Feature Request- Handling of vCenter

[ALOM]

Hi All-

I have been using Veeam for a while now (~4 years at 2 companies) and I find it shocking that Veeam hasn't come up with a "feature" to handle vCenter.

I, like most of you here, have my vCenter virtualized, and have had to use workarounds to get this critical server successfully backed up. I have used a single VM, remote DB, and now, with 5.5, using the virtual appliance.

The way I see it, you have two choices:

1. You can lock your standalone VM to a host using a DRS rule (what we do).
The problem: Hope you don't have maintenance on that host, because if you do, you are removing the rule, entering maintenance mode, doing your maintenance, re-adding the rule. When you're done there, you are back on Veaam, re-mapping the VM in the job. Which probably then creates another backup "chain" because Veeam thinks its a new VM altogether in the job.

2. You can use your remove DB and use a registry key to exclude the DB for vCenter.
The problem: You're not backing up the db...

Am I missing something? is there a better way?

A simple solution:

Add a check box to signify if a VM is your vCenter appliance or standalone server, then when the job starts Veeam can perform a MOB look up of the host and use that path to backup the VM instead of directly communicating with vCenter.

Remote DB:

Add a check box that this DB server contains vCenter DB, let it browse the live server and select the DB to exclude.
Or, again, if it does contain the vCenter DB, use the host directly when backing up the VM.

Either way, it seems like such a must have for a software that has so many great features!

Appreciate any input!

Aaron
ALOM Technologies

[tsightler]

Automatic handling of center was added in V7.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello,

2. You can use your remove DB and use a registry key to exclude the DB for vCenter.
The problem: You're not backing up the db...

Actually even with this registry key enabled, you DO backup your vCenter Server database. The reg key you're referring to only excludes this database from AAIP.

As to the vCenter Server appliance, I believe you can back it up even with vCenter Server connection, but in this case VMware Tools Quiescence should be disabled. There is an existing topic covering this scenario.

Thanks for the feedback anyway!