vSphere

Backup and Restore vDS Configurations

Manish Jha

You can export vSphere distributed switch and distributed port group configurations to a file. The file preserves valid network configurations, enabling distribution of these configurations to other deployments.

This functionality is available only with the vSphere Web Client 5.1 or later. However, you can export settings from any version of a distributed switch if you use the vSphere Web Client or later.

To export vSphere Distributed Switch configurations using the vSphere Web Client:
 
1: Browse to a distributed switch in the vSphere Web Client navigator and Right-click the distributed switch and click Settings > Export Configuration
 

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2: Select the Export the distributed switch configuration or Export the distributed switch configuration and all port groups option.

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3: Click Yes to save the configuration file to your local system. 

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Select a location your computer where you want to save the backup file and also provide a name for the backup file.

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You now have a configuration file that contains all settings for the selected distributed switch and distributed port group.… Read More

Troubleshooting vSphere Replication plugin missing from vCenter Server

Manish Jha

Last week I upgraded my VR appliance from 6.1.1 to 6.1.2 and registered VR to vCenter and to my surprise VR plugin was missing after I reloaded my vSphere Web Client. I tried logoff and login to Web Client a couple of times, but luck was not with my side. 

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While configuring VR, I saw a succesful configuration message, So easily I can rule out issues with VR > VC registration. 

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I even restarted Web Client service followed by bouncing vCenter server node but VR has decided to give up on me that day and still the plugin was missing from Web Client. This was a bit strange for me as I have deployed VR in my lab 3-4 times and never encountered this issue.

On googling the issue, I came across VMware KB-2149560 which clearly mentions that this is a known issue with VR 6.1.2. The KB has all the steps listed in order to fix the issue. … Read More

vSphere Data Protection-Part 5: Configuring Backup Replication

Manish Jha

In last post of this series we learnt how to configure a backup verification job and test wether or not a taken backup is restoreable. In this post we will learn how to configure data backup replication so that in case of disaster, if source site is completely down,even then data can be restored from secondary location.

If you accidently landed on this post and have missed earlier post of this series, you can read them from below links:

1: Introduction to vSphere Data Protection

2: Installing & Configuring vSphere Data Protection

3: Backup And Restore VM’s using VDP

4: Configure a Backup Verification job

Lets get started with some theoretical concepts about replication before jumping into lab and actually configuring and testing it. 

About VDP Replication

Replication enables you to avoid data loss if the source VDP appliance fails because copies of the backups are available on the destination target. … Read More

vSphere Data Protection-Part 4: Configure a Backup Verification job

Manish Jha

In last post of this series, we had a look on how to take backup and restore of VM’s using VDP and how to clone/edit existing backup jobs.

In this post we will discuss about how to configure a backup verification job to ensure integrity of backups taken by VDP. 

If you accidently landed on this post and have missed earlier post of this series, you can read them from below links:

1: Introduction to vSphere Data Protection

2: Installing & Configuring vSphere Data Protection

3: Backup And Restore VM’s using VDP

Automatic Backup Verification (ABV)
Automatic Backup Verification (ABV) is a scheduled or on-demand mechanism for verification of backups that ensures the integrity of restore points. ABV has the following characteristics:

  • Backups are restored to a temporary virtual machine with the following naming convention: VDP_VERIFICATION_<vm-name> -<unique number>
  • Backups are restored with no network conflicts, because the NIC is always disabled during the ABV operation.
… Read More

vSphere Data Protection-Part 3: Backup And Restore

Manish Jha

In previous post of this series we deployed the VDP appliance and also had a look on some of the basic configuration steps. Now its time to test how VDP works. 

If you accidently landed on this post and have missed earlier post of this series, you can read them from below links:

1: Introduction to vSphere Data Protection

2: Installing & Configuring vSphere Data Protection

Lets jump into lab and see how backup and restore works with VDP.

Before actually starting with creating any new backup/restore job, I want to first emphasize on the backup window configuration.

Backup and Maintenance Window

Bt default VDP starts taking backup of virtual machine at 8 PM and it has a backup window of 12 hours i.e from 08 PM to 08 AM. Modify this backup window as per business hours of your organization. 

When backup windows completes, VDP performs testing the backup to see if the taken backups are a good candidate when it comes to restoring stuffs.… Read More

vSphere Data Protection-Part 2: Installation & Configuration

Manish Jha

In last post of this series we discussed about VDP and its capabilities. We also discussed about VDP architecture and different deployment options available. In this post we will learn how to install and configure VDP. Lets get started.

Requirements for installing VDP

Make sure your infrastructure meets following requiremnts met before deploying VDP:

  • A static IP address is required for the VDP appliance and any additional proxy appliances.
  • DNS entries created ahead of time for forward and reverse lookup.
  • Ensure enough capacity is available on the datastore where backups will reside.
  • Editions of vSphere Essentials Plus and above (or vSphere with Operations Management / vCloud Suite) include licensing for vSphere Data Protection.
  • The vCenter Server and attached ESXi hosts must be configured with an NTP server. 
  • vCenter Server 5.5 or higher. If you are using vCenter 5.5 U3 and want to deploy VDP 6.1, 6.1.1, or 6.1.2, then see VMWare KB-2146825
  • Esxi host v5.1 or higher.
… Read More

vSphere Data Protection-Part 1: Introduction

Manish Jha

I am now in final legs of my VCAP6-Deploy exam prepration and objective 7.2 revolves all around VDP. Since I have no prior experience with VDP, this is the best time for me to explore this product.

I have broken down this series in various part so that the posts do not get too lengthy and this is the first part where we will be discussing about what VDP is and what it offers when it comes to backing up and recovering vSphere deployments. 

What is vSphere Data Protection (VDP)?

vSphere Data Protection is a backup and recovery solution designed for vSphere environments which is powered by EMC Avamar. It provides agentless, image-level virtual-machine backups to disk. It also provides application-aware protection for business-critical Microsoft applications (such as Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint) along with WAN-efficient, encrypted backup data replication. 

Capabilities of vSphere Data Protection

The key capabilities of VDP are (not limited to):

  • Agent-less virtual machine backup and restore that reduces complexity and deployment time
  • Integration with EMC Data Domain for additional scale, efficiency, and reliability
  • Flexibility to restore replicated backup data at both the source and target locations
  • Automated backup verification that provides the highest level of confidence in backup data integrity
  • Appliance and backup data protection via a checkpoint-and-rollback mechanism
  • File Level Restore (FLR), which enables granular file and folder restoration without the need for an agent in Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines
  • Significantly reduced backup data disk space requirements using Avamar variable-length deduplication technology
  • VDP make use of vSphere Storage APIs and Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technique to reduce load on the vSphere host infrastructure and minimize backup window requirements
  • Reliable, efficient replication of backup data between vSphere Data Protection appliances for redundancy and offsite data protection

Consult this whitepaper by VMware to know more about these capabilities in greater details and also what other capabilities lies within VDP.… Read More

Distributed Switch Port Group Bindings

Manish Jha

In a vSphere environment where vDS is being used for networking connectivity, there are several options available for what should be the type of port binding that is to be used for a portgroup. Have you ever wondered which Port Binding setting is most suitable for the distributed portgroups to get optimal performance? 

In this post we will be talking about some use cases for using different type of port bindings with vDS.

There are 3 types of Port Binding that is available at portgroup level

  1. Static Binding
  2. Dynamic Binding
  3. Ephemeral Binding

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We will discuss about these one by one.

Static Binding

When you connect a virtual machine to a port group configured with static binding, a port is immediately assigned and reserved for it, guaranteeing connectivity at all times. The port is disconnected only when the virtual machine is removed from the port group. You can connect a virtual machine to a static-binding port group only through vCenter Server.… Read More

Network IO Control in vSphere 6

Manish Jha

In this post we will discuss about what is NIOC and why we need it. We will also configure NIOC in lab. 

What is Network IO Control (NIOC)?

Network I/O Control (NIOC) was first introduced with vSphere 4.1 and it is a vDS feature that allows a vSphere administrator to prioritize different type of network traffic by making use of Resource pools and shares/limits etc. NIOC does the same for network tarffic which SIOC does for storage traffic.

What problem NIOC is solving?

In old days physical servers were equipped with as many as 8 (or more) ethernet cards and administrators (as a best practice) configured vSphere to use dedicated NIC for passing various network traffic like management traffic or vMotion or fault tolerance. Managing these many physical cables were a bit cumbersome.

Modern day servers addressed this issue by introducing servers with support for 10 GBPS/40 GBPS network speed and these servers have only 2 NIC’s and all the traffic is passed via these 2 NIC’s.… Read More

vSwitch NIC Teaming and Network Failure Detection Policies

Manish Jha

What is NIC Teaming and why you need it?

Uplinks is what provides connectivity between a vSwitch and a physical  switch. This uplinks passes all the traffic generated by virtual machines or the vmkernel adapters. 

But what happens when that physical network adapter fails, when the cable connecting that uplink to the physical network fails, or the upstream physical switch to which that uplink is connected fails? With a single uplink, network connectivity to the entire vSwitch and all of its ports or port groups is lost. This is where NIC teaming comes in.

NIC teaming means that we are taking multiple physical NICs on a given ESXi host and combining them into a single logical link that provides bandwidth aggregation and redundancy to a vSwitch. NIC teaming can be used to distribute load among the available uplinks of the team.

Below diagram illustrates vSwitch connectivity to physical world using 2 uplinks.… Read More