Backup Service for vCloud Update 4 USER'S GUIDE
Table of contents 1 User's Guide ....................................................................................................................3 1.1 About the backup service ..........................................................................................................3 1.2 Supported web browsers...........................................................................................................3 1.3 Installing VMware Tools ......................................................
1 User's Guide 1.1 About the backup service This service enables backup and recovery of virtual machines managed by VMware vCloud Director. The service is available through a web interface. To log in to the backup service, use your vCloud Director credentials. What you can do after logging in depends on the settings made by a system administrator for your organization. Due to these settings, some of the operations described in this guide may be not available to you. 1.
1.4 Basic operations This section describes typical usage of the backup service. 1.4.1 Logging in to the service You can log in to the backup service under the following conditions: A system administrator has enabled use of the service for your organization. [For non-administrative users] Your organization administrator has enabled use of the service for your account. To log in to the backup service 1. Go to the login page of the backup service.
When the backup starts, you can see its progress in the machine details area on the right. The number of machines that are backed up simultaneously and the order in which they are backed up are defined by the backup service. If you need to stop the backup on a specific machine, select the machine, and then click Stop backup or click the stop button ( ) near the progress bar.
3. Select the backup plan that you want to apply to the machines. For example, select Daily. A backup plan contains the following instructions for the backup service: Schedule: When and how often to do backups. Retention rules: How long to store the backups. Backup options (p. 14). 4. Click OK. The name of the applied backup plan appears in the Backup plan column. If another backup plan was previously applied to the machine, that backup plan is revoked.
Setting up the recovery 1. On the organization tab, select the machine that you want to recover, and then click Recover. 2. In Recovery point, select the date and time to which the machine will be recovered. By default, the latest recovery point will be used. If the vApp no longer has one or more networks that were used by the backed-up machine, you are prompted to map the network adapters of the virtual machine to the networks of the vApp. 3.
Setting up the recovery 1. Open the Backup storage tab. 2. In the list of backed-up machines, select the machine that you want to recover, and then click Recover. 3. In Recovery point, select the date and time to which the machine will be recovered. By default, the latest recovery point is selected. 4. In Target vApp, specify the vApp to which the machine will be recovered. By default, the original vApp is selected.
In Preserve MAC addresses, specify whether the machine's network adapters (except the newly added ones) will have the same MAC addresses as those of the original machine. To prevent a MAC address conflict, avoid selecting this check box if the original machine exists and will not be overwritten. 7. [Optional] Select the Power on the virtual machine after recovery check box. 8. Click OK. Monitoring the recovery progress The progress of recovery is shown in the machine details area on the right.
The service shows the volumes, files, and folders that were present on the machine at that time. Volumes that you cannot recover files from are not shown. Select the files and folders that you want to recover, and then click OK. After the recovery is completed, the link to download the .zip file appears on the Backup storage tab in the machine details area on the right. The link is valid for 24 hours. You can use the link only when you are logged in to the service. The files are stored in the .
1.4.7 Monitoring protection statuses The Protection status column on the organization tab indicates how well a virtual machine or a vApp is protected. Protection statuses of machines The table below lists protection statuses of a machine by order of severity, from the least severe to the most severe. Status Meaning Not protected No backup plan is applied to the machine. Never backed up A backup plan is applied to the machine, but no backup has been run.
The number of backed-up virtual machines. The alerts about an almost-reached quota (80 percent or more is used) or an exceeded quota (100 percent or more is used). To see historical data on the storage usage, expand the area. The column chart represents the service usage for the last 30 days. In the chart, red columns show days when the storage quota was exceeded and orange columns show days when the storage quota was almost reached.
1.6.1.1 Schedule and retention rules The backup operation runs according to the schedule you specify. The resulting backups are kept according to the retention rules and then deleted. The scheduled time is displayed according to the time zone set on the machine from which you are logged in to the backup service. If you schedule backups to run, say, at 07:00, they will run when your machine clock reaches 07:00, regardless of the time zone where the vCloud infrastructure is physically located.
2. Out of these days of week, choose the one to Do weekly/monthly backups on. Backups that are performed on that day will be considered as weekly backups and monthly backups. Backups that are performed on other days will be considered as daily backups. By default, the backups will run Monday through Friday at 22:00. Friday is chosen for Weekly/Monthly backups. Retention rules Specify how long you want to retain the daily, weekly, and monthly backups.
the backup storage for sets of backups with different encryption settings. During recovery, you will need to select the correct entry and type the correct password. Notifications Specify whether to send e-mail notifications after a successful backup, after a failed backup, or both. Specify the address to send the notifications. Separate multiple e-mail addresses with a semicolon. For example: user1@example.com; user2@example.
VSS Specify whether to use Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) during backup. This option is effective only for machines where VMware Tools is installed (p. 3). This option ensures that the file system will be backed up in a consistent state. For machines running Windows, this option also ensures the consistent state of all data that is used by VSS-aware applications, such as by Microsoft SQL Server. Without this option, the backup process is faster, but data consistency cannot be guaranteed. 1.6.
To delete a backup plan 1. Open the Backup plans tab. 2. Select the backup plan that you want to delete, and then click Delete. 3. Confirm the deletion of the backup plan. 1.7 Generating usage reports This functionality is available only to administrators. Usage reports provide historical data about using the backup service in your organization. You may need these reports to calculate how much your organization will be charged for the service.
6. [Optional] To print the report, click Print. To save the report as a comma-separated values (.csv) file, click Save as .csv file. 1.8 Enabling non-administrators to use the service Using the backup service includes logging in to it, performing backup and recovery, and managing backups and backup plans. A system administrator may want to create a dedicated vCloud Director role for the backup service access. Organization administrators can enable members of any vCloud Director role to use the service.
1.9 Viewing audit logs The backup service includes an audit log, which records operations performed by users. System and organization administrators have a view into the log scoped to their area of control. To view the audit log 1. Log in to the service. 2. Click the Logs tab.
2 Terminology reference Agent for vCloud The backup service infrastructure component that runs on a dedicated virtual machine within a vCloud Director management cluster. Backup (operation) An operation that saves information about a virtual machine in a packaged form, for the purpose of recovery. Backup (recovery point) The result of a single backup operation. A backup represents a point in time to which a user can recover the virtual machine.
Recovery An operation that creates or overwrites a virtual machine by using the data that was earlier saved in a backup. When you select for recovery the same machine that was backed up, it is overwritten. Otherwise, a new virtual machine is created. Resource group One or more ESX(i) clusters that contain virtual machines of vCloud Director organizations. Retention rules A part of backup plan that specifies how long backups are kept.
