Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
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dinger76
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Test/Dev to Production & Backup Again with Veeam

Post by dinger76 »

Hi,

So I've been using Veeam for a number of years and have really enjoyed the functionality it can provide. I've just been posed a tricky issue and I was wondering whether Veeam could help to solve the issue.

We currently have a Production server (which could be multiple VMs) which we occasionally have developers making changes to... obviously not a good situation. So to correct this issue, we want to have a process in place that would allow us to take a copy of the production server back into a development environment (with different name and IP Address) allow our developers to make their changes on this server and once the changes are signed off as being successful... take this development server into production to replace the existing production server and therefore mean that our developers do not directly touch the production environment.
Whatever solution we come up with needs to be repeatable as our developers may need to perform updates once or twice a month.

All of the ideas that I've had so far, involve a lot of manual work which may prove to be unfeasible in reality. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas to assist.

Thanks

Chris
Shestakov
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Re: Test/Dev to Production & Backup Again with Veeam

Post by Shestakov »

Hi Chris.
I would make a replica of the production VM and if everything developers work with goes well, do a permanent failover to it. And don`t forget to backup the production VM just in case.
Does it sound good?
Thanks!
Vitaliy S.
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Re: Test/Dev to Production & Backup Again with Veeam

Post by Vitaliy S. » 1 person likes this post

Seems like a perfect use case for On-Demand sandbox and SureBackup jobs.
dinger76
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Re: Test/Dev to Production & Backup Again with Veeam

Post by dinger76 »

Hi,

Thanks for the information... although the option has been available for a while, I haven't really had a requirement to utilise it. Now that the requirement is there, I'm going to look into this further.

Thanks once again
Vitaliy S.
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Re: Test/Dev to Production & Backup Again with Veeam

Post by Vitaliy S. »

Yep, let us know how it works out. One thing to note in this case, once you power down the VM (in a SureBackup job) all changes will be discarded. This will allow you to do multiple dev tests before committing all the changes to a production environment.
dinger76
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Re: Test/Dev to Production & Backup Again with Veeam

Post by dinger76 »

Ok, so I have made a virtual lab and an application group. I've even created a Surebackup job and this runs and powers up the VM as expected and the Surebackup job stays active once the basic tests are performed.

I seem to be missing two elements, and I think that it is just my understanding...

Running the Surebackup job is just Surebackup, how do I run as an On-Demand Sandbox?

My understanding with an 'On-Demand Sandbox' is that I can migrate the virtual machines directly into Production... I don't seem to have an 'On-Demand Sandbox' as I do not have any options to migrate to production... when the Surebackup job is running, the only options available are to stop the surebackup job or look at history etc.

I've tried searching the web for more information about 'On-Demand Sandbox' and although there are lots of documents and videos, the only information they seem to provide is around creating the virtual lab and application group... some mention that you can migrate to production but none tell you how to do it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
foggy
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Re: Test/Dev to Production & Backup Again with Veeam

Post by foggy »

dinger76 wrote:My understanding with an 'On-Demand Sandbox' is that I can migrate the virtual machines directly into Production... I don't seem to have an 'On-Demand Sandbox' as I do not have any options to migrate to production... when the Surebackup job is running, the only options available are to stop the surebackup job or look at history etc.
On-Demand Sandbox is just a SureBackup job with the "Keep the application group running once the job completes" check box selected. To migrate VMs from the virtual lab to production, you can use any of the available options, such as svMotion, Quick Migration, replication job, etc.
willn
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Re: Test/Dev to Production & Backup Again with Veeam

Post by willn »

We have a similar requirement in our environment.

We utilize the Virtual Lab functionality in Veeam a little differently however. We do not use the SureBackup jobs for our dev/test enviroments, but rather create a virtual lab manually and then use it as the proxy. Few limitations to this:
  • There is a limit of three "mapped" proxy networks in the labs. (Can be overcome through opening a ticket with Veeam support)
  • If you are using Windows and Active directory you have to refresh DCs with the dev/test VMs. Not a huge deal if you refresh the entire environment, but if you wanted
    to just refresh one of the VMs you would have to re-establish the trust relationship. It can be a pain.
  • Not a real easy way to put the changes in production. You would really just use it for testing, then do the same changes in production once tested. Shouldn't really matter if following SDLC though, right? :)
Vitaliy S.
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Re: Test/Dev to Production & Backup Again with Veeam

Post by Vitaliy S. »

willn wrote:There is a limit of three "mapped" proxy networks in the labs. (Can be overcome through opening a ticket with Veeam support)
As far as I know this limitation comes from using hardware v4 for the Virtual Lab VM appliance. You should be able to overcome it by upgrading to a higher version of VM hardware.
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