Comprehensive data protection for all workloads
Post Reply
tomhkr
Enthusiast
Posts: 42
Liked: 9 times
Joined: Feb 03, 2014 7:40 am
Contact:

Premissions planning, ESXi vs vCenter

Post by tomhkr »

Greetings.

We have six ESXi 5.0 hosts in a cluster, running automated vMotion.
The vCenter is a VM inside this cluster and so is our Active Directory.

How should I plan with credentials access to the cluster?
A root privileges account on the ESXi hosts would give most "direct" access but is most likely not vMotion aware
A local administrator privileges account on the vCenter server would be dependent on the presence of the vCenter server (what happens if it goes down?)
An AD account same as above would be double dependent on both AD and vCenter presence

What would be the best way of letting Veeam manage a vMotion cluster without relying on vCenter presence?
Vitaliy S.
VP, Product Management
Posts: 27055
Liked: 2710 times
Joined: Mar 30, 2009 9:13 am
Full Name: Vitaliy Safarov
Contact:

Re: Premissions planning, ESXi vs vCenter

Post by Vitaliy S. »

Not sure there is a way to properly manage your ESXi cluster without vCenter Server. The recommended way of backing up VMs is still to use vCenter Server connection (because of the vMotion). Also since your vCenter Server is virtual, you can configure a backup job to protect it.
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: Premissions planning, ESXi vs vCenter

Post by foggy »

Since VM moref ID is changed during the migration between the hosts, only adding VM to the job via vCenter can make the job vMotion-aware (i.e. able to track this change and continue to run normally).
dellock6
VeeaMVP
Posts: 6137
Liked: 1928 times
Joined: Jul 26, 2009 3:39 pm
Full Name: Luca Dell'Oca
Location: Varese, Italy
Contact:

Re: Premissions planning, ESXi vs vCenter

Post by dellock6 »

To better explain, there are actually two morefID: one at the host level (changed every time a vm is vmotioned) and one at the vcenter level. By using vcenter backup job is vmotion-aware because it follows the vcenter morefID.
Also, with vCenter you can create a job using dynamic containers like resource pools, folders or datastores.
IMHO, if there is a cluster managed by vCenter, there is no reason or advantage to run backups pointing at single ESXi servers.

Luca.
Luca Dell'Oca
Principal EMEA Cloud Architect @ Veeam Software

@dellock6
https://www.virtualtothecore.com/
vExpert 2011 -> 2022
Veeam VMCE #1
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 227 guests