Comprehensive data protection for all workloads
Post Reply
Paule
Novice
Posts: 4
Liked: never
Joined: Sep 13, 2011 6:59 am
Full Name: Thomas Paulsen
Contact:

Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by Paule »

Hello,
we are currently looking for a backup/recovery solution for our new virtual environment.
It's going to be an ESXi cluster with about 200 VMs for the start, growing rapidly each week.
As we would like to automate the Cluster as much as possible, new VMs will be created by the admins via vCloud Director.

My main questions are:
Is there a way to get Veeam Backup & Replication to take new VMs into the Backup Schedule automatically?

Has anyone recovered VMs into vCloud Director? I am afraid the UID of the VM might change during restore and thus, the VM will not be recognized as the old one (not being listed in the vApps directory any more).
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by foggy »

Hello!

You can create a folder hierarchy in vCenter grouping your VM's into logical containers based on some criteria and specify these folders rather than individual VMs while creating your backup jobs. If you then place а new machine in the folder, it will be automatically backed up by the corresponding job.

Regarding your second question, it depends on the way vCloud Director tracks individual VMs. VBR preserves VM moref ID when restoring it to its original location (over existing VM), but the VM UUID is changed during restoration.

Thanks.
Vitaliy S.
VP, Product Management
Posts: 27055
Liked: 2710 times
Joined: Mar 30, 2009 9:13 am
Full Name: Vitaliy Safarov
Contact:

Re: Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by Vitaliy S. »

In addition to folder hierarchy you can use datastores/hosts as containers for newly provisioned VMs.
htwnrva
Enthusiast
Posts: 32
Liked: never
Joined: Jan 20, 2010 6:59 pm
Full Name: Ronny
Contact:

Re: Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by htwnrva »

We backup at the datastore level for precisely this reason.
tsightler
VP, Product Management
Posts: 6009
Liked: 2843 times
Joined: Jun 05, 2009 12:57 pm
Full Name: Tom Sightler
Contact:

Re: Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by tsightler »

foggy wrote:Regarding your second question, it depends on the way vCloud Director tracks individual VMs. VBR preserves VM moref ID when restoring it to its original location (over existing VM), but the VM UUID is changed during restoration.
To add a little to this, if you need to perform a restore of a VM that still exist in vCD the easiest option is to simply restore the Virtual Disk (VMDK files) but not the entire VM. This allows you preserve the UUID and will not affect vCD at all.

On the other hand, if the VM has indeed been deleted, then the best option is to deploy a new, identically configured VM via VCD, and then perform the restore of the virtual disks.
Paule
Novice
Posts: 4
Liked: never
Joined: Sep 13, 2011 6:59 am
Full Name: Thomas Paulsen
Contact:

Re: Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by Paule »

Thanks for all your replies, this helps us a lot with planning the backup.
Another question that came to my mind is: If I delete a VM via vCD or vCenter, what will happen to the backed up files in the Veeam Repository? Will the backups stay in place, or will they be deleted, as the VM no longer exists?
If so, is there a setting to define, who long after a VM has been deleted, the backup files should be kept?
dellock6
Veeam Software
Posts: 6137
Liked: 1928 times
Joined: Jul 26, 2009 3:39 pm
Full Name: Luca Dell'Oca
Location: Varese, Italy
Contact:

Re: Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by dellock6 »

You can define the retention period of a deleted VM by the advanced setting "Deleted VMs data retention period".

About vCloud, another option (the one we choosed) is to backup at the Resource Pool level, since every RP refers to a different tenant, so at the end you have one backup job per tenant. And if you choose to let customers login to Veeam via the web restore, you can set permissions to their backup only.

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

@dellock6
https://www.virtualtothecore.com/
vExpert 2011 -> 2022
Veeam VMCE #1
Gostev
Chief Product Officer
Posts: 31460
Liked: 6648 times
Joined: Jan 01, 2006 1:01 am
Location: Baar, Switzerland
Contact:

Re: Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by Gostev »

Note that "Deleted VMs data retention period" defines how long VM data remain in the transformed synthetic fulls (all backup modes that maintain single VBK file) before its blocks are marked as unused. If you are using the backup mode with multiple full backups, you have to take care of preserving older full backups yourself according to the required retentions, since new fulls will only contain VMs which are actually present in the infrastructure. Thanks.
ErikSi
Enthusiast
Posts: 31
Liked: 1 time
Joined: Jan 01, 2006 1:01 am
Location: Groningen, The Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by ErikSi »

In response to put VM's in a folder. I have my jobs point to a vmware folder. But the problem i noticed is that in "Guest processing" "Advanded" you only see the folder and not the VM's so you can't set different user credentials for VM's
Is there a way around this ? except for not using folders to do backups..
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by foggy »

Haven't you noticed the Add VM button in the Advanced Options dialog?
ErikSi
Enthusiast
Posts: 31
Liked: 1 time
Joined: Jan 01, 2006 1:01 am
Location: Groningen, The Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by ErikSi »

Yes i did notice the Add button :-)
The thing that i did not know is that if i add the VM and edit the login, will this server be backupped twice ? once in the folder and once from the added vm ?
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: Automatic Backup of new VMs?

Post by foggy »

No, each VM will be backed up once. Settings for the individual VM have higher priority than those of the folder.
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 243 guests