SEP sesam Extension for VMWare ESX Server

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Copyright 1999-2011 by SEP AG. All Rights reserved.

Any form of reproduction of the contents of this manual is allowed only with the express written permission from SEP AG. When compiling and designing user documentation SEP AG uses great diligence and attempts to deliver accurate and correct information. However, SEP AG does not guarantee the contents of this manual.

Introduction

The SEP sesam online extension for ESX Servers provides hot backups of Virtual Machines (VMs) running on a VMware ESX server. Consistent backups are achieved by creating a snapshot of the virtual machine. After the snapshot the virtual disk (VMDK) files are transferred to a SEP sesam backup medium. The ESX backup client will be installed directly on the ESX server.

Advantages

• No proxy server is necessary
• Virtual machines do not need to be on a SAN storage device

Disadvantages

• Higher load on the ESX server
• No file system backup of Windows guests

System Requirements

• VMware ESX server >= 3.0
• SEP sesam server >= 3.4.1.41 or greater
• SEP sesam Extension for ESX server
• Previous installation of the standard SEP sesam backup client

For a SEP sesam RDS installation the mt-st RPM package is required. This is not on the ESX install medium but you can use RPM for RHEL 4 or Fedora 3 which can be found e.g. here:

ftp://ftp.tu-ilmenau.de/Mirrors/centos/4.7/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/mt-st-0.8-1.i386.rpm

Installation

SEP sesam backup client must be installed directly on each ESX server.

• Login as root user
• Install Sesam Linux backup client, using SEP sesam RPM package for RHEL4 (For Vsphere (ESX) 4.0 Please install the RHEL5 Package for 64 Bit Systems RHEL5)
• Install Sesam ESX Client RPM package

Configuration

Firewall

On each ESX server an active firewall is running by default. We recommend to switch it off during configuration of the SEP sesam ESX online module.

Example:

In this example you can see the configuration of the ESX firewall for the ESX host and the the available Virtual Machines. The SEP sesam control communication will be processed by a single port (port 11301) in the client configuration. Besides the initial port (port 11001) you must configure 2 ports per simultaneous backup on the ESX firewall (e.g. 11002-11007 for 3 parallel backups). Further information regarding firewall settings for a ESX server in sesam are stored in our user manual within Components > Topology.

On the ESX console interface the configuration has to execute line per line (or as a batch):

After all ESX firewall commands are executed the configuration can be checked by esxcfg-firewall -q.

Adoption of backup tools config

adopt VCHOST, USERNAME and PASSWORD in /etc/vmware/backuptools.conf file

Configuration in the SEP sesam GUI

Configure the ESX server in SEP sesam GUI as a UNIX client. As operating system you can choose ESX-Server.

In the SEP sesam GUI create a new backup task with task type ESX-Server. As backup source specify the display name of the virtual machine.

The VM can be selected by the client file system browser under VMware. You can also get the display name from VMware Virtual Center or on the ESX-Server CLI by executing the command:

If the backup source is set to ALL, all VMs on the ESX Server are saved. To exclude specific VMs put their names into the exclude list.
Attention: SEP sesam exclude list are regular expressions.

Remote Device Server

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

Restore

Restore is quite similar to a regular file system restore. In the SEP sesam restore wizard you can choose between VMware and file system view. In the VMware view files are grouped by VM even if the files belonging to a VM are on different storage locations. In file system view you can see all files as they are stored on disk.

Restore options

Original tree structure

If set, all files are restored in the same directory hierarchy as they were saved. If not set, all files are restored into the selected target path without their directory names. This option can be useful if you want to restore a VM spanning over several storage locations into one place.

Attention: In this case you will need to adopt VM config file (*.vmx) before you can start the restore.

Recover after restore

Register the VM after restore on ESX Server and with it in Virtual Center

Recover and online

Register and start the VM and bring it online

Troubleshooting

Connect a controller through the VM

In case of problems when writing data to a tape device and the SCSI controller is connected through the host system to a virtual machine. This could be a setting of the SCSI driver. Two settings are possible:

Either

• Switch the SCSI driver to paravirtual, which may result in lower throughput.
  

Or

• Enable Passthrough at Configuration -> Advanced Settings and restart the ESX server.

Finally, you have to do the following steps:

1. Add a new PCI device in config of the VM.
2. The passthrough adapter should be selectable now and has to be chosen.
3. Now the controller with all connected devices is going to be passed through to the VM.
4. The native driver of the controller has to be installed at the guest OS.

Further Links/Literature

• SEP sesam Extension for VMware ESX Server