Feature Request - VMware App Volumes integration

[ibeerens]

I don't know if this place to post a feature request but I'll give it a try. I have the following feature request for Veeam Backup & Replication:
- Backup App Volumes appstacks by selecting the appstacks to backup and define a retention period.

I tried a file copy but this is not ideal because the appstacks are copied thick and each file copy overwrites the earlier copied appstacks.

Regards,

Ivo Beerens
www.ivobeerens.nl

[Andreas Neufert]

We are aware of the situation and the technical backup details but we can not comment about the future of our product.

[ibeerens]

And as Veeam Partner?

Best Regards,

Ivo Beerens
www.ivobeerens.nl

[Andreas Neufert]

We have strickt rules what we can communicate, when and how. In the end it is the same at this point in time.

[vlad_diverse]

Any changes?

[tsightler]

No changes at this time. Perhaps you can explain in more detail what you would like to see. App volumes are quite unique and VMware offers an integrated method to back them up for several releases now. Is there some reason this capability is not sufficient?

[vlad_diverse]

Hi Tom,
Many companies are using vSAN, as a storage for VMware Profile-only Writable Volumes. Backup is done, to the other VMFS volume, but if all you have is vSAN, it is all on vSAN. You cannot natively have backup for 30 days. Veeam cannot backup bunch of files from vSAN.
I am using ISCSI connected storage to windows VM, which I share as NFS to be listed as a backup target, for App Vols. Then I use Windows Agent to collect profiles daily from that Windows VM.
Would be easier, if I could backup files from VMFS.

[Castro.D.Bruno]

Hello everyone. New here!

I need to back up vmdk files that are not mounted to any virtual machine within my vCenter. This is because AppVolumes dynamically mounts and unmounts the vmdk files. The virtual machine to which the vmdk is mounted may not be the same, so assigning it to a fixed VM is not feasible.

Every time the user logs out, the virtual machine in which the user was working is destroyed, and AppVolumes unmounts the vmdk.

How can I back up these files using Veeam?

[Mildur]

Hello Castro

I moved your question to this existing topic.
Veeam doesn‘t provide an integration with App Volumes.
As a workaround, you could use Filecopy jobs. But they would copy the entire VMDK size in every backup session.

Best,
Fabian

[Castro.D.Bruno]

Hello, thank you for the response.
The solution we ended up choosing with my team was to develop two scripts.

One script runs before the execution of the job to attach the vmdk disks created by the AppVolumes backup solution. The other script is used to detach the disks.

So, what we did was create a "pivot" VM to which we applied these scripts in the job configuration and backed up the VM.

I would be happy to share the scripts with you, but I cannot find where to attach files in the forum.

We look forward to future integration with this application!
Greetings.

[tyler.jurgens]

You're in luck - there is a "YARA and Script Library" on the community forums for sharing those kinds of scripts.

https://community.veeam.com/yara-and-script-library-67

Would be awesome to see your additions there.

[magcware]

Hello, in our case, we also had the same need to back up the app volume disks. For this purpose, we built two scripts that allow us to mount and unmount the VMDKs automatically.

We created an empty VM and then set up a backup job, selecting the VM. In the advanced options of the backup job, we chose the "mount_disk.ps1" script for the pre-script and the "umount_disk.ps1" script for the post-script.


It is required to install the VMware CLI tool on the Veeam server.

You can find the scripts at the following link.

https://github.com/mguerra89/VMware-App-Volumen-Veeam

[Mildur]

Hi Miguel

Welcome to the forum and thank you for sharing your script.

Best,
Fabian