VMware and Hyper-V

Ubiquitous - an adjective that means "everywhere." A perfect word to describe VMs, and a perfect word to describe Zmanda. Why? Because we can protect your data everywhere.

Okay, maybe not quite everywhere - we're still working on that. But with Zmanda you can efficiently and economically back up the data that resides within your VMs hosted on VMware and Hyper-V hosts. Read on for the steps to do so.

Hyper-V

Hyper-V VM backups can be done in one of two ways:

  1. Saved State method - snapshots of appropriate volumes are taken by putting the VM into a saved state.

  2. Child VM Snapshot method - backs up the child VM using the VSS writers inside the Hyper-V child virtual machine.

Zmanda supports both methods. We recommend Child VM Snapshots for production systems, given that the saved state method requires downtime.

It is also important to note that you must install a Zmanda Windows Server Client on your VM host before you can back up the VMs. Click here for the steps to install and configure the Zmanda client.

Steps

  1. Login to the ZMC server, open the Sources tab, then click on Add Source

  1. Select Hypervisor in the window that appears. You will then see the screen pictured below. For detailed information on all of the configuration fields, click here. We will only cover the most important fields in this guide.

  1. In the Host Name field enter the IP address or name of the Windows Hyper-V hypervisor. After inputting the IP address, click the Discover button to discover all of the VMs hosted on the hypervisor.

  2. After clicking Discover you may select an individual virtual machine within the Hyper-V hypervisor to back up. This will back up the virtual hard disk files (.vhd or .vhdx), snapshot files (.avhd or .avhdx), and the initial store files of the virtual machine selected.

  3. Once the configurations are filled in, click SAVE

VMware ESXi and vCenter

Before adding VMware sources, you must have installed the required dependencies from VMware's website. If you choose to install Zmanda using the Backup Appliance or AWS/Azure Marketplace listings, these dependencies will come pre-installed. If you performed a binary installation, please refer this KB article for steps on how to install the required dependencies.

Please note that you must create an individual source for each VM that you would like to back up in your ESXi or vCenter instance. Contact [email protected] for a utility that will allow you to bulk enroll VMs. Otherwise, please follow the steps below to add your ESXi or vCenter VMs as sources in Zmanda.

Steps

  1. Login to the ZMC server, open the Sources section, and click on Add Source

2.Select Hypervisor in the window that appears. Then, in the Type dropdown, select VMware. The below-mentioned configuration window will appear. Following the image, we have included the key fields that you will need to fill out. For a detailed description of the other fields, please see this page.

ESX/vCenter: Here you may select vCenter Type if your VMs are clustered on multiple ESXi hosts managed by one central vCenter. You may also choose ESX Type if you do not have vCenter or do not wish to backup your VMs on a vCenter level.

ESX/vCenter Hostname: The IP address or hostname of the ESXi host whose guest VMs are being backed up, or the IP address or hostname of the VMware vCenter that manages the ESXi server(s). After discovery is complete, input the ESX credentials linked to the VM you have chosen.

VMWare Credentials: If you have selected vCenter, you will see two places to enter credentials: one for the vCenter server and the other for the ESXi node. The credentials are those used to log in to the front end of the VMware systems. With this, you have now successfully completed mapping your VMware install to Zmanda.

Quiesce: In order to use Quiesce, the VM must have the VM tools installed. A virtual machine's file system is also quiesced by VMware Tools when you do so.

The process of getting the data on a virtual machine into a state acceptable for backups is known as quiescing the guest file system. A quiesce process ensures that the guest file systems are consistently represented on a snapshot disk.

By following these steps, you successfully integrate your VMware setup with Zmanda for efficient backup management.

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