AHV Wishlist

[euscada]

Hi all,

We recently converted our ESX cluster to an AHV cluster and all went well.

We then got our Veeam solution up and running and we noticed a few missing things we used from our ESX "Console" Veeam interface.

Here is a short list of items we would like to see (if possible) for future releases.

1. In our ESX configuration we were able to “chain jobs” within Veeam. We used this feature to chain jobs on long running jobs where the end time was undetermined. This appears to not be an option in Veeam for AHV.
 
2. Previously we could “visualize” our backups and “see” the processing of the VM via the Veeam console interface (Read/Write speeds etc). This appears to not function (or not available) for AHV VMs.

3. Noted the majority of the job configurations are done via the Web Interface in Veeam for AHV. Is this going to change in the near future or will Veeam for AHV be moving to all web based?
We have noted certain changes not happening in windows console vs web interface (ie Job descriptions not updating, jobs appear disable when they are not, processing rates appear different in console vs web)

4. We previously used Veeam to "VM Copy" an entire VM off to a storage location in the event of a total meltdown and easily spin it up on a tertiary machine. It appears Veeam for AHV does not have a "VM Copy" option. It also appears Nutanix does not offer a "VM Workstation" type of software, so this feature may be in vain until this is an option?

I'm sure there will be more as time progresses and we play with the interface more, although it appears to work just fine.

We have yet to "restore" an AHV VM back into our environment, although it appears straight forward.

Thanks for any feedback!

[ronnmartin61]

Correct there is not any chaining feature in the AHV proxy job scheduling facility. You should be able to watch the realtime job performance in the AHV proxy if you click on a running job however you're correct that the real time job statistics do not appear in the VBR UI only job duration and percent complete. While we added more VBR UI centralized management in the version 2 AHV proxy there are no near term plans to move all management into VBR. You may still create offsite copies with a Nutanix backup copy job in VBR.

[euscada]

Thanks for the reply.

Chaining would be a nice feature being we "run the same job" to 2 different repositories. (Separate jobs)

Not having the true VBR console is not a deal breaker, it works fine in the web console, although it would be nice to have 1 place though to manage feature sets.

Here is a short list of strange things I have seen in our conversion to AHV --

Jobs running (in console) does not actually reflect the jobs actually running (In the tree it will show (2) jobs running but it is actually 1 job running)
The folder structure of the backups in the storage repository appears "messy" and is not all within a "parent folder" of the job name.
Job descriptions appear to not update (in console) after being changed in the Web UI.
Jobs appear disabled (in console) that are not actually disabled in the Web UI.
Processing rates/speeds appear different in console vs Web UI.

[euscada]

Hmm, so the "Copy" feature you speak of is not really a "VM Copy" per-se, it is more of a "Backup job copy"...

Does the feature exist (or will it?) to create a "VM Copy" of an AHV vm?

I would like to "VM Copy" an AHV VM to a NAS...

Or better yet, how does one go about "Copying the vdisk" of an AHV VM to a storage location?

I hope I am asking the right questions...

[ronnmartin61]

Apologies as I thought you meant backup copy. Correct there's no VM copy analog for AHV backups and I'm not aware of any plans to implement. I'm sure there's probably a method with native Nutanix tools to export AHV VM's however I'm not sure how efficient it would be for recovery since Nutanix does not allow mounting external storage to their clusters. Since you'd have to move data from NAS to a Nutanix cluster Veeam restoration from a backup or backup copy would be much less painless. The other option (assuming you had a secondary Nutanix cluster) would be to simply use Nutanix-native VM replication.
The closest thing Nutanix has to a "workstation" edition is Nutanix CE. Our AHV integration works just fine on this platform.
Have you checked out the "View as tree" option in the protected VM's UI in the proxy? It display a more hierarchical view by job.
I'm aware there may be some proxy/VBR sync issues and you may just want to open a support case on those...

[euscada]

Hi again...

It appears in the HYCU environment they support "Restoring AHV VMs to network share repositories"...

This would be a nice feature for Veeam with AHV.

I can also see myself utilizing an in-place conversion if offered (so I wouldn't have to do it manually // convert raw to vmdk)

About CE - Do you know if I can restore from a production AHV environment to a CE environment? I have yet to explore this option...

About the "View as tree" - I did see this, although I was referring to the repository location of the backups, they appear "not as organized" as they once were and appears as a base folder for each VM, not grouped by job name (not sure if this is intended or just ? )

I will open a case with support also as I have a few VMs in old jobs (that I was playing around in) that I can not remove...

I'll mentions the strange behavior also stated above.

Thanks