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1 Introduction
- 1.1 Image Backup
- 1.2 File level Backup
2 System requirements
3 Installation
4 Configuration
- 4.1 Adoption of backup tools config
- 4.2 SSPI authentication
5 Configuration in the SEP sesam GUI
6 Backup option for SAN / Network based Backup
7 Remote Device Server
8 Restore
9 Further Links/Literature

Introduction

The SEP sesam extension module for Virtual Consolidated Backup (VCB) provides hot backups of Virtual Machines (VMs) that run on VMWare ESX/ESXi servers. Consistent backups are achieved by creating a snapshot of the virtual machine and after which the virtual disks (VMDK) files are transferred to the VCB Windows Proxy Server. From here the files are saved by SEP sesam. If possible data transfer from ESX Server to VCB-Proxy Server is done over SAN to avoid network traffic.

Advantages

No workload on the ESX Server
Filelevel backup for Windows guests

Disadvantages

Windows 2003 Proxy server is necessary
Virtual machines must be on a SAN storage device to avoid data transfer over network
Data is transferred to Windows Proxy server first
Restore is more complicated

VCB offers two different types of backup:

Image Backup

Here all virtual disks are saved as one big file. It's the best way for disaster recovery because only the image files have to be restored

File level Backup

File level backup is only available for Windows guests. Here the file systems of the guest are mounted at the proxy server. Then the files are saved as a usual file backup. The easiest way to restore a file is to install the SEP sesam client on the guest system and restore it directly

System requirements

Installed VMware VCB >= 1.5 running on a Windows 2003 Server (VCB-Proxy).
SEP sesam server >= 3.4.1.71 or greater (includes the SEP sesam VCB Client)
Previous installation of the standard SEP sesam backup server or RDS package on the VCB Proxy

Installation

Install the SEP sesam backup client for Windows on the VCB Proxy Server. SEP sesam server or RDS packages can also be used.

Configuration

Some configuration can be done at the VCB Server. Here we only explain the most important one. Please read the VCB documentation by VMWare for more information.

Adoption of backup tools config

Edit <VCB program path>\generic\config.js e.g.

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Consolidated Backup Framework\config\config.js
                                                                                 
/*                                                                                        
 * Generic configuration file for VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB).                       
 */                                                                                       
/*
* Directory where all the VM backup jobs are supposed to reside in. 
* For each backup job, a directory with a unique name derived from the
* backup type and the VM name will be created here.                   
* If omitted, BACKUPROOT defaults to c:\\mnt.                         
*                                                                     
* Make sure this directory exists before attempting any VM backups.   
*/                                                                    
BACKUPROOT="C:\\vcbmnt";                                               
/* * URL that is used by "mountvm" to obtain the block list for a
* disk image that is to be mounted on the backup proxy.       
*                                                             
* Specifying this option is mandatory. There is no default    
* value.                                                      
*/                                                            
HOST="winvcb";                                            
/*
* Port for communicating with all the VC SDK services.
* Defaults to 443                                     
*/                                                    
PORT="443";
/*
* Username/password used for authentication against the mountvm server.
* Specifying these options is mandatory.                               
*/                                                                     
USERNAME="Administrator";                                               
//
PASSWORD="secret";
/*
* TRANSPORT_MODE determines how VCB accesses virtual disk data. 
* Currently, two modes are supported on Windows:                
*                                                               
* +) "san"                                                      
*    Virtual disk data is read directly off a shared storage device
*    that the virtual disk resides on. This requires VMFS     
*    storage on SAN or iSCSI and the storage device has to be      
*    accessible from both ESX and the VCB proxy.                   
* +) "nbd"                                      
.....

Adopt at least BACKUPROOT, VCHOST, USERNAME and PASSWORD in the file to your match your environment.

BACKUPROOT: Directory into which the VM files are exported. It must have enough free disk space to save the largest VM.; If more VCB backups run parallel more space is needed

HOST: Hostname of your Virtual Center Server (VC). If this is not set the hostname of VCB server is used (which means that VC and VCB have to run on the same host)

USERNAME: Windows user that is allowed to connect to your VC and has the necessary backup rights

PASSWORD: Password for this user

If no config file is found or no values are set then the following defaults are used:

HOST: Hostname of VCB
USERNAME: '__sspi__'
PASSWORD: none

SSPI authentication

You can configure the Consolidated Backup to use the Security Support Provider Interface (SSPI) for authentication. The advantage of using the SSPI is that it does not require the password to be stored in this configuration file in plain text or in the registry. In order to use SSPI the following conditions must be met:

SEP sesam server service must be configured to run under an Administrator account.
Always use the Consolidated Backup from a user context with the same username and password credentials on both the VCB proxy and the Virtual Center Server or be a domain user.
Set 'USERNAME to '_sspi_' and leave PASSWORD empty in config.js file.

Configuration in the SEP sesam GUI

First, configure the VCB server in the SEP sesam GUI as a normal Windows client.

In the SEP sesam GUI create a new backup task with task type VCB Image or VCB File. As backup source specify the display name of the virtual machine. The VM can be selected by the client filesystem browser under VMWare. You can also get the display name from VMware Virtual Center or on the ESX-Server CLI by executing the command vcbVmName -s Any:.

Attention:

Not only Windows VMs can be selected as backup type VCB File because sometimes guest operating systems can't be determined correctly. Only choose Windows guests here or otherwise the backup will fail.

Backup option for SAN / Network based Backup

When doing a backup over SAN Storage the Option -a transport=san has to be added to the additional call arguments (Expert Options)! For a backup of the Virtual Machine over a regular network please use -a transport=nbd

Remote Device Server

Instead of installing the SEP sesam client you can install the Server or the Remote Device Server (RDS) package. By doing this VMs can be saved LAN Free to any storage device connected to the VCB server.

Restore

If VCB couldn't recover a VM directly into an ESX host two steps are necessary:

Restore all files that belong to a VM on the VCB Server using the regular file system restore
Use the VMWare Converter to import the backup into VC

Further Links/Literature

You can find more information about VCB from VMWare here
SEP sesam Extension for VCB

Retrieved from "http://wiki.sepsoftware.com/wiki/index.php/SEP_sesam_backup_client_for_VMware_Consolidated_Backup"

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