on the NetBackup policy name and the technology that is displayed in the Data availability column.
Drag and drop the required virtual machines to Selected Assets.
- The next page displays the environment for the selected assets on both the data centers.
- The next page lists the service objectives that are available for the selected assets. You can expand the service objective to view details. Select the appropriate service objective.
- Select the target (recovery) data center.
- Do the following in the NetBackup Configuration panel and click Next.
Review the information about common policies across the selected virtual machines and the primary server on which the data is to be recovered. Review the target primary servers selection, the schedule, and policy details.
Select either the Cluster or the ESXi option.
If you select the Cluster option, select the target cluster from the dropdown. You can select multiple datastores which are the shared datastores.
If you select the ESXi option, you can choose the ESX server which is part of the cluster or standalone ESX server and select datastore on which the virtual machine is to be recovered remotely. The datastore could be the shared or local datastores.
Select the appropriate datastores for each disk and the configuration file.
Select either of the option Apply to all the virtual machines or Select target for each virtual machine. If you select the option Select target for each virtual machine, then each of the virtual machines are moved into different target datastores.
Resiliency Platform provides an option to use the NetBackup Instant Access feature to recover/rehearse the virtual machine instantaneously. Using Instant Access the virtual machine is mounted directly to the ESXi host to allow the backup storage device to treat the snapshot as a normal virtual machine. During the restore operation, the virtual machines will be moved to the target datastore using VMware Storage vMotion in the background.
If Resiliency Platform detects that the backup storage has Instant Access capability, you can select it as the preferred recovery method for the discovered data centers.
For the discovered data centers, click Select Instant Access for Recover operation or Select Instant Access to for Rehearsal operation, as the case may be.
Resiliency Platform automatically uses the full restore option if the backup image is not located on an Instant Access capable storage or additional NFS data stores can not be mounted.
On the Select Recovery Method page, you can also choose the recovery host from a list to be used for recovering the virtual machines according to the appropriate transport mode. Resiliency Platform lets NetBackup decide the transport mode for recovery. The default mode chosen by NetBackup is the same mode that was used while creating the backup as specified in the backup policy. You need to select the appropriate recovery host according to the transport mode used in the backup policy.
Note:
During rehearsal operation, using Instant Access to boot the virtual machine does not consume additional space on the target EXSi host.
See Support for NetBackup Instant Access to recover a resiliency group.
Review the summary.
Note:
If you change the name of the datastore in future, you need to edit the resiliency group and update the datastore name in the datastore selection section. This is because the current recovery configuration may use the datastore name you selected while creating the resiliency group.
- Complete the network customization steps for the virtualization technology.
- Verify the summarized information and enter a name for the resiliency group.
When you finish the wizard steps, Resiliency Platform invokes a workflow which initializes the virtual machines for the DR configuration. You can view the progress or ensure that this operation is successfully completed on the Activities page.
See Viewing activities.
Verify that the new resiliency group is added to the Resiliency Groups tab.
See Viewing resiliency group details. to view the target selection details for the resiliency group in the NetBackup tab.
Note that after configuring the resiliency group, it might take some time for the backup images to reflect in the Recover Wizard. Also note that all the available images from NetBackup primary server are not discovered. The discovery of images is on the selected RPO which is defined in the service objective. If the RPO is "X", at the time of creation of resiliency group, then 2X or past one month backup images, whichever is the maximum duration are discovered. Example if the RPO is 2 months, then the images for last 4 months since the time of creation of resiliency group are discovered. If the RPO is 4 hours then images for last one month are discovered.