Information:
The following describes the basic installation and configuration steps, according to best practices, to configure VMWare Consolidated Backup for use in conjunction with your current 3rd party backup solution and a Fiber Channel (FC) or iSCSI SAN environment.
While it is possible to configure VCB for use with individual ESX host, this article will focus on using VCB with VirtualCenter (VC) server.
General Requirements and Assumptions
- The VCB proxy server should be a Physical Server
- The VCB proxy is attached to the same Fiber Channel/iSCSI SAN as the ESX hosts being backed up.
- Present the VCB proxy the same LUNs as the ESX hosts have access to. You may limited this to just the LUNs that have virtual machines that need to be backed up, but in general present all LUNs.
- Dedicated SCSI Adapter or FC port for Tape Devices
- Windows 2003 SP1 or R2 (32-bit or 64-bit)
- A VirtualCenter server is installed and configured to manage the ESX host.
- Network connectivity to VirtualCenter (VC) Server and the individual ESX hosts
- Virtual Machines must be stored on VMFS 3 formatted disks on the SAN.
- Raw Device Mappings (RDMs) used by the virtual machines (VM) must be in “virtual compatibility mode.” RDMs in “physical compatibility mode” are not supported by VCB.
- 3rd party backup software should be installed.
- The latest version of VMWare tools is installed into every Virtual Machine (VM) that is to be backed up using VCB.
- File level backups are only supported on Microsoft Windows NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, or 2008.
- Image level VM backups are supported on all guest operating systems
Installation Steps:
1) Run the VCB installation program on the VCB proxy server
2) Welcome Screen
a. Click Next
3) License Agreement
a. Accept
b. Click Next
4) Destination Folder
a. Accept default (make note of this folder for future reference)
b. Click Next
5) Ready to Install
a. Click Install
6) Depending on your driver verification setting you may receive the following.
a. VMWare Virtual Volume Storage Bus
i. Click Yes to install the driver
7) Click Finish
Disable automatic drive letter assignments on the VCB proxy
Perform the following as a local administrator
1) Start a command prompt
2) Run Diskpart
a. automount off
b. automount scrub
Edit PATH Environment Variable to include VCB folder on the VCB proxy
1) Select the Path system variable
2) Click Edit
a. Attach the destination folder to the end of the Path variable prefixing with a semicolon (;).
b. ; C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Consolidated Backup Framework
3) Click OK
4) Click OK
5) Reboot
Install and configure the 3rd party backup software
1) Install the backup software
2) Install the backup software VCB integration module if not done as part of the installation.
a. VMware provides some integration modules for use with some 3rd party backup application. Download and install the module as described in the Readme.html file that comes with the downloaded module.
3) Make the following configuration changes to the 3rd party software
a. Enable cross junctions (mount points)
b. Disable the following because they make changes to the snapshots
i. Disable changing the archive bit of backed up files
ii. Disable change journal functions
Configure the SAN to present storage to the VCB proxy server
Review the Fiber Channel SAN Configuration Guide or iSCSI SAN Configuratin Guide
for the specific requirements of the storage vendor that you are using. You should then present the same LUNs to the VCB proxy server as presented to the ESX hosts. Be sure to present the LUNs with the same LUN ids (0,1,2, etc) to both the ESX hosts and the VCB proxy server. This may require reconfiguration or multiple VCB proxy servers if you have standalone ESX servers that use the same LUN ids.
You may limit the LUNs presented to the VCB proxy to just the LUNs that have virtual machines that need to be backed up, but in general present all LUNs.
If using VCB to backup to disk first, then present an additional LUN to the proxy server to store the backups on. This should be presented as a high LUN id (32 for example) to avoid conflicts with ESX host LUNs.
Configure VirtualCenter 2.5
The permissions that allow VCB to backup a VM are granted from the VirtualCenter server and not from the operating system. Because of this we need to configure an account (domain or local server) with permissions in VC.
1) Setup a (domain or local) account for use with VirtualCenter and VCB
2) Add the (domain or local) account to VC for use with VCB
a. Open the VI Client
b. Click Host & Clusters
c. Select the Permissions tab
i. Right click in the free area below the tab
ii. Select Add Permission
1. Assigned Role: “VMware Conslidated Backup User”
2. Add the domain user account.
3. Click OK
Configure VCB configuration file
The VCB configuration file is config.js, and by default is located in the following folder
C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Consolidated Backup Framework\config
Comments start and end with “/”, two (//) together is a single line comment. Remove comments as needed to configure the config.js file.
Configure the file as described below.
1) Edit the config.js file
a. BACKUPROOT=”C:\\mnt”; (create this path on the VCB proxy)
b. HOST=”the FQDN of the VC server”;
c. USERNAME= “username for use with the VCB backup.”;
i. “domain\\username” or “username”
d. PASSWORD= “password for use with the VCB backup.”;
Config.js is only used when running JS or WSF scripts, not batch commands or command line utilities.
Using vcbMounter
vcbMounter can be used in several different ways that can be beneficial in setting up and configuring the backups. The following lists some common actions that vcbMounter can be used for.
- vcbMounter can be used to backup full VM images directly to disk. These images can then be backed up with any 3rd party backup software to tape.
- There are several ways full image backups can be performed the two most common are SAN and NBD
- SAN: uses FC or iSCSI to mount VMFS 3 disks and then perform the full backup to an NTFS disk
- NBD: uses TCP/IP to connect to VirtualCenter and the ESH host to perform the full backup to an NTFS disk
- vcbMounter can also be used to mount and dismount the VM image file system to a folder on the VCB proxy server. This allows any 3rd party backup software to perform a file level backup of the virtual machines
- vcbMounter is commonly used to test configuration by performing manual test backups.
Example vcbMounter commands
The following command will perform a full backup (-t fullvm) of the VM “server.domain.com” using TCP/IP (-m ndb). The VM resides on the VirtualCenter server (vcserver) and the backup is performed with the vcbuser and password. Finally the full VM image is backed up to drive:\path
vcbmounter -h vcserver -u domain\vcbuser -p password -m nbd -a ipaddr:server.domain.com -r drive:\path -t fullvm
Change -m ndb to -m san to perform a backup over the SAN instead of the TCP/IP network.
To work with directly with the file system of the virtual machine use the -t file options in place of the -t fullvm. Use the following command to unmount the file system when the backup is complete.
vcbmounter -h vcserver -u domain\vcbuser -p password -U drive:\path
Where drive:\path is location where the file system was originally mounted. You should see a file called unmount.dat in this folder. Make sure there are currently no applications accessing this folder prior to unmounting it.
Integrating with 3rd party Backup Software
For specifics about how to integrate with your 3rd party backup software refer to the integration module Readme.html file that was provided in the download. Once you have performed tests using vcbMounter, integration with the backup software is done via scripts and may vary by product, but the foundation needed for that integration to take place is there and working.
More Information:
The first time a VCB backup is performed the VM must be powered on. All subsequent backups can be performed regardless of the power state of the VM.
Sources of Information:
VMware Consolidated Backup Best Practices and Deployment Considerations for SAN Environments
Virtual Machine Backup Guide (ESX 3.5, VirtualCenter 2.5)
Fiber Channel SAN Configuration Guide
iSCSI SAN Configuration Guide