Feature Request - SureBackup

[ChrisGundry]

Hi There,

I would like to submit a request for a couple of features that would make life a lot easier when working with sure backup:
1. Ability for SureBackup to select and work with clusters instead of specific single hosts. Currently we have to select a particular host, if that host is not available then we can't use SureBackup. At least this is what I am told by support. In a world of DRS, dvSwitches, vMotion and HA, this isn't great. Why have the option to use a configuration that uses dvswitches but not have your actual lab/proxy usable on multiple hosts?

2. The wording on the network setup page of the SureBackup lab. We feel the wording isn't very good and should be made clearer to those trying to setup SureBackup. Support were also unable to clarify the setup process very much either. The other issue is that it just isn't clear enough about which setup to use and why. There are also no warnings about using using a different dvSwitch to your production production switch/port group. So if you have a dvSwitch that contains your production port group, you select that dvSwitch for SureBackup use as well, it will create a SureBackup port group on the same switch. The issue comes when you boot the proxy appliance, which within the lab is on the same IP as your default GW, it then conflicts with your normal GW, because your proxy appliance is on a port group on the same dvSwitch as your production port group. This can be resolved by either using a different dvSwitch for your SureBackup networks, or using a different VLAN tag for your lab networks. The issue is that the documentation and the setup wizard don't warn you about either of these issues. The setup wizard doesn't mention anything on the isolated networks page about which VLAN tag to use or NOT to use either. I feel there should at least be a warning in the documentation about this issue. When I raised this with support they didn't seem to understand what the actual issue was or why there was a conflict.

3. Several things in application groups.
3a. You can't select all the VMs and click edit to set their 'role' or credentials for testing.
3b. You can't do the same thing to specify other test options like ping, startup timeouts etc
3c. Setting the amount of memory has to be done on each VM, so takes a while if you have several VMs
3d. Setting the amount of memory is done on a %, would be nice to have the option to set it as a static amount rather than a %
3e. Setting the memory as a % when you can't see the current VM memory allocation is hard.

4. I understand that you probably want people to build an app group that has just the core services like AD in, then use linked jobs to test their whole backup job with all VMs, which makes sense from a verification point of view. The issue is that some jobs contain say 20 or 30 VMs.
4a. If we don't want to test all of the VMs in the job then we are stuck.
4b. We can't do anything I mentioned in #3 when doing it via the 'linked jobs'
4c. The linked job might also contain one of the VMs that is also in the default app group

5. If the SureBackup job fails, the job stops and the lab shuts down. There are 2 issues with this for us:
5a. If one source backup failed and that VM is the first VM in the SureBackup job then we fail to verify any backups. The job should continue and try to test all VMs. I understand perhaps it stops the job because it is deemed that any failure is a total failure, or that maybe the VM might be critical to the rest of the testing so cannot continue without it. But we feel these should be things that are configurable. Ideally on a per server basis within the app group/job.
5b. If the option to 'keep lab running when finished' is enabled and the job fails, we feel the lab should keep running. This would greatly help with being able to troubleshoot. At the moment the job stops and the lab shuts down, so you can't check anything.
5c. The 'hidden' option to right click a VM within a failed job to start it is handy, however, you seem to only be able to do this with a single VM within the failed lab/job. If you could do this with all of the VMs it would be much more useful to us.

I don't know if any of this has changed in 9.5 U4 as we have not yet installed it but plan to soon.

Any feedback would be appreciated!

Many thanks!

Chris

[HannesK]

Hello,
thanks for this detailed list of feature requests. As far as I can see, there were no changes in U4 about your requests.

We are aware that SureBackup, which was designed some time ago does not meet all of today's requests. But I cannot promise you when we will be able to address your requests.

Best regards,
Hannes