Verifying vCloud Backups

[itsjacob]

I have a tenant with a number of servers and vApps in our cloud hosting infrastructure, and they are all backed up with vCloud-type backups. They would like us to perform some verification of their backups, but I see that SureBackup doesn't support vCloud backups. What are my options?

Could we rebuild the backups as vSphere backups rather than vCloud backups? What kind of feature changes would we be looking at? From my research so far, it looks like we would lose the ability to restore the vApps, but that's something we can live with (we also manage the servers for the tenant).

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

It depends how detailed the verification should be. With powershell you can automate for example file restores or instant VM recovery.

They can just place a canary (i.e. text file with current date every day) inside the VM and if you can restore it, then the backup must be fine.

Best regards,
Hannes

[itsjacob]

Thanks for the info, Hannes - I don't think the Powershell tools will cover this use case, but I can see them being helpful in the future.

We basically want to perform a dry-run disaster recovery scenario with at least the file server - how long will it take to restore the backup, and will it actually start up properly from the backup. It just occurred to me that SureBackup would test the latter scenario, but not the former since it uses the instant-recovery tools to mount and load the disks (if I understand SureBackup correctly). To test recovery time, would we just restore the backup into a different location?

[Gostev]

@Egor Yakovlev why SureBackup does not allow processing vCloud Director backups? They are regular vSphere VMs backup (plus vApp metadata).

[Egor Yakovlev]

Investigating.
So far it looks like a trivial task and according to first QA contacts feature was in a very low demand, thus skipped from the beginning.
Will update this thread as I collect more info.

[Egor Yakovlev]

vApp networking brings the greatest challenge to handle during SureBackup, however restoring machines outside vApp boundaries shall be achievable without big pain.
I have passed the request to the respectful team.
/Thanks!

[TheBrain82]

Hello all together. Any news regarding the "SureBackup" support for vCloud-type backups? Someone knows whether it will be supported with V12 ore newer/later? Or is there any workarround to get vcloud backups usable for SureBackup jobs so far?
Is there a ongoing future request?

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi, Oleg.

Feature request is ongoing, and we are evaluating possibilities to add this feature.
No ETA yet.

/Thanks!

[TheBrain82]

Hello Igor,

thanks for your clarification. Any chance to mention the feature request number in here, that it can be pushed an further by me and my colleagues?

Anyway, one more question regaring sure backups, because I could find anything inside of the manuals. Do you know, whether veeam backups of physical machines via agent can be mounted/used by sure backups jobs too?

It is not mentioned anywhere, but should be possible. True?

Cheers + Thanks.

[HannesK]

Hello,

Any chance to mention the feature request number in here

no need for a number... "pushing here" goes directly into Veeam Product Management (the forums are run mainly by product management).

Do you know, whether veeam backups of physical machines via agent can be mounted/used by sure backups jobs too?

not today. But that's something we plan to improve.

Best regards,
Hannes

[Egor Yakovlev]

Feature request ID will not be that useful, as it is an internal tracking number, however posting feedback in this thread will be sufficient for feature request to be updated, as product management team directly handles every post on Veeam R&D forums and I guarantee every voice will be counted.

As for the physical backups verification, there is a respectful feature request thread in a Server\Workstation Forum. Currently you cannot select such backups as a target for SureBackup jobs. We do see the need of a feature and working on it as well.

/Thanks!

[myFist]

+1 - it would be great to offer such a service for our vCloud customers.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Noted.

Can you, please, describe required case in more details?
Would you like to verify vApps as a whole unit, or simply pick VMs from it and launch in the labs?

/Thanks!