Integrating VMware with NetWorker

This article provides procedures for backup and restore of virtual machines deployed on a VMware vSAN data store using EMC NetWorker 9.1, 9.2 and 18.1.

Pre-requisites

The following pre-requisites must be met before continuing:

  • NetWorker — EMC NetWorker 9.1, 9.2 or 18.1 server (inc. NMC)
    • Storage node should be the same version as the NetWorker server
    • A minimum of one configured DD Boost device
    • One pool that contains the DD Boost device
  • Data Domain — DDOS version 5.7 or later

For detailed information on how to deploy, configure and run backups/restores on vSAN environment, see:

Deployment of vProxy OVA

  1. Log in to the vCenter server web client with user credentials having OVA deployment permission.
  2. Right-click the vSAN cluster and select Deploy OVF Template
  3. Select local file and click Browse
  4. Navigate to the vProxy OVA package location, select the OVA and click Open
  5. Click Next in the Select Template.
  6. On the Select name and location window, enter the virtual appliance name and the inventory location (optional).
      For example, a datacenter or VM folder.
  7. Click Next.
  8. On the Select resource window, select the cluster, host, vApp, or resource pool in which to deploy the OVA.
  9. Click Next.
  10. On the Review details window, review the product details such as product name, version, vendor, publisher, and download size.
  11. Click Next.
  12. On the Accept License Agreements window, the EULA appears. Review the EULA and click Accept.
  13. Click Next.
  14. On the Select storage window, select disk format and the destination vSAN datastore on which to store the virtual appliance files.
      EMC recommends you to select Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed to ensure that the amount of storage space allocated to the virtual appliance is available.
  15. Select the default vSAN Storage Policy or appropriate VM storage policy as applicable for your vSAN datastore and click Next.
  16. On the Select networks window, select the Destination networks to use with the appliance and click Next.
  17. On the Customize template window, specify the following attributes:
    1. Expand Networking properties, and then perform the following tasks:
      1. In the DNS field, enter the IP address of DNS servers, separated by commas.
      2. In the Default Gateway field, enter the IP address of the gateway host.
      3. In the FQDN field, enter the fully qualified domain name of the vProxy
      4. In the Network IP address field, enter the IP address for the vProxy appliance.
          vProxy backups do not support the use of IPv6 Network IP addresses.
      5. In the Network Netmask/Prefix field, enter the netmask for an IPv4 Network IP address.
    2. Expand Password settings, and then perform the following tasks:
      1. In the Admin password field, enter the admin account password or leave the field blank to use the default password. The default password is a3dp@m8n.
      2. In the Root password field, enter root account password or leave the field blank to use the default password. The default password is changeme.
    3. Expand Timezone settings and in the Timezone setting field, select the timezone.
      1. On the Ready to Complete window, review the deployment configuration details and click Finish.
      2. The Deploying window appears and provide status information about the deployment.
  18. Click Next.

Configuration of the vCenter Server in NetWorker Server

  1. Launch the NetWorker Management Console aka NMC by pointing to the url:
      http://<networker-management-console-ip>:9000
  2. Click the NetWorker Administration to open the NetWorker Administration Console.
  3. In the NetWorker Administration window, click Protection.
  4. In the left navigation pane, expand the NetWorker server, right-click VMware View, and click Add vCenter.
      The Add vCenter window appears.
  5. In the Host Name field, specify the FQDN of the vCenter server where vSAN is configured.
  6. In the User Name field, specify a user account that has permissions to perform backups.
  7. In the Password field, specify the password for the account for the vCenter server.
  8. Click OK.

Configuration of vProxy Appliance in NetWorker Server

  1. Log in to the NMC GUI as an administrator of the NetWorker server.
  2. Click the Enterprise button on the taskbar.
  3. Highlight a host in the navigation tree:
    1. Right-click NetWorker.
    2. Select Launch Application.
      The NetWorker Administration window appears.
  4. Click Devices on the taskbar.
  5. In the expanded left navigation pane, right-click VMware Proxies and click New.
  6. In the Name field, specify the FQDN of the vProxy appliance.
  7. On the Configuration tab, configure following options:
    1. From the vCenter menu, select the vCenter server on which you deployed the vProxy appliance.
    2. In the User ID field, enter the admin user account.
    3. In the Password field, enter the admin user account password on the vProxy appliance. The default password is a3dp@m8n.
    4. Specify a value in the Maximum NBD sessions or Maximum hotadd sessions attribute
      • Maximum NBD sessions - Defines the maximum virtual machine sessions that the vProxy appliance supports when you use the NBD transport mode. Datastores should be defined in the vProxy properties when using this setting to restrict NBD to these datastores only.
      • Maximum hotadd sessions - Defines the maximum number of virtual disks that NetWorker can concurrently hotadd to the vProxy appliance. The default value is 13. The maximum value for this attribute is 25.
      Note:
        When specifying the maximum sessions value for the transport modes, ensure that at least one transport mode is set to a value greater than 0. If you want to enable only one of the transport modes, set the maximum sessions for the transport mode you do not want to use to 0.
  8. Click OK.

Creating a VMware policy

  1. On the Administration window, click Protection.
  2. In the expanded left pane, right-click Policies and click New.
      The Create Policy dialog box appears.
  3. On the General tab, in the Name field type a name for the policy.
      The maximum number of characters for the policy name is 128.
    Note:
      After you create a policy, the Name attribute is read-only.
  4. In the Comment box, type a description for the policy.
  5. From the Send Notifications list, select whether to send notifications for the policy:
    1. To avoid sending notifications, select Never.
    2. To send notifications with information about each successful and failed workflow and action after all the actions in the policy complete, select On Completion.
    3. To send a notification with information about each failed workflow and action after all the actions in the policy complete, select On Failure.
  6. In the Send notification attribute, when you select the On Completion option or On failure option, the Command box appears. Use this box to configure how NetWorker sends the notifications. You can use the nsrlog command to send the notifications to a log file or you can send an email notification.
  7. In the Restricted Data Zones tab, leave the restricted data zone field blank.
  8. Click OK.
  9. After you finish, create the workflows and actions for the policy.

Creating a workflow

  1. In the Administration window, click Protection.
  2. In the left pane, expand Policies, and then select the policy that you created.
  3. In the right pane, select Create a new workflow.
  4. In the Name field, type the name of the workflow.
      The maximum number of characters for the name of the group is 64.
  5. In the Comment box, type a description for the workflow.
      The maximum number of characters for the Comment field is 128.
  6. From the Send Notifications list, select whether to send notifications for the workflow:
    • To use the notification configuration that is defined in the policy resource to determine when to send the notification, select Set at policy level.
    • To send notifications with information about each successful and failed workflow and action, after all the actions in the workflow complete, select On Completion.
    • To send notifications with information about each failed workflow and action, after all the actions in the workflow complete, select On Failure.
  7. In the Running group box, define when and how often workflow runs:
    • To ensure that actions contained in the workflow run when the policy or workflow is started, in the Enabled box, leave the option selected. To prevent the actions in the workflow from running when the policy or workflow that contains the action is started, clear this option.
    • To ensure that the workflow starts at the time that is specified in the Start time attribute, on days that are defined in the action resource, in the AutoStart Enabled box, leave the option selected. To prevent the workflow from running at the time that is specified in the Start time attribute, clear this option.
    • To define the time to start the actions in the workflow, in the Start Time attribute, use the spin boxes. The default value is 9:00 P.M.
    • To define how frequently to repeat the actions that are defined in the workflow over a 24 hour period, In the Interval attribute, use the spin boxes.
    • To define the duration of time in which NetWorker can manually or automatically restart a failed or canceled workflow, in the Restart Window attribute, use the spin boxes.
  8. To create the workflow, click OK.
  9. After you finish, create the actions that occurs in the workflow, and then assign a group to the workflow. If a workflow does not contain a group, a policy does not perform any actions.Note:
      That in step #6, you can define if you need this workflow to be scheduled, this will allow you to perform scheduled backups.

Creating a VMware group

  1. VMware group defines virtual machines or virtual disk files to back up.
  2. In the Administration window, click Protection.
  3. In the expanded left pane, right-click Groups, and click New.
      The Create Group dialog box appears, with the General tab selected.
  4. In the Name attribute, type a name for the group.
      The maximum number of characters for the group name is 64.
  5. From the Group Type list, select VMware.
  6. From the Sub-Type list, select ALL.
      NetWorker does not support other sub-types in this configuration.
  7. From the Optimization dropdown, select a backup optimization mode.
      Capacity is for variable segment sizing, while Performance is for fixed segment sizing.
  8. In the Comment field, type a description of the group.
  9. From the Policy-Workflow list, select the workflow that you want to assign the group to.
  10. From the vCenter Server list, select the vCenter Server with virtual machines or VMDKs, or click + to add the vCenter Server by using the group properties, and then select the objects to protect.
      Here you can select the VMs residing on vSAN datastore.
  11. Click OK.

Creating a VMware backup action

  1. VMware backup is a scheduled backup of virtual machines within a vCenter Server.
  2. In the expanded left pane, select the workflow, and then perform one of the following tasks in the right pane to start the Policy Action wizard:
    1. If the action is the first action in the workflow, select Create a new action.
    2. If the workflow has other actions, right-click an empty area of the Actions pane, and click New.
        The Specify the Action Information page appears.
  3. In the Name field, type the name of the action.
      The maximum number of characters for the action name is 64.
  4. In the Comment field, type a description for the action.
  5. To ensure that the action runs when the policy or workflow that contains the action is started, in the Enabled box, select the option. To prevent the action from running when the policy or workflow that contains the action is started, clear this option.
  6. From the Action Type list, select Backup.
  7. From the secondary action list, select VMware (vProxy).
  8. If you create the action as part of the workflow configuration, the workflow appears automatically in the Workflow box and the box is dimmed.
  9. Specify the order of the action in relation to other actions in the workflow.
    • If the action is part of a sequence of actions in a workflow path, in the Previous box, select the action that should precede this action.
    • If the action should run concurrently with an action, in the Previous box, select the concurrent action, and then select the Concurrent checkbox.
  10. Specify a weekly or monthly schedule for the action:
    • To specify a schedule for each day of the week, select Weekly by day.
    • To specify a schedule for each day of the month, select Monthly by day.
  11. Click the icon on each day to specify the backup level to perform.
        To perform the same type of backup on each day, select the backup type from the list and click
    Make All
      .
  12. Click Next.
  13. The Specify vProxy Options window appears.
  14. From the Destination Storage Node box, select the storage node with the devices on which to store the backup data.
  15. From the Retention boxes, specify the amount of time to retain the backup data.
      After the retention period expires, the save set is removed from the client file index and marked as recyclable in the media database during an expiration server maintenance task.
  16. In the vProxy section, select one of the following options:
    1. Auto vProxy Selection - Select this option to allow NetWorker to choose the vProxy host for backups.
    2. Manual vProxy Selection - Specify this option to define the vProxy host that NetWorker users for backups. Provide the name of the vProxy host in the vProxy Name field.
  17. From the Destination Pool box, select the media pool in which to store the backup data.
      Only pools configured with a DDBoost device appear in the dropdown.
  18. Click Next.
      The Specify the Advanced Options page appears.
  19. Although the Retries, Retry Delay, and the Inactivity Timeout options appear, this action does not support these options and you can ignore these values.
  20. In the Parallelism field, specify the maximum number of concurrent operations for the action.
  21. From the Soft Limit list, select the amount of time after the action starts to stop the initiation of new activities. The default value of 0 (zero) indicates no amount of time.
  22. From the Hard Limit list, select the amount of time after the action starts to begin terminating activities. The default value of 0 (zero) indicates no amount of time.
  23. Configure overrides for the task that is scheduled on a specific day.
  24. From the Send Notifications list box, select whether to send notifications for the action
  25. In the Send notification attribute, when you select the On Completion option or On failure option, the Command box appears. Use this box to configure how NetWorker sends the notifications. You can use the nsrlog command to send the notifications to a log file or you can send an email notification.
  26. Click Next.
      The Action Configuration Summary page appears.
  27. Review the settings that you specified for the action, and then click Configure.

Starting ad-hoc image backup via the workflow

Pre-requisite:

    Ensure that there is atleast one DataDomain device mounted and labelled in the NetWorker Administration console
  1. Log in to the NMC GUI as an administrator of the NetWorker server.
  2. Click Enterprise on the taskbar.
  3. Highlight a host in the navigation tree:
    1. Right-click NetWorker.
    2. Select Launch Application.
        The NetWorker Administration window appears.
  4. Expand any existing policy on the right pane.
  5. Right-click on existing workflow and click Start.
  6. Monitor the backup through the Monitoring tab.

Starting image restore via the NetWorker Recovery wizard

  1. When you click Recover in the NMC Administration window and select Recover > New from the menu, the Recovery wizard launches. Virtual Machine Recovery is the second option displayed.
  2. After selecting a virtual machine recovery, you can perform recovery of individual virtual machines, or recover from multiple virtual machines

Resources

For more information, see the NetWorker VMware Integration 9.1, 9.2, or 18.1 guides.