Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
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Resqman
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Running a linux webserver on surebackup Job

Post by Resqman »

Hello:

I would like to get an on-demand sandbox for one of our webservers up and running via surebackup but I am running into an issue. I have configured the virtual lab to include a static mapping so that I can access the web server from one of my production networks for testing. Almost everything look ok when I run the surebackup job: the proxy spins up just fine, the web server is placed in the virtual lab environment and I am able to ping the webserver from my production environment. However, the web service (httpd) fails to launch on the server. I have narrowed it down to the fact that apache cannot start due to the fact that the server is not able do a dns lookup for itself. In the logs I get errors saying:
AH00547: Could not resolve host name HostedSubdomain.mydomain.com
[core:error] (EAI 2) Name or service not known

A bit more background. In my production environment, my DNS server (a physical system), the web server and the B&R server all reside in different networks. Of course all of these systems can see each other as the networks are routed through. The Web server is running CentOS 7 and using httpd (apache) as the web service.

I've gone through the online documentation and I can't find a way to route DNS traffic out from the virtual lab in a surebackup job through the proxy appliance to the production network. The only thing that I can think of doing is to create a VM with the same name/ip as my actual production DNS server (but obviously keep it off my production environment) and configure that VM to run a toned-down DNS server, back it up via veeam and add it to the application group that the web server's surebackup job will be running so that it can answer the web server's dns requests when httpd tries to launch.

Isn't there a better way to do this? I can't be the only person out there with non-virtualized DNS servers using veeam. It occurs to me that anyone running linux web servers may run into this issue yet I have not been able to find any info on the forums about it.

I'd welcome any suggestions!
Andreas Neufert
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Re: Running a linux webserver on surebackup Job

Post by Andreas Neufert »

Idea of the SureBackup design is that you can add servers that you depend on into an Application group and start it before the job.

As you do not have such a server virtualized you can do the following:
1) Add local entries on the hosts file of the web server so that he can always resolve himself.
2) Create a script that you start as "test script" within the SureBackup Job that perform the "hosts" file changes and restart the web service.
3) Create a VM that you backup with the envrionment and add it to the Application Group. This server should replicate the DNS entries and you need to manipulate the IP address and stuff manually.
4) Create a new VM with a DNS Service and place it directly in the lab (just let it running there). It should answer the DNS calls then.

For 4) and 3) you need to create the subnet and networks and enable the routing at the virtual lab then. For me 1) or 2) looks much more simple and clean to do.
Resqman
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Re: Running a linux webserver on surebackup Job

Post by Resqman »

Thank-you for the response. I had previously tried #1 & 2 but it proved to not work reliably since a few other http related services would not start without dns. I had already set up my surebackup environment as you described in #4 and it works fine.
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