vSphere Data Protection

Administration Guide
vSphere Data Protection 6.1

This document supports the version of each product listed and

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EN-001795-00

vSphere Data Protection Administration Guide

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Contents

1 Understanding vSphere Data Protection 13

Introduction to vSphere Data Protection 14
Benefits of VDP 14
VDP Functionality 15
Image Level Backup and Restore 16
Single VMDK Backup and Restore 16
Guest-level Backup and Restore 16
Replication 17
File Level Recovery 17
Customer Experience Improvement Program 17
VDP Architecture 17

2 VDP Installation and Configuration 21

vSphere Data Protection Capacity Requirements 22
Software Requirements 22
Hardware Versions and Migration 22
vSphere Hosts and vSphere Flash Read Cache Compatibility and Performance
Unsupported Disk Types 22
Unsupported Virtual Volumes 23
System Requirements 23
VDP System Requirements 23
IPv6 Requirements 23
Preinstallation Configuration 23
DNS Configuration 23
NTP Configuration 24
vCenter Hosts and Clusters View 24
User Account Configuration 24
VDP Best Practices 26
General Best Practices 26
Deployment Best Practices 26
HotAdd Best Practices 27
Storage Capacity for Initial VDP Deployment 27
Sizing 27
Monitoring VDP Capacity 28
VDP Installation 29
Deploying the OVF Template 29
Initial Configuration 30

22

3 VDP Appliance Migration 33

Migrating the VDP Appliance from 5.8.x or Later to 6.1

34

4 Post-Installation Configuration of VDP Appliance 35

About the VDP Configure Utility 36
Viewing Status 36
Starting and Stopping Services 37
Collecting VDP Logs or Diagnostic Information 38
Modifying Configuration Settings 40
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Network Settings 40
vCenter Server Registration 40
Rolling Back an Appliance 41
Emergency Restore 42
Automatic Host Detection 44
Refreshing Restore Points 44
Reconnecting the Host to the vCenter 44

5 Securing Communication between VDP and vCenter 45

Replacing the VDP Certificate 46
Authenticating the VDP Server for Secured Communications 47
Securing the VDP Appliance Communication with the vCenter Server 48
Securing the Proxy Communication with the vCenter Server 49

6 Configuring VDP 51
Login Security 52
Configuring the Customer Experience Improvement Program 52
Configuring and Monitoring 53
Viewing Backup Appliance Configuration 53
Editing the Backup Window 55
Configuring the Email Notifications and Reports 55
Viewing the User Interface Log 57
Running an Integrity Check 57
Monitoring VDP Activity 58
Viewing Recent Tasks 58
Viewing Alarms 59
Viewing the Event Console 60
Persisted and Pop-up Messages to Show the Capacity Usage Issue
VDP Shutdown and Startup Procedures 60

60

7 Proxies 61
Proxy Overview 62
Considerations Before Deploying an External Proxy 62
Deployment of External Proxies 62
Number of Proxies to Deploy and Proxy Throughputs per Proxy 62
Managing Proxy Throughput 63
External Proxy Support 64
Adding an External Proxy 65
Disabling the Internal Proxy 66
(Optional) Configuring Proxy Certificate Authentication 66
Monitoring External Proxy Health Status 67
Health Status Criteria 67
External Proxy Logs 67

8 Storage Management 69
Creating New Storage 70
Minimum Storage Performance 71
Attaching Existing VDP Disks 72
Detaching and Reattaching Storage 73
Viewing the Storage Configuration 74
Enabling the Seek Test 75
Changing the Configuration File to Enable the Seek Test 75

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9 Data Domain Integration 77

VDP and Data Domain System Integration 78
Architecture Overview 78
VDP Client Support 78
Best Practices 79
Data Domain Limitations 79
Backup 79
Restore 80
Security - Encryption 80
Data Migration 80
Pre-integration Requirements 80
Network Throughput 80
Network Configuration 81
NTP Configuration 81
Licensing 81
Port Usage and Firewall Requirements 81
Capacity 81
Data Domain System Streams 82
Existing Backup Products in Use with Data Domain 82
Preparing the Data Domain system for VDP Integration 82
Adding a Data Domain System 83
Editing the Data Domain System 85
Deleting the Data Domain System from the VDP Appliance 85
Backups with VDP and Data Domain 87
How Backups Work with VDP and Data Domain 87
Where Backup Data is Stored 87
How VDP Appliance Manages Backup Data 87
Supported Backup Types 88
Canceling and Deleting Backups 88
Selecting a Data Domain Target for Backups 88
Replication Control 88
Replication Data Flow 89
Replication Schedule 89
Replication Configuration 89
Replication Monitoring with VDP 89
Server Maintenance Activity Monitoring 89
Restoring Avamar Checkpoint backups from Data Domain systems 90
Assumptions for the Restore Operation 90
Performing the Checkpoint Restore 90
Monitoring Data Domain from the VDP Appliance 91
Monitoring by Using the vSphere Web Client 92
Monitoring by Using the VDP Configuration Utility 92
Reclaiming Storage on a Full Data Domain System 93
Common Problems and Solutions 94
Backup Fails if the Data Domain System is Offline 94
Rolling Back after Deleting a Data Domain System 95

10 VDP Disk Expansion 97

Prerequisites 98
VMFS Heap Size Recommendations 98
Performing Disk Expansion 99
Viewing the Storage Configuration 100
Performance Analysis 101
Running the Performance Analysis Test 101

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Disk Expansion with Essentials Plus 101

11 Using VDP 103

Accessing VDP 104
Accessing the VDP Appliance by Using CLI 104
Useful Commands 104
Understanding the VDP User Interface 105
Switching VDP Appliances 106
VDP User Interface 106
Viewing Information from the Reports Tab 106
Refresh 106
Task Failures Tab 107
Job Details Tab 108
Unprotected Clients Tab 108

12 Managing Backups 111

Backup Jobs 112
Choosing the Virtual Machines 112
Identifying retired virtual machines 112
Specifying the Backup Schedule 113
Setting the Retention Policy 113
Creating a Full Image Backup Job 114
Creating a Backup Job on Individual Disks 115
Unsupported disk types 116
Limitation 116
Migration on Individual Disks 117
Viewing Status and Backup Job Details 117
Editing a Backup Job 117
Cloning a Backup Job 117
Deleting a Backup Job 117
Enabling or Disabling a Backup Job 118
Running Existing Backup Jobs Immediately 118
Locking and Unlocking a Backup 119
Migrating Backup Jobs from VDP to Avamar 119
Guidelines 119
Recommendations 119
Prerequisites 120
Procedure 120
Troubleshooting 121

13 Automatic Backup Verification 123

About Automatic Backup Verification 124
Limitations 124
Best Practices 124
Creating a New Backup Verification Job 125
Editing a Backup Verification Job 127
Cloning a Backup Verification Job 127
Executing and Running a Backup Verification Job 127
Monitoring Backup Verification 128
Enabling and Disabling a Backup Verification Job 128
Deleting a Backup Verification Job 128

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14 Managing Restores 129

Restore Operations 130
Limitations 130
Selecting Backups to Restore 130
Filtering for List of Backups 131
Restores when Snapshots Are Present 131
Restoring Image Backups to the Original Location 131
Restoring Image Backups to a New Location 133
Disabling the vMotion Feature Before Performing Restores to a New Location 134
Restoring Backups to Individual SCSI Disks 134
Deleting a Backup from the Restore Tab 135
Clearing all Selected Backups from the Restore Tab 135

15 Replication 137
Replication Jobs 138
Replication Compatibility 138
Replication and Data Domain 140
Best Practices for Replication 140
Limitations 141
Defining Backup Types for a Replication Job 141
Creating a Replication Job 141
Managing Destinations 145
Editing a Replication Job 145
Cloning a Replication Job 145
Deleting a Replication Job 146
Enabling or Disabling a Replication Job 146
Viewing Status and Replication Job Details 146
Running Existing Replication Jobs Immediately 146
Replication Back to the Source 146
Node Structure for Recovered Backups 146
Node Structure of Backups Replicated Again 146
Replication Destinations 147
Replication Recovery Compatibility 147
Enabling or Disabling Replication Recovery 148
Replication Recovery 148
Multi-Tenancy 149

16 Using File Level Restore 151

Introduction to the VDP Restore Client 152
LVM and EXT Support 152
File Level Restore Limitations 152
Unsupported VMDK Configurations 153
Unsupported Windows Configurations 153
Logging in to the Restore Client 153
Basic Login 153
Advanced Login 154
Mounting Backups 155
Filtering Backups 155
Navigating Mounted Backups 155
Performing File Level Restores 155
Using the Restore Client in Basic Login Mode 155
Using the Restore Client in Advanced Login Mode 156
Monitoring Restores 157

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17 VDP Application Support 159

VDP Application Support 160
Installing Application Agents 160
Checking the User Account Control Setting on Microsoft Windows 160
Installing VDP Clients when UAC is Enabled 160
Backing Up and Restoring Microsoft SQL Servers 161
Microsoft SQL Server Options 161
Hardware Requirements 161
Microsoft SQL Server Support 161
Installing VDP for SQL Server Client 162
Configuring the Cluster Client in a Failover Cluster 163
Configuring the Cluster Client for an AlwaysOn Availability Group 164
Creating Backup Jobs for Microsoft SQL Servers 166
Restoring Backups of Microsoft SQL Servers 168
Monitoring Client Activity 169
Uninstalling the VDP Plug-in for SQL Server 170
Backing Up and Restoring Microsoft Exchange Servers 170
Microsoft Exchange Server Options 170
Microsoft Exchange Server Support 170
Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Requirement 171
Hardware Requirements 171
Unsupported Microsoft Exchange Servers 171
Installing VDP for Exchange Server Client 171
Installing in a DAG or Cluster Environment 172
Configuring an Exchange DAG Client 172
Using the VMware Exchange Backup User Configuration Tool 174
Manually Configuring the VDP Backup Service 175
Creating Backup Jobs for Microsoft Exchange Servers 175
Restoring Backups of Microsoft Exchange Servers 177
Suspending Replication in a DAG or Cluster 178
Monitoring Client Activity 179
Uninstalling the Exchange Server Plug-in 179
Granular Level Recovery on Microsoft Exchange Servers 179
Backing Up and Restoring Microsoft SharePoint Servers 182
Hardware Requirements 182
Supported Microsoft SharePoint Servers 182
Installing VDP for SharePoint Server Client 183
Creating Backup Jobs for Microsoft SharePoint Servers 184
Restoring Backups of Microsoft SharePoint Servers 185
Monitoring Client Activity 185
Uninstalling the VDP Plug-in for SharePoint Server 185

18 VDP Disaster Recovery 187

Basic Disaster Recovery 188

A VDP Port Usage 189

B Minimum Required vCenter User Account Permissions 193
C VDP Troubleshooting 197
Troubleshooting the VDP Appliance Installation Issues 198
Troubleshooting the Installer Package Issues 198
Troubleshooting the VDP Management Issues 198
Troubleshooting the VDP Backup Issues 199
Troubleshooting the VDP Backup Performance Issues 201
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Troubleshooting the VDP Restore Issues 201

Troubleshooting the VDP Replication Issues 203
Troubleshooting the VDP Integrity Check Issues 203
Troubleshooting the Automatic Backup Verification Issues 204
Troubleshooting the Restore Client (File Level Recovery) Issues 204
Troubleshooting the VDP Licensing Issues 206
Troubleshooting the VDP Appliance Issues 206
Troubleshooting the VDP Microsoft Exchange Server Issues 207
Troubleshooting the VDP Microsoft SQL Server Issues 208
Troubleshooting the VDP Microsoft SharePoint Server Issues 209
Troubleshooting the Storage Capacity Issues 209
Monitoring the VDP Local Storage Capacity 209
Monitoring the Data Domain Storage Capacity 209
Monitoring the Capacity Issues 210
General Steps to Free Storage Space 210
Accessing the VDP Knowledge Base Articles 211

Index

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About This Book

The vSphere Data Protection Administration Guide describes how to install and manage backups for small and
medium businesses. This guide also includes troubleshooting scenarios and recommendations for resolution.

Intended Audience
This book is for anyone who wants to provide backup solutions by using vSphere Data Protection (VDP). The
information in this book is for experienced Windows or Linux system administrators who are familiar with
virtual machine technology and datacenter operations.

Typographical conventions
VMware uses the following type style conventions in this document:
Bold

Use for names of interface elements, such as names of windows, dialog boxes,
buttons, fields, tab names, key names, and menu paths (what the user
specifically selects or clicks)

Italic

Use for full titles of publications referenced in text

Monospace

Use for:

System output, such as an error message or script

System code

Pathnames, filenames, prompts, and syntax

Commands and options

Monospace
italic

Use for variables

Monospace
bold

Use for user input

[]

Square brackets enclose optional values

Vertical bar indicates alternate selections , that is, or

{}

Braces enclose content that the user must specify, such as x or y or z

...

Ellipses indicate nonessential information omitted from the example

VMware Technical Publications Glossary

VMware Technical Publications provides a glossary of terms that might be unfamiliar to you. For definitions
of terms as they are used in VMware technical documentation, go to http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.

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vSphere Data Protection Administration Guide

Document Feedback
VMware welcomes your suggestions for improving our documentation. Send your feedback to
[email protected].

Technical Support and Education Resources

The following sections describe the technical support resources available to you. To access the current versions
of other VMware books, go to http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.

Online Support
To use online support to submit technical support requests, view your product and contract information, and
register your products, go to http://www.vmware/support/phone_support.html.

Support Offerings
To find out how VMware support offerings can help meet your business needs, go to
http://www.vmware.com/support/services.

VMware Professional Services

VMware Education Services courses offer extensive hands-on labs, case study examples, and course materials
designed to be used as on-the-job reference tools. Courses are available onsite, in the classroom, and live
online. For onsite pilot programs and implementation best practices, VMware Consulting Services provides
offerings to help you assess, plan, build, and manage your virtual environment. To access information about
education classes, certification programs, and consulting services, go to http://www.vmware.com/services.

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Understanding vSphere Data

Protection

This chapter includes the following topics:

Introduction to vSphere Data Protection on page 14

Benefits of VDP on page 14

VDP Functionality on page 15

Replication on page 17

File Level Recovery on page 17

Customer Experience Improvement Program on page 17

VDP Architecture on page 17

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vSphere Data Protection Administration Guide

Introduction to vSphere Data Protection

vSphere Data Protection (VDP) is a robust, simple to deploy, disk-based backup and recovery solution that is
powered by EMC. VDP is fully integrated with the VMware vCenter server and enables centralized and
efficient management of backup jobs while storing backups in deduplicated destination storage locations.
The VMware vSphere web client interface is used to select, schedule, configure, and manage backups and
recoveries of virtual machines.
During a backup, VDP creates a quiesced snapshot of the virtual machine. Deduplication is automatically
performed with every backup operation.
The following terms are used throughout this document in the context of backup and recovery.

A datastore is a virtual representation of a combination of underlying physical storage resources in the

datacenter. A datastore is the storage location (for example, a physical disk, a RAID, or a SAN) for virtual
machine files.

Changed Block Tracking (CBT) is a VMkernel feature that keeps track of the storage blocks of virtual
machines as they change over time. The VMkernel keeps track of block changes on virtual machines,
which enhances the backup process for applications that have been developed to take advantage of
VMwares vStorage APIs.

File Level Recovery (FLR) allows local administrators of protected virtual machines to browse and mount
backups for the local machine. From these mounted backups, the administrator can then restore
individual files. FLR is accomplished using the VDP Restore Client.

VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) enables backup software to perform centralized
virtual machine backups without the disruption and overhead of running backup tasks from inside each
virtual machine.

Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) is a file or set of files that appears as a physical disk drive to a guest
operating system. These files can be on the host machine or on a remote file system.

VDP appliance is a purpose-built virtual appliance for VDP.

Benefits of VDP
The benefits of vSphere Data Protection (VDP) are as follows:

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Provides fast and efficient data protection for all of your virtual machines, even those powered off or
migrated between vSphere hosts.

Significantly reduces disk space consumed by backup data using patented variable-length deduplication
across all backups.

Reduces the cost of backing up virtual machines and minimizes the backup window by using Change
Block Tracking (CBT) and VMware virtual machine snapshots.

Allows for easy backups without the need for third-party agents installed in each virtual machine.

Uses a simple, straight-forward installation as an integrated component within vSphere, which is

managed by a web portal.

Provides direct access to VDP configuration integrated into the vSphere web client.

Protects backups with checkpoint and rollback mechanisms.

Provides simplified recovery of Windows and Linux files with end-user initiated file-level recoveries from
a web-based interface.

By using emergency restore, VDP provides a method to restore virtual machines when either the vCenter
server is unavailable or the user is unable to access the VDP user interface by using the vSphere web client.

Through replication, enables you to avoid data loss if the source VDP appliance fails because copies of the
backups are available on a destination target.

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Deduplication Store Benefits

Enterprise data is highly redundant, with identical files or data stored within and across systems (for
example, OS files or documents sent to multiple recipients). Edited files also have tremendous
redundancy with previous versions. Traditional backup methods magnify this by storing all of the
redundant data over and over again. vSphere Data Protection uses patented deduplication technology to
eliminate redundancy at both the file and the subfile data segment level.

Variable vs. Fixed-Length Data Segments

A key factor in eliminating redundant data at a segment (or subfile) level is the method for determining
segment size. Fixed-block or fixed-length segments are commonly employed by snapshot and some
deduplication technologies. Unfortunately, even small changes to a dataset (for example, inserting data at
the beginning of a file) can change all fixed-length segments in a dataset, despite the fact that very little of
the dataset has been changed. vSphere Data Protection uses an intelligent variable-length method for
determining segment size that examines the data to determine logical boundary points, which increases
efficiency.

Logical Segment Determination

VDP uses a patented method for segment size determination designed to yield optimal efficiency across
all systems. VDPs algorithm analyzes the binary structure of a dataset to determine segment boundaries
that are context-dependent. Variable-length segments average 24 KB in size and are further compressed
to an average of 12 KB. By analyzing the binary structure within the VMDK file, VDP works for all file
types and sizes and deduplicates the data.

VDP Functionality
The vSphere Data Protection product, starting with version 6.0, includes all features that were previously
included in VDP Advanced. VDP functionality is included as part of vSphere Essential+ and does not require
a specific license key. The following table lists VDP functionality.
Table 1-1. VDP Functionality
Feature

VDP

Virtual machines supported per VDP appliance

Up to 400

Number of appliances supported per vCenter

Up to 20

Available storage size

0.5 TB, 1 TB, 2 TB, 4 TB, and 8 TB

Support for image level backups

Yes

Support for individual disk backups

Yes

Support for image level restore jobs

Yes

Support for image level replication jobs

Yes

Support for direct to host recovery

Yes

Support for detachable/remountable data partitions

Yes

Support for file level recovery (FLR)

Yes, supports LVM and EXT4 with external proxies

Support for guest-level backups and restores of Microsoft

Exchange Servers, SQL Servers, and SharePoint Servers

Yes

Support for application-level replication

Yes

Support for backing up to a Data Domain system

Yes

Ability to restore to a granular level on Microsoft Servers

Yes

Support for automatic backup verification (ABV)

Yes

Support for external proxies

Yes, up to 24 simultaneous virtual machines if the

maximum number of 8 external proxies are deployed.

Support for Customer Experience Improvement Program

Yes

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Image Level Backup and Restore

vSphere Data Protection creates image level backups, which are integrated with the vStorage API for Data
Protection, a feature set within vSphere to offload the backup processing overhead from the virtual machine
to the VDP appliance. The VDP appliance communicates with the vCenter server to make a snapshot of a
virtual machines .vmdk files. Deduplication takes place within the appliance by using a patented
variable-length deduplication technology.
To support the large scale and continually expanding size of many VMware environments, each VDP
appliance can simultaneously back up to 8 virtual machines if the internal proxy is used, or back up to 24
virtual machines if the maximum number of 8 external proxies are deployed with the VDP appliance.
To increase the efficiency of image level backups, VDP utilizes the Changed Block Tracking (CBT) feature,
which greatly reduces the backup time of a given virtual machine image and provides the ability to process a
large number of virtual machines within a particular backup window.
By leveraging CBT during restores, VDP offers fast and efficient recoveries of virtual machines to their original
location. During a restore process, VDP uses CBT to determine which blocks have changed since the last
backup. The use of CBT reduces data transfer within the vSphere environment during a recovery operation
and more importantly reduces the recovery time.
Additionally, VDP automatically evaluates the workload between both restore methods (full image restore or
a recovery leveraging CBT) and performs the method resulting in the fastest restore time. This is useful in
scenarios where the change rate since the last backup in a virtual machine being restored is very high and the
overhead of a CBT analysis operation would be more costly than a direct full-image recovery. VDP determines
which method results in the fastest image recovery times for virtual machines in the environment.
VDP supports backups of a vCenter server appliance (VCSA) by using an embedded Platform Service
Controller.
To perform the backups of a vCenter server and a VCSA by using an external Platform Services Controller,
perform the steps that http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2110294 describes.

Single VMDK Backup and Restore

A full image backup job includes all disks in the entire virtual machine (VM) in a single image backup.
Individual disk backup jobs allow you to select only the disks you need. An image level backup of a VM with
unsupported disk types does not include the unsupported disk types because of snapshot limitations.
When you restore a VM, the VDP appliance restores the VM configuration file (.vmx), which results in the
creation of all VMDKs from the original VM. If any of the original VMDKs were not backed up, the restore
process creates them as provisional VMDKs. The VM may not be fully functional in this case. The protected
VMDKs, however, can be accessed from the restore.
See Creating a Backup Job on Individual Disks on page 115 for instructions on backing up individual disks.

Guest-level Backup and Restore

VDP supports guest-level backups for Microsoft SQL Servers, Exchange Servers, and Share Point Servers. With
guest-level backups, client agents (VMware VDP for SQL Server Client, VMware VDP for Exchange Server
Client, or VMware VDP for SharePoint Server Client) are installed on the SQL Server, Exchange Server, or
SharePoint Server in the same manner that backup agents are typically installed on physical servers.
The advantages of VMware guest-level backups are:

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Provides additional application support for Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, or
SharePoint Server inside the virtual machines

Support for backing up and restoring entire Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, or
SharePoint Servers or selected databases

Identical backup methods for physical and virtual machines

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See VDP Application Support on page 159 for additional information on guest-level backup and restore.

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.
Replication jobs determine which backups are replicated, and when and to where the backups are replicated.
With scheduled or ad hoc replication jobs for clients that have no restore points, only the client is replicated
on the destination server. Backups created with VDP 6.0 or later can be replicated to another VDP appliance,
to an EMC Avamar server, or to a Data Domain system. If the target VDP appliance is 5.8 or earlier, then the
target must be VDP Advanced or Replication Target Identity.
See Chapter 15, Replication, on page 137 for additional information on Replication.

File Level Recovery

File Level Recovery (FLR) allows local administrators of protected virtual machines to browse and mount
backups for the local machine. From these mounted backups, the administrator can then restore individual
files. FLR is accomplished by using the VDP Restore Client.
See Chapter 16, Using File Level Restore, on page 151 for additional information on FLR.

Customer Experience Improvement Program

The Customer Experience Improvement Program is an option that enables you to send encrypted
configuration and usage information about the VDP environment to VMware servers for analysis. The
purpose of the Customer Experience Improvement Program is to help VDP improve the quality, reliability, and
functionality of the VDP product. The Customer Experience Improvement Program is not enabled by default.
During installation, you can enable the Customer Experience Improvement Program from the Product
Improvement page in the VDP Configure Utility. You can also enable or disable this option any time after the
installation of VDP from the post-installation UI. Refer to Configuring the Customer Experience
Improvement Program on page 52 for more information.

VDP Architecture
VDP can be deployed to any storage supported by vSphere. Supported storage includes VMFS, NFS, and
VSAN datastores. Management of VDP is performed by using the vSphere web client.
Backup data is deduplicated and stored in the .vmdk files that make up the VDP virtual appliance or a
supported Data Domain appliance.

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The following figure illustrates the general architecture of VDP:

Figure 1-1. VDP general architecture

VDP general architecture consists of the following components:

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vCenter server 5.5 or later

VDP virtual appliance that is installed on any vSphere host version 5.1 or later

vSphere web client

Application backup agents

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The following figure illustrates the detailed architecture of VDP:

Figure 1-2. VDP detailed architecture

VDP detailed architecture consists of the following important components:

MCS: Management Console Server (MCS) provides centralized administration such as scheduling,
monitoring, and management for the VDP server, and runs the server-side processes that the
administrator uses. The processes include all the Java processes and postgres (SQL) processes.
The corresponding log file for this component is /usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_log/mcserver.log.

AvAgent: Runs as a service within each proxy on the VDP appliance. It establishes and maintains
communication with MCS. AvAgent polls the MCS server every 15 seconds for incoming work orders. In
response to a work order, such as a backup or a restore, AvAgent spawns the AvVcbImage which in turn
calls AvTar.
The corresponding log file for this component is /usr/local/avamarclient/var-proxy-N/avagent.log.

AvVcbImage: Enables browsing, backing up, and restoring files and directories on vSphere Virtual
Machine File System (VMFS).
The corresponding log file for this component is
/usr/local/avamarclient/var-proxy-N/<Jobname>-<EPOCH>-vmimagew.log.

AvTar: The primary process for backups and restores. AvTar communicates with GSAN.
The corresponding log file for this component is
/usr/local/avamarclient/var-proxy-N/<Jobname>-<EPOCH>-vmimagew_avtar.log.

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GSAN: Global Storage Area Network (GSAN) is a component of the VDP appliance. It is sometimes
referred to as the data server or the storage server.
The corresponding log file for this component is /data01/cur/gsan.log.

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VDP Installation and Configuration

This chapter includes the following topics:

vSphere Data Protection Capacity Requirements on page 22

Software Requirements on page 22

System Requirements on page 23

Preinstallation Configuration on page 23

VDP Best Practices on page 26

VDP Installation on page 29

Initial Configuration on page 30

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vSphere Data Protection Capacity Requirements

vSphere Data Protection (VDP) capacity requirements depend on a number of factors including:

Number of protected virtual machines

Amount of data contained in each protected virtual machine

Types of data being backed up (OS files, documents, and databases, for example)

Backup data retention period (daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly)

Data change rates

NOTE Assuming average virtual machine sizes, data types, data change rates, and a retention policy of 30
days, 1 TB of VDP backup data capacity supports approximately 25 virtual machines.

Software Requirements
VDP 6.1 requires the following software:

vCenter server 5.5 or later

VDP 6.1 supports the Linux-based vCenter server virtual appliance and the Windows-based vCenter
server.

vSphere web client

The following link provides information about current vSphere web browser support:
https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-60/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vsphere.install.doc%2FGUID-F
6D456D7-C559-439D-8F34-4FCF533B7B42.html&resultof=%22web%22%20%22client%22
Web browsers must be enabled with Adobe Flash Player 11.3 or later to access the vSphere web client and
VDP functionality.

vSphere host 5.0 or later

Hardware Versions and Migration

The virtual machines hardware version limits virtual machines from migrating to the older versions that are
configured on the newer versions of vSphere hosts. If the VDP appliance was migrated to a vSphere host that
was version 5.1 or earlier, it would not be functional.

vSphere Hosts and vSphere Flash Read Cache Compatibility and Performance
The VDP appliance that is deployed as a virtual machine with hardware version 7 enables backward
compatibility with vSphere 4.x hosts. The vSphere Flash Read Cache-backed disks are only available on
vSphere 5.x and later hosts, which expect a VM to have hardware version 10 or later. As a result, if you attempt
to perform an image level backup of a vSphere Flash Read Cache-backed disk by using the VDP appliance,
then the current configuration causes the appliance to use the network block device (NBD) protocol (instead
of HotAdd) as the transport mode, which adversely affects performance.

Unsupported Disk Types

22

When planning for backups, make sure the disks are supported by VDP. Currently, VDP does not support
the following virtual hardware disk types:

Independent

RDM Independent - Virtual Compatibility Mode

RDM Physical Compatibility Mode

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Chapter 2 VDP Installation and Configuration

Unsupported Virtual Volumes

The VDP appliance version 6.1 does not support backups and restores of virtual machines on Virtual Volumes
(VVOLs).

System Requirements
The following section lists the system requirements for VDP.

VDP System Requirements

VDP is available in the following configurations:

0.5 TB

1 TB

2 TB

4 TB

6 TB

8 TB

IMPORTANT After VDP is deployed the size can be increased.

VDP requires the following minimum system requirements:
Table 2-2. Minimum system requirements for VDP
0.5 TB

1 TB

2 TB

4 TB

6 TB

8 TB

Processors

Minimum four
2 GHz
processors

Minimum four
2 GHz
processors

Minimum four
2 GHz
processors

Minimum four
2 GHz
processors

Minimum
four 2 GHz
processors

Minimum
four 2 GHz
processors

Memory

4 GB

4 GB

4 GB

8 GB

10 GB

12 GB

Disk space

873 GB

1,600 GB

3 TB

6 TB

9 TB

12 TB

IPv6 Requirements
DNS servers that VDP uses in an IPv6 environment must only contain AAAA records for hostnames. The DNS
server must not contain both an A and an AAAA record with the same hostname.

Preinstallation Configuration
Before the VDP installation, complete the following preinstallation steps:

DNS Configuration on page 23

NTP Configuration on page 24

User Account Configuration on page 24

VDP Best Practices on page 26

DNS Configuration
The DNS server must support both forward and reverse lookup on the VDP and the vCenter.
Before you deploy VDP, you must add an entry to the DNS server for the VDP appliances IP address and Fully
Qualified Domain Names (FQDN). In addition, communication to DNS is required by VMware proxy nodes
(port 53) over both TCP and UDP protocols. Failure to set up DNS properly can cause many runtime or
configuration issues.

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To confirm that DNS is configured properly, run the following commands from the command prompt on the
vCenter server:

nslookup <FQDN_of_VDP>
The nslookup command returns the FQDN of the VDP appliance.

nslookup <FQDN_of_vCenter>
The nslookup command returns the FQDN of the vCenter server.

If the nslookup commands return the proper information, close the command prompt. If the nslookup
commands do not return the information you seek, you can manually add the VDP name and address to the
/etc/hosts file in the vCenter.

NTP Configuration
VDP leverages VMware Tools to synchronize time through NTP. All vSphere hosts and the vCenter server
must have NTP configured properly. The VDP appliance gets the correct time through vSphere and must not
be configured with NTP.
CAUTION Configuring NTP directly on the VDP appliance causes time synchronization errors.
See the ESXi and vCenter server documentation for more information about configuring NTP.

vCenter Hosts and Clusters View

The VDP appliance can work with folders and resource views that are created under the Hosts and Clusters
view. The Hosts and Clusters view in the vSphere web client enables you to perform the following tasks:

Configure user accounts

Create a snapshot

Mount the ISO image

Remove a snapshot

Revert back to a snapshot

Expand disks

Configure the VDP appliance system settings.

Remove the VDP appliance from the vCenter inventory.

Accessing the Host and Clusters view

1

From a web browser, access the vSphere web client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter_Server>:9443/vsphere-client/

Log in with administrative privileges.

Select vCenter > Hosts and Clusters.

User Account Configuration

Before the vCenter user account can be used with VDP, or before the SSO admin user can be used with VDP,
you must add these users as administrator on the vCenter root node. Users who inherit permissions from
group roles are not valid.
NOTE In high-security environments, you can restrict the vCenter user account permissions required to
configure and administer the VDP appliance. The account permission categories are listed in Minimum
Required vCenter User Account Permissions on page 193.

24

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Chapter 2 VDP Installation and Configuration

The following steps are used to configure the VDP user or SSO admin user using the vSphere web client.
1

From a web browser, access the vSphere web client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter_Server>:9443/vsphere-client/

Log in with administrative privileges.

Select vCenter > Hosts and Clusters.

On the left side of the page, click the vCenter server.

IMPORTANT Ensure that you select the vCenter from the root level of the tree structure (represented under
Hosts and Clusters). If you select the vCenter VM, the configuration fails.

Click the Manage tab, and then select Permissions.

Click the Add permission (+) icon.

Click Add.

From the Domain drop-down list, select domain, server, or VSPHERE.LOCAL.

NOTE: For vCenter versions 5.1 and earlier, the default domain is SYSTEM-DOMAIN.

Select the user who will administer VDP or be the SSO admin user, and then click Add.

10

Click OK.

11

From the Assigned Role list, select Administrator.

12

Confirm that the Propagate to child objects box is selected.

13

Click OK.

To verify that user is listed under Administrators, go to Home > Administration > Role Manager and click the
Administrator role. The user you just added should be listed to the right of that role.
IMPORTANT If the VDP backup user using the VDP Configure utility belongs to a domain account, use the
SYSTEM-DOMAIN\admin format in VDP-configure. If the username is entered in the format
admin@SYSTEM-DOMAIN format, tasks related to the backup job may not show up on the Recent Running
tasks.
IMPORTANT The domain account password cannot contain spaces.

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VDP Best Practices

The following best practices should be used when deploying, using, and monitoring a vSphere Data Protection
(VDP) appliance.

General Best Practices

Deploy the VDP appliance on shared VMFS5 or later to avoid block size limitations.

Make sure that all virtual machines are running hardware version 7 or later to support Change Block
Tracking (CBT).

Install VMware Tools on each virtual machine that VDP will back up. VMware Tools add additional
backup capability that quiesces certain processes on the guest OS before the backup. VMware Tools are
also required for some features used in File Level Restore.

When configuring the network for the VDP appliance and the vCenter, do not modify network address
information by using NAT or other configuration methods (firewall, IDS, or TSNR). When these
unsupported methods are deployed as part of the virtual network, some VDP functionality may not work
as designed.

Deployment Best Practices

The following should always be considered a best practice when deploying a VDP appliance:

Create a DNS record for the VDP appliance before deploying the appliance. Ensure both forward and
reverse lookup are enabled in DNS.

One of the last steps when deploying VDP is the option to run a storage performance analysis. Run this
analysis to verify the storage on which VDP is running meets or exceeds performance requirements. The
analysis could take from 30 minutes to a few hours to complete.

Place the VDP appliance on a separate datastore than where the protected VMs will reside.

When scheduling backup jobs, consider staggering the start times.

When applications such as, a database or an Exchange Server with high change rates are backed up,
interleave (optimize) them with the image level backups of a different VM that has the unstructured data.
The databases belong to the structured data and the image level backups belong to the unstructured data.
The databases generate more unique data that results in lower deduplication ratio, but the image level
backups have higher deduplication ratio. Interleaving the image level backups in between two
application backups puts less load on the deduplication engine that results in a better performance of
backups.

NOTE Generally do not perform the image level backups of an application or a VM that has a high change
rate because the snapshot processing can consume time, which impacts the performance.

26

Consider other processes that may be running. Try not to schedule replication or automatic backup
verification when backup jobs are running. If possible, schedule these jobs to run after the backup jobs
have completed, before the maintenance window opens.

An internal proxy must be activated, and is automatically activated, when an emergency restore operation
is performed.

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Chapter 2 VDP Installation and Configuration

HotAdd Best Practices

The HotAdd transport mechanism is recommended for faster backups and restores and less exposure to
network routing, firewall and SSL certificate issues. If you use the network block device (NBD) transport
mechanism instead of HotAdd, backup performance will be degraded.
The following mandatory requirements must be met for a disk to be mounted with HotAdd:

If you are using vSphere Host version 5.0, the host must be licensed for HotAdd. vSphere Host version
5.1 and later include this feature by default.

The VDP appliance is deployed on a vSphere host that has a path to the storage that contains the virtual
disks being backed up.

HotAdd is not used on IDE-configured virtual disks. I/O over the network negatively impacts
performance. Use SCSI virtual disks instead.

The total capacity of the VMFS volume, on which VDP resides, is equal to the size of the largest virtual
disk being backed up (free space can be less than this size).

The block size of the VMFS volume where VDP resides is the same or larger than the size of the largest
virtual disk being backed up.

The virtual machine being backed up must not have any independent virtual hard disk.

The virtual machine being backed up is in the same datacenter (vCenter server container object) as the
VDP appliance. HotAdd transport cannot cross the datacenter boundary.

The virtual machines and VMDKs in the vCenter server have the same name as those associated with the
virtual machine being backed up.

HotAdd does not work with virtual machines that use vSphere Flash Read Cache (vFlash).

For more information about HotAdd best practices, refer to the following Knowledge Base article:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2048138

Storage Capacity for Initial VDP Deployment

When a new vSphere Data Protection (VDP) appliance is deployed, the appliance typically fills rapidly for the
first few weeks. This is because nearly every client that is backed up contains unique data. VDP deduplication
is most effective when other similar clients have been backed up, or the same clients have been backed up at
least once.
After the initial backup, the appliance backs up less unique data during subsequent backups. When initial
backups are complete and the maximum retention periods are exceeded, it is possible to consider and measure
the ability of the system to store about as much new data as it frees each day. This is referred to as achieving
steady state capacity utilization. Ideal steady state capacity should be 80%.

Sizing
vSphere Data Protection sizing helps determine the VDP appliance size and number of appliances required
based on:

Number of and type of VMs (does the VM contain file system or database data?)

Amount of data

Retention periods (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly)

Typical change rate

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The following table shows examples for vSphere Data Protection sizing recommendations:
Table 2-3. Sample recommendations for vSphere Data Protection sizing
# of VMs

Data storage per

client

Retention:
daily

Retention:
weekly

Retention:
monthly

Retention:
yearly

Recommendation

25

20

30

1-0.5 TB

25

20

30

12

1 -2 TB

25

40

30

12

2 - 2 TB

50

20

30

1 - 1 TB

50

20

30

12

2 - 2 TB

50

40

30

12

3 -2 TB

100

20

30

1 - 2 TB

100

20

30

12

3 - 2 TB

100

40

30

12

6 - 2 TB

The recommendations above (note that these are only guidelines) are based on the following assumptions:

The VMs primarily contain file system data. If the VMs primarily contain database data, the deduplication
rates will be lower.

70% initial deduplication rate for file system data.

99.7% daily deduplication rate for file system data.

The annual growth rate is 5%.

IMPORTANT If you are unsure of the size of the appliance to deploy, it is better to use a larger vSphere Data
Protection datastore. Once an application has been deployed, the size of the datastore cannot change.

Monitoring VDP Capacity

You should proactively monitor VDP capacity. You can view VDP capacity through the VDP Reports tab,
Used Capacity (which is used to determine steady state). Refer to Viewing Information from the Reports Tab
on page 106 for more information.
Table 2-4 describes VDP behavior for key capacity thresholds:
Table 2-4. Capacity thresholds
Threshold

Value

Behavior

Capacity warning

80%

VDP issues a warning event.

Capacity error

95%

Tasks are not generated on vCenter for backup jobs when capacity is greater than
95% full.

Healthcheck limit

95%

Existing backups are allowed to complete but new backup activities are
suspended. VDP issues warning events.

Server read-only limit

100%

VDP transitions to the read-only mode by changing the appliance status to

Admin, and does not allow new data.

Once you exceed 80% capacity, use the following guidelines for capacity management:

28

Stop adding new virtual machines as backup clients.

Remove unnecessary restore points.

Delete jobs that are no longer needed.

Reassess retention policies to see if you can decrease retention policies

Consider adding additional VDP appliances and balance backup jobs between multiple appliances

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Chapter 2 VDP Installation and Configuration

VDP Installation
The vSphere Data Protection (VDP) installation is completed through two steps:

Deploying the OVF Template on page 29

Initial Configuration on page 30

Deploying the OVF Template

Prerequisites

vSphere host 5.0 or later.

vCenter server 5.5 or later.

Log in to the vCenter server from a vSphere web client to deploy the OVF template. If you are unable to
connect to the vSphere web client, confirm that the vSphere web client service is started.

The VDP appliance connects to a vSphere host using port 902. If there is a firewall between the VDP
appliance and the vSphere Host, port 902 must be open. See Chapter A, VDP Port Usage, on page 189,
for additional information on port usage.

The VMware Client Integration Plug-in must be installed on your browser. If it is not already installed, it
can be installed during the following procedure.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access the vSphere web client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter_Server>:9443/vsphere-client/

Log in with administrative privileges.

Select vCenter > Datacenters.

On the Objects tab, click Actions > Deploy OVF Template.

If prompted, allow and install the VMware Client Integration Plug-in.

Select the source where the VDP appliance is located. By default the File name dialog is set to OVF
Packages (*.ovf). From the drop-down box to the right of File name, select OVA Packages (*.ova).

Navigate to the location of the VDP appliance .ova file. Confirm that you select the appropriate file for the
datastore. Click Open.

After the VDP appliance .ova file is selected, click Next.

Review the template details and click Next.

10

On the Accept EULAs screen, read the license agreement, click Accept, and then click Next.

11

On the Select name and folder screen, type the name for the VDP appliance. When typing the name, use
the fully qualified domain name (FQDN), which the VDP configuration uses to find the VDP appliance in
the vCenter inventory. Do not change the VDP appliance name after installation.

12

Click the folder or datacenter where you want to deploy the VDP appliance, and then click Next.

13

On the Select a resource screen, select the host for the VDP appliance and click Next.

14

On the Select Storage screen, select the virtual disk format and select the location of the storage for the
VDP appliance. Click Next.

15

On the Setup networks screen, select the Destination Network for the VDP appliance and click Next.

16

In the Customize template screen, specify the Default Gateway, DNS, Network 1 IP Address, and
Network 1 Netmask. Confirm that the IP addresses are correct and match the entry in the DNS server.
Setting incorrect IP addresses in this dialog box will require the .ova to be redeployed. Click Next.

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NOTE The VDP appliance does not support DHCP. A static IP address is required.
17

On the Ready to complete screen, confirm that all of the deployment options are correct. Check Power on
after deployment and click Finish.

vCenter deploys the VDP appliance and boots into the install mode. You can monitor Recent Tasks to
determine when the deployment completes.

Initial Configuration
Prerequisites

Ensure that the VDP .ovf template was deployed successfully. See Deploying the OVF Template on
page 29 for more information.

You must be logged into the vCenter server from the vSphere web client.

Enough free disk space exists on the datastore. When an optional performance analysis test is run during
initial configuration of the appliance, 41 GB per disk per datastore is required (for example, if three disks
are placed on the same datastore, 123 GB of free space is required). If there is not enough space available,
the test reports a value of 0 for all of the read, write, and seek (optional) tests and gives a final status of
insufficient space.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access the vSphere web client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter_Server>:9443/vsphere-client/

Log in with administrative privileges.

Select vCenter Home > vCenter > VMs and Templates. Expand the vCenter tree and select the VDP
appliance.

Open a console session into the VDP appliance by right-clicking the VDP appliance and selecting Open
Console.

After the installation files load, the Welcome page for the VDP menu appears. Open a web browser and
type:
https://<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

The VDP Login page appears.

6

Type root in the User field and changeme in the Password field, and then click Login.
The VDP Welcome page appears.

Click Next.
The Network Settings dialog box appears by default.

30

Either confirm or specify the following network and server information for your VDP appliance. Ensure
that the values are correctly populated. Otherwise, the installation fails.
a

IPv4 or IPv6 static address

Netmask

Gateway

Primary DNS

Secondary DNS

Hostname

Domain

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Chapter 2 VDP Installation and Configuration

Click Next.
The Time Zone dialog box appears.

10

Select the appropriate time zone for your VDP appliance, and click Next.
The VDP Credentials dialog box appears.

11

In the Password field, type in the VDP appliance password by using the following criteria, and then verify
the password by retyping it in the Verify password field. This password is the universal configuration
password.
The four-character classes are as follows:

Upper case letters A-Z

Lower case letters a-z

Numbers 0-9

Special characters (for example: ~!@#,.)

Create the password using the following criteria:

12

If all four character classes are used, the password must be at least 6 characters.

If three character classes are used, the password must be at least 7 characters.

If one or two character classes are used, the password must be at least 8 characters.

Click Next.
The vCenter Registration page appears.

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13

Type in the following fields:

vCenter username
If the user belongs to a domain account, enter the name by using the SYSTEM-DOMAIN\admin
format.

CAUTION If an SSO admin user is specified as the vCenter username in the format <[email protected]>,
tasks related to VDP operations do not appear in the vCenter Recent Tasks pane of the vSphere web client. For
tasks to appear in the Recent Tasks pane, specify the SSO admin user in the format <vsphere.local\username>.

vCenter password

vCenter FQDN or IP

vCenter HTTP port

The default port is 80. If you use a port other than the default port, you must open the port in
/etc/firewall.base and restart the avfirewall service.
Specify a custom value for the HTTP port if you need to connect to vCenter over the HTTP port,
instead of the HTTPS port, which is used for all other communication.

vCenter HTTPS port

The default port is 443. If you use a port other than the default port, you must open the port in
/etc/firewall.base and restart the avfirewall service.
If the field is disabled, select the Use vCenter for SSO authentication checkbox for SSO
authentication.

NOTE Leave the Use vCenter for SSO authentication checkbox enabled if your vCenter has SSO embedded
in the vCenter server appliance. If you disable this selection by clearing the checkbox, you must enter the SSO
Server FQDN or IP address and the SSO port fields.

Click Test Connection.

A connection success message appears. If this message does not appear, troubleshoot your settings
and repeat this step until a successful message appears.

If you receive the following message on the vCenter Registration page, perform the steps that User
Account Configuration on page 24 describes:
Specified user either is not a dedicated VDP user or does not have sufficient vCenter
privileges to administer VDP. Please update your user role and try again.

14

32

Click Next to advance to the Create Storage page, which guides you through the storage type selection.
Creating New Storage on page 70 provides information about storage configuration, and the final steps
that you require to complete the initial configuration wizard.

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VDP Appliance Migration

This chapter contains the following topic:

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Migrating the VDP Appliance from 5.8.x or Later to 6.1 on page 34

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vSphere Data Protection Administration Guide

Migrating the VDP Appliance from 5.8.x or Later to 6.1

VDP 6.1 does not support upgrading from previous versions. However, you can migrate all jobs, maintenance
window, and data from the VDP 5.8.x or later appliance to the VDP 6.1 appliance.
1

Start the VDP initial configuration wizard.

Specify the required fields on the pages Welcome through vCenter Registration.

On the Create Storage page:

a

Select VDP Migration.

Specify the following fields:

IP Address: Type the IP address of the VDP 5.8.x or later appliance.

Password: Type the password of the VDP 5.8.x or later appliance.

Click Verify authentication.

Ensure that the authentication succeeds.

34

Click Next.

In the Warning message box which states Migrating VDP will shut down your source VDP
<xx.xx.xx.xx>. Do you wish to continue?, click Yes.

Click Next.

On the VDP Migration page:

a

Ensure that the progress and the log messages properly appear.

Click Next.

On the Device Allocation page:

a

Click the browse button to browse the ESX datastore, and select the data disks of VDP in any order
to migrate.

Ensure that the disk validation succeeds.

Click Next.

Specify the required fields on the pages CPU and Memory through Complete.

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Post-Installation Configuration of
VDP Appliance

This chapter contains the following topics:

About the VDP Configure Utility on page 36

Viewing Status on page 36

Starting and Stopping Services on page 37

Collecting VDP Logs or Diagnostic Information on page 38

Modifying Configuration Settings on page 40

Rolling Back an Appliance on page 41

Emergency Restore on page 42

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About the VDP Configure Utility

During installation of vSphere Data Protection (VDP), the VDP Configure utility runs in install mode. This
mode allows you to enter initial networking settings, time zone, VDP appliance password, and vCenter
credentials. Install mode also allows you to create or attach storage and optionally run the performance
assessment tool. After initial installation, the VDP Configure utility runs in maintenance mode and displays
a different user interface.
To access the VDP Configure utility, open a web browser and type:
https://<IP_address_VDP_Appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Use the VDP appliance username and password. As you log into the VDP configuration utility, a system health
check script runs. You must wait for the system health check to finish running before you can perform
configuration tasks from any of the VDP configuration utility tabs.
NOTE After the appliance is configured, you can optionally run a performance analysis test from the VDP
configuration utility. The test requires 41 GB per disk per datastore. If that amount of space is not available,
the utility reports insufficient space and the performance analysis test will not run.
Use the configuration interface to perform the following configuration tasks:

Storage Management on page 69: Enables you to view your storage configuration, add and edit a Data
Domain system, and add or expand disk storage on the VDP appliance.

Viewing Status on page 36: Enables you to see the services currently running (or currently stopped) on
the VDP appliance.

Starting and Stopping Services on page 37: Enables you to start and stop selected services on the VDP
appliance.

Collecting VDP Logs or Diagnostic Information on page 38: Enables you to download current logs from
the VDP appliance for troubleshooting purposes.

Modifying Configuration Settings on page 40: Enables you to view or change network settings,
configure vCenter Registration, view or edit system settings (time zone information and VDP credentials),
and manage proxy throughput through external proxy and internal proxy configuration options.

Rolling Back an Appliance on page 41: Enables you to restore the VDP appliance to an earlier known
and valid state.

Emergency Restore on page 42: Enables you to restore a VM directly to the host that is running the VDP
appliance. This emergency restore procedure is intended for use when the vCenter is unavailable.

Managing Proxy Throughput on page 63: Enables you to manage internal and external proxies. You can
deploy up to 8 external proxy virtual machines. Deploying 8 external proxies helps you to improve the
backup throughput by using hot add feature, and run more concurrent backup and restore operations.

Viewing Status
The Configuration tab lists all of the services required by VDP and the current status of each service. Table 4-5
describes the services used by VDP.
Table 4-5. Description of services running on the VDP appliance.

36

Service

Description

Core services

These are the services that comprise the backup engine of the VDP appliance. If these
services are disabled no backup jobs (either scheduled or on demand) will run, and no
restore activities can be initiated.

Management services

Management services should only be stopped under the direction of technical support.

File level restore services

These are the services that support the management of file-level restore operations.

Backup recovery services

These are the services that support backup recovery.

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Chapter 4 Post-Installation Configuration of VDP Appliance

Table 4-5. Description of services running on the VDP appliance. (Continued)

Service

Description

Maintenance services

These are the services that perform maintenance tasks, such as evaluating whether retention
periods of backups have expired. The Maintenance services are disabled the first 24-48
hours after the VDP appliance is deployed. This creates a larger backup window for initial
backups.

Backup scheduler

The backup scheduler is the service that initiates schedule backup jobs. If the backup
scheduler is stopped, no scheduled backups will run. On-demand backups can still be
initiated.

NOTE If any of these services stop running, an alarm is triggered on the vCenter server. If a stopped service
is restarted, the alarm is cleared. There can be a delay of up to 10 minutes before alarms are triggered or
cleared.
The status that is displayed for these services can be any of the following:

Starting

Start Failed

Running

Stopping

Stop Failed

Stopped

Loading-getting state

Unrecoverable (Core services only)

Restoring (Management services only)

Restore Failed (Management services only)

Click the refresh icon to update the status display.

Starting and Stopping Services

On the status screen you can restart stopped services by clicking Start, or you can stop running services by
clicking Stop. In general, however, you should only stop running services under the direction of technical
support.
If you see that a service is stopped, you can attempt to restart it by clicking Start. In some cases, however,
additional troubleshooting steps are necessary for the service to work properly.
If all services are stopped, start the services in the following order:
1

Core services

Management services

Backup scheduler

Maintenance services

File level restore services

Backup recovery services

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Collecting VDP Logs or Diagnostic Information

The Log Collector tab enables you to individually or collectively download the VDP log files. The Log
Collector tab groups log files into four sections. Table 4-6 describes the log files in each group.
Table 4-6. Log files available from the Log Collector tab
Group

Log files

All VDP Appliance Logs

Log files related to the VDP appliance

Client Logs

Log files related to Microsoft applications

Configurations

VDP configuration files from proxies, config checker, agents, and so on

These configuration files are located in /space/vdp/config.

External Proxy Logs

Log files from external proxy virtual machine

These log files are visible only when at least one external proxy is deployed.

NOTE All logs are located in /space/vdp/logs.

The All VDP Appliance Logs group is divided into following subgoups so that you can download only specific
log files:
Table 4-7. Log files available in the All VDP Appliance Logs group
Group

Log files

Core VDP Service

Log files related to GSAN, VDP, AVI, system, and DPN

Management Service

Log files related to the MC server

File System Service

Log files related to HFScheck

File Level Restore Service

Log files related to FLR

Replication

Log files related to replication and replication recovery

Image Backup and Restore

Log files related to backups and restores

Procedure
1

Open a web browser and type:

https://<IP_address_VDP_Appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Log in with the VDP username and password.

On the Log Collector tab, select one or more options and click Download to download log files:

All VDP Appliance Logs: Select this option and click Download to download all log files from the
VDP services to a .zip file.
The Select location for download dialog box appears. The default name of the log bundle is
LogBundle.zip.
Rename the file to a unique name. The log bundle is intended primarily to send VDP appliance logs
to the Support personnel.

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To download all logs under a specific heading from the following list, select a checkbox next to
the heading and click Download.

To download the log files that are listed under multiple headings, select the checkbox next to one
or more log files and click Download.

Client Logs: Select this option and click Download to download an aggregated text file that contains
all client failure logs.

Configurations: Select this option and click Download to download only the VDP configuration file
information.

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The following table provides information about what log files you must download to troubleshoot the
area-specific issues:
Table 4-8. Log files to download to troubleshoot the area-specific issues
Area to
troubleshoot

Log group

Location on appliance

Relevant log files to

download

Upgrade

Core VDP Service ->

AVI

/space/vdp/logs/avi_logs/server_log/

avinstaller.log.0

Image
Backup or
Restore

Image Backup and

Restore and External
proxy Logs (if you
are using external
proxy)

/space/vdp/logs/image_proxy/avamarclient/

/usr/local/avamarclient/var (in case of

external proxy)

*.log files (also known as

avtar logs and contain
information on the
backup)

*.alg files (contains

workorder information)

Replication

/space/vdp/logs/replicate/client/

*Replicate-avreplscript.log

*Replicate.log

*Replicate.alg

Replication

File Level
Recovery

File Level Restore

Service

/usr/local/avamarclient/bin/logs

flr-server.log

/space/vdp/logs/flr_proxy/

*.log

/space/vdp/logs/vdp_logs/flr/server_logs/

flr_debug.txt

flr_msg.txt

flr_out.txt

VDP plug-in

Core VDP Service ->

VDP

/space/vdp/logs/vdp_logs/vdr/server_logs/

vdr_server.log

VDP
configuration
utility

Core VDP Service ->

VDP

/space/vdp/logs/vdp_logs/vdr/server_logs/

vdr-configure.log

Integrity
check

File System Service ->

HFSCheck

/space/vdp/logs/hfscheck/

*.log

The following table provides information about what logs you must collect to troubleshoot the backup and
restore issues with Microsoft applications:
Table 4-9. Log files to download to troubleshoot the area-specific issues
Plug-in

Location of log files

Relevant log files to collect

SQL VDP
plug-in

For SQL standalone:

SQL VSS plug-in's logs

C:\Program Files\avp\var

Avtar logs

For SQL failover cluster:

Avagent logs

The var folder on a share drive that was specified during the
cluster configuration by using Windows Cluster Configuration
Wizard (WCCW)

Windows Application
and System event viewer
logs on the client

SharePoint VSS plug-in's

logs

Avtar logs

Avagent logs

Windows Application
and System event viewer
logs on the client

For SQL AlwaysOn cluster:

The var folder that was specified during the cluster configuration
by using WCCW
If a shared drive was specified during the cluster configuration,
the shared drive contains the log files of all the nodes.
If a local folder was specified during the cluster configuration,
each cluster node contains the log files.

SharePoint
VDP plug-in

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C:\Program Files\avp\var

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Table 4-9. Log files to download to troubleshoot the area-specific issues

Plug-in

Location of log files

Relevant log files to collect

NOTE

In a SharePoint federated farm, you must collect the logs from every SharePoint Server node including any SQL
backends.

If the SharePoint Server is connected to either a SQL failover or an AlwaysOn cluster, or both a SQL failover and an
AlwaysOn cluster, a set of logs is also generated on the shared var folder that was specified during the cluster
configuration by using WCCW.

Exchange VDP
plug-in

On each VDP client:

Exchange plug-in's logs

C:\Program Files\avp\var

Avtar logs

Shared var folder that was spefified in the Windows Cluster

Configuration Wizard for Exchange DAG

Avagent logs

Windows Application
and System event viewer
logs on the client

Modifying Configuration Settings

When you access the VDP Configure utility after installation, it runs in maintenance mode. While in
maintenance mode, by clicking the Configuration tab, you can set or modify any settings that were entered
during installation. You can configure network settings and system settings, and you can register the vCenter.

Network Settings
You can configure the following network settings on the Configuration tab.
NOTE If you change any network settings, manually run an integrity check immediately after the change is
made. Failure to run an integrity check could result in a VDP connection failure while rolling back to a
previous checkpoint. See Running an Integrity Check on page 57 for instructions.

IPv4 or IPv6 static address: The Internet Protocol v4 or v6 setting of the interface.

Netmask/Prefix: The network mask or prefix of the IPv4 or IPv6 static address.

Gateway: The gateway address of the IPv4 or IPv6 static address.

Primary DNS: The primary domain name system used for DNS resolution.

Secondary DNS: The secondary domain name system used for DNS resolution.

Hostname: The unique name by which a computer is known on a network (for example: vdp-primary).

Domain: A unique name that identifies a website (for example: emc.com). Domain is sometimes referred
to as the domain name.

vCenter Server Registration

CAUTION Changing the vCenter server hostname, vCenter server password, vCenter server FQDN or IP
address, or vCenter server port number results in the loss of all backup jobs, replication jobs, and backup
verification jobs associated with the VDP appliance. Existing restore points remain intact, but you will be
required to re-create backup jobs and replication jobs.
Before the process that reconfigures the vCenter server registration runs, all of the following conditions must
be true:

40

No other reconfiguration process is running (for example, password or network reconfiguration).

No backup, replication, or restore jobs are running.

No integrity check is running.

All services are running on the VDP appliance.

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Chapter 4 Post-Installation Configuration of VDP Appliance

If you change any vCenter registration credentials, manually run an integrity check immediately after the
change is made. Failure to run an integrity check could result in a VDP connection failure while rolling back
to a previous checkpoint. See Running an Integrity Check on page 57 for instructions.

Rolling Back an Appliance

The VDP appliance could become inconsistent or unstable. In some cases, the VDP Configure utility can detect
an inconsistent or unstable state and will provide a message similar to the following message immediately
after you log in:
It appears that your VDP appliance has suffered an unclean shutdown and will likely require a checkpoint rollback to restore data
protection functionality. This process may be initiated from the Rollback tab.

CAUTION By default, VDP keeps two system checkpoints. If you roll back to a checkpoint, all backups and
configuration changes taken since the checkpoint was taken will be lost when the rollback is completed.
The first checkpoint is created when VDP is installed. Subsequent checkpoints are created by the Maintenance
service. This service is disabled for the first 24 to 48 hours of VDP operation. In the event that you roll back
during this time frame, then the VDP appliance is set to the default configuration and any backup
configurations or backups are lost.
NOTE If any VMware VDP for Exchange Server Clients or VMware VDP for SQL Server Clients were installed
between a checkpoint and a rollback, the clients must be reinstalled.
Follow the procedure below to roll back a VDP appliance.
CAUTION Only roll back to the most recent validated checkpoint.

Prerequisite
The VDP appliance must be installed and the VDP appliance password is required.

Procedure
1

Open a web browser and type:

https://<IP_address_VDP_Appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Log in with the VDP username and password.

Click the Rollback tab.

Click the lock icon to enable VDP rollback.

Enter the VDP appliance password and click OK.

The lock icon changes to unlocked.

Click the checkpoint that you want to roll back to.

Click Perform VDP rollback to selected checkpoint.

A warning message appears explaining the consequences of rolling back the VDP appliance.

Click Yes.
An information message appears telling you a rollback has been initiated.

Click OK.
The VDP appliance attempts to roll back and displays status information. It also displays an information
message indicating whether the roll back succeeded or failed.

10

Click OK.

If the VDP appliance did not roll back successfully, contact Customer Support.

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Emergency Restore
VDP is dependent on the vCenter server for many of its core operations. The direct-to-host emergency restore
operation provides a method to restore the virtual machines when wither the vCenter server is unavailable or
the user is unable to access the VDP user interface by using the vSphere web client.
An emergency restore operation restores a VM directly to the host that is running the VDP appliance. The
Emergency Restore tab displays a list of VMs that have been backed up by the VDP appliance. These virtual
machines can be restored as new virtual machines on to the host where the VDP appliance is running.

Best Practices and Recommendations

Ensure the following requirements are met before you perform an emergency restore operation:

The virtual machine being restored has a virtual hardware version that is supported by the host on which
the VDP appliance is running.

There is adequate free space in the target datastore to accommodate the entire virtual machine.

The target VMFS datastore to which the virtual machine is being restored supports the VMDK file size.

Network connectivity is available for the restored virtual machines from the host where the VDP
appliance is running.

There is at least one local account with administrator privileges on the host where the VDP appliance is
running.

Limitations and Unsupported Features

The vSphere host on which the emergency restore operation is being performed cannot be part of the
vCenter inventory. A vSphere host that is currently managed by the vCenter server must be temporarily
disassociated from the vCenter server to perform the emergency restore. To disassociate the vCenter
server, use the vSphere Client (not the vSphere web client) connected directly to the vSphere host.

Emergency restore allows you to restore only to the root of the host level in the inventory.

Emergency restore requires that the DNS server used by VDP is available and can fully resolve the target
vSphere host name.

Emergency restore restores the virtual machine in the Powered Off state. You must manually log in to the
host and power on the restored virtual machine.

Emergency restore restores the virtual machine as a new virtual machine. You must ensure that the name
provided for the virtual machine is not a duplicate of a virtual machine that already exists.

Emergency restore does not list MSapp clients.

An internal proxy is automatically activated when an emergency restore operation is performed. If both
the internal and external proxies are activated, you must disable the internal proxy on the VDP Configure
utility for the emergency restore to complete successfully.

Procedure
1

If you have not already done so, log in to the vSphere client of the host and, from the Summary tab under
Host Management, perform the following steps:
a

Click Disassociate Host from vCenter.

Click Yes when prompted to remove the host from the vCenter.

Log in to the VDP Configure utility:

https://<IP_address_VDP_Appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

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Click the Emergency Restore tab.

Virtual machines protected by VDP are listed in the Emergency Restore dialog box. Here, you can find the
following details about the virtual machines:

Name: The name of the virtual machines protected by the VDP appliance. By clicking the disclosure
arrows, you can determine the date and time of the last restore for the selected virtual machine.

Last Known Path: The last known location of the virtual machine in the vCenter inventory list. This
location is updated if the virtual machine is moved.

Running restore details:

Client Name: The name of the virtual machine client that is restored.

Status: The pass or fail status of the restore.

Start Time: The time the restore started.

Completed Time: The time the restore completed.

Bytes Transferred: The number of bytes that were transferred during restore.

Select the virtual machine that will serve as the restore point and click Restore.
The Host Credentials dialog box appears.

In the Host Credentials dialog box, enter valid host credentials:

ESXi Host name or IP: Enter the vSphere hostname or vSphere host IP address.

Port - 443: Populated by default.

Username: Enter the vSphere host username. The recommended host username is root. For any
other host username, the user account must have the create VM privilege.

Password: Enter the vSphere host password. If you enter invalid host credentials, an error message
displays and you will be unable to connect to the host.

NOTE If you did not successfully disassociate the selected virtual machine from its vCenter, an error message
appears and you cannot proceed.
6

Click OK.
The Restore a Backup screen initiates the restore with the new name and destination.

The Restore a Backup dialog box displays the following information:

Client name: The name of the client on which the virtual machine is restored.

Backup: The date and timestamp of the backups.

New Name: The field where a new name must be entered, which cannot be a duplicate of a VM that
already exists.

Destination: The vSphere hostname.

Datastore: A drop-down list of datastores available as the destination targets.

Enter a new name in the New Name field. The name must be unique and can be up to 255 characters long.
The following characters cannot be used in the name: ~ ! @ $ ^ % { } [ ] | , ` ; # \ / : * ? < > ' " & . In addition,
diacritical characters cannot be used (for example: , , , , and ).

Select a datastore as the destination target for the backup.

CAUTION The datastore capacity size is listed. Make sure you select a datastore with enough disk space to
accommodate the restore. Insufficient space causes the restore to fail.
10

Click Restore.

11

Verify that the restore submitted successfully by checking the progress in the Recent Tasks dialog box.

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NOTE The restored virtual machine is listed at the vSphere host level in the inventory. Restoring to a more
specific inventory path is not supported.

Automatic Host Detection

For vSphere Data Protection versions 5.5 and earlier, users are required to identify, disassociate, and populate
vSphere host values before they perform an emergency restore. With vSphere Data Protection version 5.8 and
later, the appliance automatically detects the host that it is currently registered to and pre-populates the
hostname or IP value in the Host Credentials dialog box. This eases the burden for a user, who might have
numerous hosts in a cluster and needs to identify the current, resident host to disassociate from the vCenter.
The following are rare cases when the appliance fails to detect the most updated host to which the appliance
is registered and displays an older value:

The vCenter is unavailable and, after the VDP appliance migrates to a different host under HA-enabled
clustering, the appliance displays the older host to which it was registered.

The vCenter becomes unavailable immediately after the appliance is migrated to another host. In this case,
the new host cannot be detected, because it takes the appliance a period of time to process and update
events from the vCenter.

In both of these cases, the user must manually determine to which host the appliance is registered.

Refreshing Restore Points

1

Log in to the VDP-Configure URL:

https://<IP_Address_VDP_Appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Click the Emergency Restore tab.

Click Refresh.
The loading bar refreshes the restore points.

Reconnecting the Host to the vCenter

1

Restore the vCenter. Refer to Restore Operations on page 130 for instructions.

NOTE The restored vCenter is powered off by default.

2

Once the vCenter restore completes, power on the vCenter.

Log in to the vCenter URL to verify all the services are running:
https://<IP_address_vCenter>:5480

For a Windows-based vCenter, log in as an administrator to the server that runs vCenter server, and verify
whether all the Windows services are running.
4

Log in to the restored vCenter through the vSphere client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter>:9443/vsphere-client/

From the vSphere client, add the vSphere host to the newly-restored vCenter.

NOTE Once the vCenter has been restored, there may be a delay of approximately 20 minutes while the
vCenter services start up. During this delay, you will be unable to perform a successful backup or restore
operation. If you experience delays, try the backup or restore later.

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Securing Communication between

VDP and vCenter

This chapter contains the following topics:

Replacing the VDP Certificate on page 46

Authenticating the VDP Server for Secured Communications on page 47

Securing the VDP Appliance Communication with the vCenter Server on page 48

Securing the Proxy Communication with the vCenter Server on page 49

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Replacing the VDP Certificate

You can replace the VDP certificate for the port 8543 with either a new self-signed certificate or a CA-signed
certificate.
Perform the following steps to replace the VDP certificate:
1

Stop the services by running the following command:

root@vdp#: emwebapp.sh --stop

Delete the tomcat alias by running the following command:

root@vdp#:/usr/java/latest/bin/keytool -delete -alias tomcat

Generate an SSL certificate by running the following command:

root@vdp#:/usr/java/latest/bin/keytool -genkeypair -v -alias tomcat -keyalg
RSA -sigalg SHA256withRSA -keystore /root/.keystore -storepass changeit
-keypass changeit -validity 3650 -dname "CN=vdp.vmware, OU=VDP, O=OrgName,
L=PUNE, S=MH, C=IN"

To use a self-signed certificate, go to step 6.

To use a CA-signed certificate:

a

Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) by running the following command:

root@vdp#:/usr/java/latest/bin/keytool -certreq -keyalg RSA -alias tomcat
-file csrFileName.csr

Get the CA-signed certificate in the .p7b format by using the CSR content and save the certificate.

Import the .p7b chain certificate file by running the following command:
root@vdp#:/usr/java/latest/bin/keytool -import -alias tomcat -keystore
/root/.keystore -file /<Path_to_the_Certificate>/<chainCertFileName.p7b>

Verify whether the certificate entry with the tomcat alias exists in the keystore by running the following
command:
root@vdp#:/usr/java/latest/bin/keytool -list -v -keystore /root/.keystore
-storepass changeit -keypass changeit

If the certificate entry exists in the key store, run the addFingerprint.sh script:
root@vdp#:./usr/local/avamar/bin/addFingerprint.sh

Start the services by running the following command:

root@vdp#: emwebapp.sh --start

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Chapter 5 Securing Communication between VDP and vCenter

Authenticating the VDP Server for Secured Communications

While communicating with the VDP server, to prevent the man-in-the-middle attacks and fully use the
security that the certificates provide, VDP provides thumbprint on the console. The following figure illustrates
a sample thumbprint:

When you access the VDP server by using the https://<vdp-ip>:8543/vdp-configure URL, ensure that the SSL
certificate comes from the same VDP server, and is valid. To verify whether the SSL certificate is valid, see
whether the thumbprint on the console and the SSL certificate that the browser receives during SSL handshake
match. VDP has a default SSL certificate.
To change the default certificate, import the new certificate as a privatekeyentry in keytool to keystore.
After you import the new certificate, to see the updated thumbprint on the VDP console, perform the following
steps:
1

Stop services by running the following command:

emwebapp.sh --stop

Run addFingerprint.sh script:

./usr/local/avamar/bin/addFingerprint.sh

Start services by running the following command:

emwebapp.sh -start

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Restart the VDP appliance.

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Securing the VDP Appliance Communication with the vCenter Server

VDP appliance can establish HTTPS connections to vCenter server either with or without SSL certificate
verification for different purposes. Failure to verify the SSL certificate makes the vCenter server and the VDP
appliance prone to the man-in-the-middle attacks. VDP now supports uploading of the vCenter server
certificate or signing certificate in the VDP certificate repositories during the registration process to the
vCenter server. The certificate is then used to authenticate or trust vCenter server in all the subsequent HTTPS
connections including test connections to the vCenter server, thereby securing the VDP appliance.

Prerequisites
Download the vCenter certificate in the .p7b, .cer, or .crt format by using the following URL:
https://<vCenter_IP_address>/sdk

Procedure

For initial configuration:

a

Open the initial configuration wizard by using the following URL:

https:<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

On the vCenter Registration page:

i

Specify the vCenter information such as login credentials, host name or IP address, and port
numbers in the corresponding fields.

ii

Select Verify vCenter certificate.

If you do not want to secure the VDP application communication with vCenter, clear Verify
vCenter certificate. Clearing this option does not verify the vCenter certificate.

iii

Click Upload and select the vCenter certificate that you downloaded.

iv

Click Test Connection.

If the vCenter certificate is valid, connection to vCenter is established. Otherwise, the connection
fails.

For vCenter re-registration:

a

Log in to the VDP configuration utility by using the following URL:

https:<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

On the Configuration tab, click the setting icon and select vCenter registration.
The vCenter Registration wizard appears.

On the vCenter Registration page, select I have reviewed the information. I want to reconfigure
vCenter and click Next.

On the vCenter Configuration page:

Specify the vCenter information such as login credentials, host name or IP address, and port
numbers in the corresponding fields.

ii

Select Verify vCenter certificate.

iii

Click Upload and select the vCenter certificate that you downloaded.

iv

Click Next.

On the Ready to Complete page, review the information and click Finish.
If the vCenter certificate and other information is valid, connection to vCenter is established.
Otherwise, the re-registration fails.

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Chapter 5 Securing Communication between VDP and vCenter

Securing the Proxy Communication with the vCenter Server

By default, the VDP server management service and proxies do not validate SSL certificates when connecting
to the vCenter server. This can leave the vCenter server vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle exploitation, which
might result in unauthorized access to the vCenter server. Configuring each proxy to use SSL certificate
authentication when connecting to the vCenter server corrects this vulnerability.

Prerequisites
Ensure that a Certificate Authority (CA) signed SSL certificate is installed on the vCenter server.
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2034833 provides information about how to generate a CA-signed SSL certificate
and install it on the vCenter server, and implement the CS-signed certificates in a vSphere 5.1 or 5.5
environment.
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2111219 provides information about how to replace the default certificates with the
CA-signed SSL certificates in a vSphere 6.0 environment.

Procedure
1

Open a command shell and log in to the proxy as root.

Copy the vCenter server certificate to /usr/local/avamarclient/bin on the proxy.

For a Linux vCenter:

vCenter 5.x:

Server certificate: /etc/vmware-vpx/ssl/rui.crt

Root certificate: /etc/vmware-vpx/ssl/rui-ca-cert.pem

vCenter 6.0:

Server certificate: /etc/vmware-vpx/ssl/rui.crt

Root certificate: /var/lib/vmware/vmca/root.cer

scp the appropriate certificate from vCenter to /usr/local/avamarclient/bin on the proxy.

In case of a self-signed certificate, use only server certificate.
In case of a CA-signed certificate, create a chain certificate by running the following command:
cat rui.crt root.cer > chain_cert.pem

For a Windows vCenter:

vCenter 5.x:

Server certificate: C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\SSL\rui.crt

Root certificate: C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware

VirtualCenter\SSL\cacert.pem

vCenter 6.0:

Server certificate:
C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\cfg\vmware-vpx\ssl\rui.crt

Root certificate: C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\data\vmca\root.cer

scp the appropriate certificate from vCenter to /usr/local/avamarclient/bin on the proxy.

In case of a self-signed certificate, use only server certificate.
In case of a CA-signed certificate, create a chain certificate by running the following command:
cat rui.crt root.cer > chain_cert.pem

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NOTE If a chain SSL certificate is used for vCenter, copy the chain.pem file, which contains all the certificates
in the chain, to /usr/local/avamarclient/bin on the proxy.
3

Set proper operating system permissions on the certificate by typing:

chmod 600 /usr/local/avamarclient/bin/<certificate_file>
where, certificate_file is either a server certificate or a chain certificate.

Open /usr/local/avamarclient/var/avvcbimageAll.cmd in a UNIX text editor.

Append the following content at the end of the file:

--ssl_server_authentication_file=/usr/local/avamarclient/bin/<certificate_file>
where, certificate_file is either a server certificate or a chain certificate.

NOTE Use chain.pem for a chain vCenter SSL certificate.

6

Save the changes and close avvcbimageAll.cmd.

Open /usr/local/avamarclient/var/avvmwfileAll.cmd in a UNIX text editor.

Append the following content at the end of the file:

--ssl_server_authentication_file=/usr/local/avamarclient/bin/<certificate_file>
where, certificate_file is either a server certificate or a chain certificate.

NOTE Use chain.pem for a chain vCenter SSL certificate.

9

Save the changes and close avvmwfileAll.cmd.

10

Open /etc/vmware/config in a UNIX text editor.

11

Append the following contents at the end of the file:

vix.enableSslCertificateCheck = "true"
vix.sslCertificateFile = "/usr/local/avamarclient/bin/<certificate_file>"
where, certificate_file is either a server certificate or a chain certificate.

12

Save the changes and close /etc/vmware/config.

13

Open /usr/local/avamarclient/var/vddkconfig.ini in a UNIX text editor.

14

Change the value of vixDiskLib.linuxSSL.verifyCertificates from 0 to 1.

15

Save the changes and close vddkconfig.ini.

16

Ensure that there are no running backup or restore jobs on the proxy.

17

Restart the avagent and vmwareflr services by running the following commands:
service avagent-vmware restart
service vmwareflr restart

Result
The proxy can use and validate SSL certificates when connecting to the vCenter server.
Repeat this procedure for each proxy that you deploy in the vCenter environment.

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Configuring VDP

This chapter includes the following topics:

Login Security on page 52

Configuring the Customer Experience Improvement Program on page 52

Configuring and Monitoring on page 53

Monitoring VDP Activity on page 58

VDP Shutdown and Startup Procedures on page 60

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Login Security
To increase security of the VDP configuration utility, after 5 unsuccessful login attempts from any user, the
VDP configuration utility is locked for 5 minutes. This prevents any login attempts during that time. Any
existing sessions that are already logged in are unaffected.
If a lockout occurs:

The VDP configuration utility informs the user during a login attempt.

A vCenter event about the lockout is generated.

The vdp-configure.log captures the time, the user, the source address, and request headers of the
failed login attempts that led up to the lockout.
To view the vdp-configure.log file, log in to the VDP appliance by using terminal or console admin
user and default password.

Configuring the Customer Experience Improvement Program

The Customer Experience Improvement Program is an option that enables you to send encrypted
configuration and usage information about the VDP environment to VMware servers for analysis.
NOTE The Customer Experience Improvement Program (PhoneHome) is not supported in a pure IPv6
vSphere Data Protection environment.
VDP sends the following types of data to VMware:

Version information for VDP and vSphere

VDP time zone and uptime

Number of protected and unprotected VMs

Amount of configured capacity

Data Domain in use (true/false)

Capacity utilization

Number of internal and external proxies configured and registered

Number of work orders per proxy configured by the user

Maintenance and management status

Latest valid checkpoint date

Agents in use (SQL Server, Exchange, Exchange GLR/DAG, and SharePoint)

Last integrity checkpoint status

VDP state

Details of job failures with timestamp and failure code

Number of jobs that have failed against each failure code

During the installation of VDP, you can enable the Customer Experience Improvement Program from the
Product Improvement page in the VDP Configuration Utility. The Product Improvement page provides the
Enable Customer Experience Improvement Program checkbox. By default, the checkbox is not selected.
Anytime after the installation, you can either enable or disable the Customer Experience Improvement
Program by accessing the VDP Configure Utility from a web browser.

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Prerequisites
In networks that are protected by a firewall, you may need to modify the network to help prevent connectivity
issues when the Customer Experience Improvement Program attempts to upload data to the VMware server.
To ensure that the firewall does not prevent Customer Experience Improvement Program from uploading data
to the VMware server, open the network to the following VMware servers:

https://vcsa.vmware.com:443

https://phtransfer.vmware.com:443

Procedure
1

Open a web browser and type:

https://<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Log in with the VDP username and password.

On the Configuration tab, click the

icon and select Product Improvement.

The Product Improvement page appears.

4

Either enable or disable the Customer Experience Program by either selecting or clearing the Enable
Customer Experience Improvement Program checkbox respectively.

Configuring and Monitoring

From the vSphere web client, you can view and modify backup window configuration details, in addition to
information about the appliance and storage. You can also configure the VDP appliance to send email reports
on a scheduled basis.

Viewing Backup Appliance Configuration

The backup appliance information provides information about backup appliance, storage summary, and
backup windows configuration. The backup appliance information includes:

Display name

Product name

IP Address

Major Version (VDP version number)

Minor Version (used by Technical Support)

Status

Host

vCenter server

VDP backup user

VDP appliance time

Time zone

These options are configured during the VDP appliance installation. They can be edited through the VDP
Configure utility. Post-Installation Configuration of VDP Appliance on page 35 provides additional
information.

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The VDP appliance storage summary includes:

Capacity: The total capacity of the VDP appliance.

Space free: The amount of space that is available for backups.

Deduplicated size: The amount of disk space that the backups are consuming in the deduplicated format.

Non-deduplicated size: The amount of disk space that the backups would consume if they are converted
to a native and non-deduplicated format.

NOTE To refresh the data on the page, click the refresh icon beside Storage Summary.
On the left, a color container variant is presented to check the VDP capacity:

When the storage capacity used is under 80%, the container is green.

When the storage capacity used is between 80% and 95%, the container is yellow. The following message
appears:
The VDP storage is nearly full.

When the storage capacity used is between 95% and 100%, the container is red. The following message
appears:
The VDP storage is nearly full.

When the storage capacity used is 100%, the container is red. The following message appears:
The VDP storage is full.

NOTE If a Data Domain system is added to the VDP configuration, the Data Domain storage summary also
appears.
Figure 6-3 illustrates the backup window configuration.

Figure 6-3. Backup window configuration

Each 24-hour day is divided into two operational windows:

Backup window: The portion of each day reserved for performing normal scheduled backups.

Maintenance window: The portion of each day reserved for performing routine VDP maintenance
activities, such as integrity checks. Do not schedule backups or perform a Backup Now operation while
VDP is in maintenance mode. The backup jobs will run but they will consume resources VDP needs for
maintenance tasks.
The jobs that are running when the maintenance window begins or that run during the maintenance
window continue to run.

NOTE Because the blackout window is eliminated, activities such as, integrity checks and garbage collection
now continuously run during the maintenance window.

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Editing the Backup Window

You can change the amount of time available for processing backup requests.

Prerequisites

VDP is installed and configured.

You are logged in to the vSphere web client and connected to the VDP appliance.

Procedure
1

Connect to the VDP appliance. Accessing VDP on page 104 provides information.

From the VDP user interface, select the Configuration tab (by default you are on the Backup appliance
view).

At the bottom right corner of the Backup appliance view, click the Edit button.
The backup start time and duration time options appear as shown in Figure 6-4:

Figure 6-4. Backup window configuration in the edit mode

4

Use the drop down arrow to choose the start time for the backup window.

Enter the duration of the backup window. The minimum backup window is 4 hours and the maximum
backup window is 16 hours.

Click Save.
A dialog appears telling you that the settings were saved successfully.

Click OK.

VDP changes the backup window configuration.

Configuring the Email Notifications and Reports

You can configure VDP to send SMTP email reports to specified recipients. If you have enabled email reports,
the email messages that include the following information are sent:

Items that need attention

VDP appliance status

Backup jobs summary

Virtual Machines summary

Replication summary

Unprotected Virtual Machines

NOTE The VDP email notifications and reports do not support carbon copies (CCs), blind carbon copies
(BCCs), and SSL certificates.

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Prerequisites

VDP is installed and configured.

You are logged in to the vSphere web client and connected to the VDP appliance.

The email account for email notifications and reports must exist.

Procedure
1

Connect to the VDP appliance. Accessing VDP on page 104 provides information.

From the VDP user interface, select the Configuration tab.

Select Email and click Edit.

Specify the following fields:

Enable email reports: Select this option to enable email reports.

Outgoing mail server: Type the name of the SMTP server that want to use to send email. You can type
this name as an IP address, a host name, or a fully qualified domain name. The VDP appliance must
be able to resolve the name that you have typed.
The default port for non-authenticated email servers is 25. The default port of authenticated mail
servers is 587. You can specify a different port by appending a colon (:) and the port number to the
server name. For example, to specify the use of port 8025 on server emailserver enter
emailserver:8025.

(Optional) My server requires me to log in: Select this option if your SMTP server requires
authentication.

Username: Type the username that you want to authenticate with.

Password: Type the password that is associated with the username.

VDP does not validate the password. The password that you type is passed directly to the email
server.

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From address: Type the email address from where you would like the email report. This can only be
a single address.

To address(es): Type a comma-separated list of up to 10 email addresses.

Send time: From the drop-down list, select the time you want VDP to email reports.

Send day(s): Check the days you want the reports sent.

Report Locale: Select the country for the email reports.

Enable CSV Attachment: Select this option if you want to receive the email report as an attachment
in the CSV format.

Enable VDP alarm email notification: Select this option to enable the VDP alarm email notification.
If you select this option, VDP sends an email notification when the VDP alarm is triggered or if a
posted event changes the VDP alarm status from yellow to red.

Click the Save button.

To test your email configuration, click Send test email.

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Viewing the User Interface Log

Clicking Log on the Configuration tab displays the user interface log for VDP. This is a high-level log that
details the activities that have been initiated with the user interface and that identifies some key status items.
Click Export View to save the details that are displayed on the screen to file on the machine where your
browser is running.
More detailed logs can be downloaded using the VDP configuration utility. Refer to Collecting VDP Logs or
Diagnostic Information on page 38 for instructions.

Running an Integrity Check

Integrity checks verify and maintain data integrity on the deduplication store. The output of an integrity check
is a checkpoint. By default, VDP runs an integrity check every day during the maintenance window. In
addition, you can start the integrity check manually.
CAUTION If the VDP appliance displays an alarm that the last valid integrity check failed or is out of date, run
a manual integrity check. If you allow for the VDP appliance to continue to make backups while the integrity
check is out of date, you are risking losing potential backup data if a rollback to the last validated checkpoint
is ever required.
You can see a list of all of the VDP checkpoints through the VDP Configure utility, Rollback tab. See Rolling
Back an Appliance on page 41 for additional information.

Prerequisites

VDP is installed and configured.

You are logged in to the vSphere web client and connected to the VDP appliance.

Procedure
1

Connect to the VDP appliance. Accessing VDP on page 104 provides information.

From the Configuration tab in the VDP user interface, click the

icon and select Run integrity check.

A confirmation screen appears, asking if you want to perform a manual integrity check.
3

Click Yes.
A message appears informing you that the integrity check has been initiated.

Click OK.
VDP starts the integrity check.

Monitor the Integrity Check progress through Recent Tasks.

NOTE When the VDP Integrity Check is running, the Maintenance service is stopped. This may cause a
temporary VDP error. Wait until the Integrity Check is complete and the Maintenance service automatically
restarts and the VDP error message is resolved.

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Monitoring VDP Activity

You can monitor the activities of the VDP appliance by using one of the following methods:

Viewing Recent Tasks on page 58.

Viewing Alarms on page 59

Viewing the Event Console on page 60

Tasks, events, and alarms that are generated by VDP are prefaced by VDP: Note, however, that some of the
tasks and events that occur as part of VDP processes are performed by the vCenter server and do not have this
prefix.
For example, if VDP runs a scheduled backup job against a running virtual machine, the following task entries
are created:
1

Create virtual machine snapshot (vCenter acting on the virtual machine to be backed up)

VDP: Scheduled backup job (VDP starting the backup job)

Reconfigure virtual machine (the VDP appliance requesting services from virtual center)

Remove snapshot (virtual center acting on the virtual machine that has completed backing up)

To see only VDP-generated tasks or events in the Tasks or Events console, enter VDP: in the Filter field.

Viewing Recent Tasks

VDP generates task entries in the Recent Tasks windows when it performs the following operations:

Backups

Automatic Backup Verification

Restores

Replications

Replication Recovery

VDP-Configuration

Integrity Checks

Clicking on a task entry in the Recent Tasks window displays task details in the pane at the bottom of the
screen. Task details can also be displayed by clicking the link next to the virtual machine icon in the Running
tab under Recent Tasks.
You can cancel the tasks also from the Running tasks jobs panel by clicking the cancel task icon.

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Viewing Alarms
Table 6-10 lists the alarms that the vSphere Data Protection (VDP) appliance can trigger:
Table 6-10. vSphere Data Protection alarms

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Alarm Name

Alarm Description

VDP: [001] The most recent checkpoint

for the VDP appliance is outdated.

From the Configuration tab of the VDP user interface, click the All
Actions icon and select Run integrity check.

VDP: [002] The VDP appliance is nearly

full.

The VDP appliance is nearly out of space for additional backups. You
can free the space on the appliance by manually deleting either
unnecessary or older backups and by modifying the retention policies of
the backup jobs to shorten the backup retention time.

VDP: [003] The VDP appliance is full.

The VDP storage is full. The appliance runs in the read-only mode till
you provide additional space. You can free the space by deleting either
unnecessary or older backups.

VDP: [004] The VDP appliance

datastore is approaching maximum
capacity.

The datastore where the VDP appliance provisioned its disks is

approaching maximum capacity. When the maximum capacity of the
datastore is reached, the VDP appliance will be suspended. The
appliance cannot be resumed until additional space is made available on
the datastore.

VDP: [005] Core services are not

running.

Start Core services by using the VDP Configure utility.

VDP: [006] Management services are

not running.

Start Management services by using the VDP Configure utility.

VDP: [007] File system services are not

running (supported in VDP versions 5.5
and lower)

Start File system services by using the VDP Configure utility.

VDP: [008] File level restore services are

not running.

Start File level restore services by using the VDP Configure utility.

VDP: [009] Maintenance services are

not running.

Start Maintenance services by using the VDP Configure utility.

VDP: [010] Backup scheduler is not

running.

Start Backup scheduler by using the VDP Configure utility.

VDP: [013] Protected Virtual Machine

limit exceeded.

The supported number of protected Virtual Machines has been

exceeded.

VDP: [014] Backup Recovery services

are not running.

Start Backup Recovery services by using the VDP Configure utility.

VDP: [015] Replication services are not

running.

Start replication services by using the VDP Configure utility.

VDP:[016] The Data Domain storage is

nearly full

The Data Domain storage is nearly full. You can free the space on the
Data Domain storage by manually deleting the unnecessary or older
backups, and modifying the retention policies of the backup jobs to
shorten the backup retention time.

VDP:[017] The Data Domain storage is

full

The Data Domain storage is full. You can free the space by manually
deleting either unnecessary or older backups.

NOTE: This alarm is not supported in VDP version 5.8 or later.

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Viewing the Event Console

VDP can generate events of the following types: info, error, and warning. Examples of the following types of
events are:

Info: VDP: Critical VMs Backup Job created.

Warning: VDP: Unable to add Host123 client to backup job Critical VMs because. . .

Error: VDP: Appliance has changed from Full Access to Read Only.

VDP generates events on all state changes in the appliance. As a general rule, state changes that degrade the
capabilities of the appliance are labeled errors, and state changes that improve the capabilities are labeled
informational. For example, when starting an integrity check, VDP generates an event that is labeled an error
because the appliance is set to read only before performing the integrity check. After the integrity check, VDP
generates an event that is labeled informational because the appliance changes from read-only to full access.
Clicking on an event entry displays details of that event, which includes a link to Show related events.

Persisted and Pop-up Messages to Show the Capacity Usage Issue

If either the VDP appliance storage or the Data Domain storage usage is at a critical point, an alert bar with a
message appears on the vSphere web client. The text and the icon in the message depends on the amount of
the storage usage. The same text and icon appears in the Storage Summary section on the Configuration tab.
You can either hide or show the alert bar by using the hide/show control, which exists below the alert bar.
Hiding and showing of the alert bar is animated with fade and resize effects.
An icon that indicates a high severity message appears on the left side of the hide/show control. If you have
hidden the alert bar, the high severity message icon appears to acknowledge you the capacity alerts.
Also, the alert bar contains the Configuration - Backup Appliance link on the right side. If you click the link,
the Backup Appliance panel on the Configuration tab appears and the link on the alert bar is hidden.
If the storage usage is not critical, the alert bar and the hide/show control neither appear nor included in the
layout.
If you resize the web browser window, the alert bar is scaled according to the content. A tool tip appears on
the message if the text is truncated to fit in the bar.

VDP Shutdown and Startup Procedures

If you need to shut down the VDP appliance, use the Shut Down Guest OS action from the vCenter server
web client. This action automatically performs a clean shutdown of the appliance. If the appliance is powered
off without the Shut Down Guest OS action, corruption might occur. It can take up to 30 minutes to shut down
and restart the VDP appliance. You can monitor the status by using the virtual machine console. After an
appliance is shut down, you can restart it by using the Power On action from the vCenter server web client.
If the appliance does not shut down properly, when it restarts it rolls back to the last validated checkpoint. This
means any changes to backup jobs or backups that occur between the checkpoint and the unexpected
shutdown are lost. This is expected behavior and is used to ensure system corruption does not occur from
unexpected shutdowns. See Rolling Back an Appliance on page 41 for additional information.
The VDP appliance is designed to be run 24x7 to support maintenance operations and to be available for
restore operations. Do not shut down the VDP appliance unless there is a specific reason for shutdown.
NOTE Before vCenter server patches or upgrades, use the VDP shutdown procedure.

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Proxies

This chapter includes the following topics:

Proxy Overview on page 62

Managing Proxy Throughput on page 63

External Proxy Support on page 64

(Optional) Configuring Proxy Certificate Authentication on page 66

Monitoring External Proxy Health Status on page 67

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Proxy Overview
This chapter describes the use of internal and external proxies in VDP Appliances.
After initial deployment, a VDP appliance has only internal proxy configured. After the VDP appliance is fully
deployed, you can deploy up to eight external proxies through the VDP Configuration UI. If you configure an
external proxy for the VDP appliance, the internal proxy automatically is disabled during the process.

Considerations Before Deploying an External Proxy

Consider the following when deploying one or more proxies for use with the VDP appliance:

The VDP appliance does not have access to a datastore, preventing the HotAdd transport method from
being used. Refer to the following VMware knowledgebase article to define the VMware HotAdd best
practices from a backup point of view:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1008072

The need to perform more backups concurrently while not constrained by resources on the vSphere host
nor by datastore performance. A maximum of 24 concurrent backup jobs are supported.

To perform File Level Recovery (FLR) on Logical Volume Manager (LVM) or EXT4 based file systems,
requires an external proxy.

Deployment of External Proxies

To take advantage of HotAdd during the backup process, the proxy appliance must have direct access to the
datastore where the target VM is located. The backup agent appliance leverages the datastore access from the
vSphere host to which it is associated. When deploying the external proxy, verify that the appliance has access
to the desired datastores by way of the vSphere host.
If the proxy appliance does not have access to the datastore where the target VM is located, the NBDtransport
method will be invoked instead of HotAdd, which may greatly reduce the speed of the backup.

Number of Proxies to Deploy and Proxy Throughputs per Proxy

When considering the number of proxies to deploy and the configuration of the number of proxy throughputs
per proxy, consider the following as best practices:

When using a single proxy

For an external proxy, if deployed with the default configuration for memory and CPUs, the optimal
number of proxy throughputs is six when running backups. Increasing the proxy throughputs per proxy
beyond six leads to performance degradation.

Increasing the CPU on the external proxy results in better performance than increasing the memory on
the single external proxy.

When the external proxy configuration is modified to eight CPUs, running eight proxy throughputs per
proxy is optimal. This is true for Level 0 and Level 1 backups. With this configuration, network bandwidth
becomes the limiting factor.

When using multiple external proxies for Level 0 backups

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Maximizing the number of proxies deployed may not produce the best performance results.

As you increase the number of proxies, the optimal number of proxy throughputs per proxy may
decrease. With two external proxies running, for example, you may see the best results while running six
proxy throughputs per proxy. With four external proxies running, you may see the best results while
running four proxy throughputs per proxy. This may be constrained by the number of proxies per
vSphere host.

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It is better to increase the number of proxy throughputs per proxy instead of the number of proxies when
performing a set number of backups.

When using multiple external proxies for Level 1 backups

When running incremental (Level 1) backups for a virtual machine, consider increasing the number of proxies.
Running four proxy throughputs per proxy provides better performance than fewer proxies running eight
proxy throughputs per proxy.

Increasing the volume of backups that run on the VDP appliance

After backups have been running, you may need to increase the volume of the backups performed during a
specific timeframe by the VDP appliance. When increasing the quantity of backups performed in a given
timeframe, consider the following best practices:

If the vSphere server resources are a constraint, run more proxy throughputs per proxy and reduce the
number of proxies.

If the vSphere server resources are not constrained, increase the number of proxies and maintain four
proxy throughputs per proxy.

If six to eight external proxies are necessary to process the desired backups, increase the number of proxy
throughputs per proxy and limit the number of external proxies deployed.

Reducing concurrent backups run on the VDP appliance

After backups have been running on the VDP appliance, you may need to reduce the number of concurrent
backups being run by the VDP appliance to limit the load on the datastores and associated storage. When
reducing the quantity of concurrent backups being run by the VDP appliance, consider the following best
practices:

Place the VDP appliance on a datastore with faster write performance, preferring iSCSI to NFS for the
datastore.

If there is high load on the datastore where the protected virtual machines reside during backups, reduce
the number of proxies and the number of proxy throughputs to proxy to four or less. This will reduce the
quantity of seek and read operations when performing backups.

Managing Proxy Throughput

The Manage Proxy Throughput wizard allows you to configure the number of simultaneous backups and
restores, based on your infrastructure. You can use the Manage Proxy Throughput wizard to set values for
both internal and external proxies. The VDP appliance supports up to 8 external proxies, and the maximum
number of concurrent backup jobs is 24.
For more information, refer to Number of Proxies to Deploy and Proxy Throughputs per Proxy on page 62.
CAUTION The number you select to simultaneously back up and restore clients is a global setting. This setting
applies to all internal and external proxy settings.

Procedure
1

Open a web browser and type:

https://<IP_address_VDP_Appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Log in with the VDP username and password.

Click the Configuration tab.

From the Action list, select Manage Proxy Throughput.

The Manage Proxy page appears.

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Select the number, from 1 to 8, of backup and restore clients that you want to run simultaneously.

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Click Next.
The Ready to Complete page appears.

Click Finish to apply the changes.

External Proxy Support

VDP Advanced appliance versions 5.5.6 and earlier are configured with internal proxies only, where the proxy
services run inside the VDP appliance and are registered to manage job requests from the appliance. External
proxies can be configured for VDP 6.0 Appliances.
NOTE The VDP appliance with external proxies supports File Level Recovery (FLR) on virtual machines with
EXT4 file systems.

Best Practice for External Proxy Deployment

NOTE If configuring the appliance to use external proxies, the internal proxies are automatically disabled.
Using HotAdd transport is usually faster than over-the-network backup and restore using NBD (network
block device) transport.

External Proxy Best Practices

Clean up orphan proxies

External proxies that are registered to the VDP appliance but no longer exist in the vCenter inventory are
considered orphan proxies. If the proxy virtual machine remains in the vCenter inventory and you see the
Either the VM is deleted or is currently not managed by vCenter warning for the proxy, you can restart
the proxy virtual machine through the VDP configuration utility. If the problem persists, the issue might
be the hostname is not resolvable due to incorrect network configuration. To work around this issue,
delete the orphan proxy and re-deploy a new proxy.

Remove the proxys ESXi host from the vCenter

When an external proxys ESXi host is removed from the vCenter, the VDP appliance considers the proxy
as an orphan and displays the Either the VM is deleted or is currently managed by vCenter warning
when it is selected in the VDP configuration utility. Unless the ESXi host will be added back to the vCenter,
delete the orphan proxy entry from the VDP configuration utility.

vCenter switch
If a proxys ESXi host is not moved to the new vCenter along with the VDPs ESXi host, that proxy appears
as an orphan in the VDP configuration utility. Unless you are planning to move the proxys host to the new
vCenter or move the VDPs host back to the original vCenter, delete the orphan proxy from VDP
configuration utility.

VDP rollback
After the VDP appliance rolls back to a previous checkpoint, any external proxies added or deleted after
the checkpoint was taken appear as orphan proxies in the VDP configuration utility. For added external
proxies, you can restart them through the VDP configuration utility to re-register or redeploy them. For
the deleted proxies, delete the orphan proxy entries from the VDP configuration utility.

Rebuild VDP from scratch and rollback

If the VDP appliance experienced issues that required a rebuild from scratch, and the appliance rolled
back to a checkpoint from Data Domain, use the VDP configuration utility to change the appliances
password immediately. Any external proxies that were deployed before the checkpoint was taken are
displayed as orphans. Delete these orphans from the VDP configuration utility. Any external proxies that
were deployed on the rebuilt VDP appliance before the checkpoint rollback appear with a Failed to
authenticate with the proxy warning. Update the proxys password after you change the VDP appliances
password.

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VDP disaster recovery from tape

If the VDP appliance is recovered from tape after a disaster, delete the orphan external proxies from the
VDP configuration utility and deploy new ones.

Update password
When the VDP appliances password is changed through the VDP configuration utility, the VDP
appliance updates the password on all registered external proxies. If a proxys password is not updated,
you will see a Failed to authenticate with the proxy warning when the proxy is selected. You can update
the proxys password manually through the VDP configuration utility.

Restart proxy
If any previously-registered external proxies appear as not registered in the VDP configuration utility,
restart the proxies, which will power cycle the proxies and reregister them to the VDP appliance.

Emergency restore
When an emergency restore operation is performed with external proxies, the internal proxy is
automatically enabled. When the emergency restore operation completes and all the ESXi hosts are
reconnected to the vCenter, you can either delete the internal proxy or delete all the external proxies. Do
not enable both the internal and external proxies for non-emergency restore activities.

Limitations

The external VDP proxies are supported only on vSphere host 5.1 and later.

The limit of external proxies per VDP appliance is 8.

The maximum number of concurrent backup jobs is 24.

File Level Recovery (FLR) in virtual machines that use the EXT4 file system requires the use of an external
proxy.

Adding an External Proxy

The Add Proxy wizard allows you to add and deploy up to 8 external proxies and register them with the VDP
appliance from the VDP configuration utility.

Procedure
1

Open a web browser and type:

https://<IP_address_VDP_Appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Log in with the VDP username and password.

Click the Configuration tab.

From the Action list, select Add Proxy.

The Add Proxy page appears.

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On the Host and Storage page, specify the following credentials, and then click Next.

Host: Select a destination host from the list.

Storage: Select a destination storage device from the list.

Network Connection: Select a network connection for the virtual machine from the list.

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On the Network page, specify the following network settings, and then click Next.

IPv4 static address: The Internet Protocol v4 or v6 setting of the interface.

Netmask: The network mask of the IPv4 or IPv6 static address.

Gateway: The gateway address of the IPv4 or IPv6 static address.

Primary DNS: The primary domain name system used for DNS resolution.

Secondary DNS: The secondary domain name system used for DNS resolution.

On the Ready to Complete page, review the deployment settings.

NOTE You can change the name of the external proxy virtual machine on the Ready to Complete page.
8

Click Finish to deploy the proxy.

Ensure that the proxy deploys to the datastore that was selected in Step 5. After the successful deployment, if
the proxy deploys to a VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) cluster, the cluster can move
the proxy by using storage vMotion. The jobs that are running on the proxy while it is migrating to a different
storage are at risk. HotAdd does not work for the proxies that are located in a DRS cluster. Therefore, you must
manually disable DRS for the proxy. This scenario applies to the VDP appliance also, if an internal proxy is in
use.
Perform the following steps to manually disable DRS for the proxy:
1

Select the DRS tab on the cluster that hosts the proxy.

Click Virtual Machine Options.

Under the Automation level, locate the proxy virtual machine and change it to Disable.

Disabling the Internal Proxy

When a user performs a rollback operation as a checkpoint performed during an external proxy backup, after
the rollback completes, the VDP configuration utility displays the internal proxy, along with a warning
message prompting the user to disable the internal proxy.

Procedure
1

In the VDP configuration utility, select the internal proxy from the Proxies list.

Select Manage proxy from the Proxies Actions icon.

The Manage internal proxy wizard displays.

Enable the Disable internal proxy checkbox, and click Next.

On the Ready to Complete page of the wizard, click Finish to apply the changes.

(Optional) Configuring Proxy Certificate Authentication

By default, proxies do not validate SSL certificates when connecting to the vCenter server. This can leave the
vCenter server vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle exploitation, which might result in unauthorized access to
the vCenter server. Configure each proxy to use an SSL certificate authentication when connecting to the
vCenter server corrects this vulnerability. Chapter 5, Securing Communication between VDP and vCenter,
on page 45 provides more information.

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Monitoring External Proxy Health Status

Health Status Criteria
The health status reported for the external proxy is based on the following criteria:

Disk Usage

Warning: Any file system that is greater than 70% capacity.

Critical Warning: Any file system that is greater than 90% capacity.

CPU Load

Warning: 15 minute load average is greater than 1.5.

Critical Warning: 15 minute load average is greater than 5.0.

Memory Usage

Warning: Usage is greater than 85%.

Critical Warning: Usage is greater than 95%.

External Proxy Logs

External proxy logs are visible only if at least one external proxy is configured. Downloading this log bundle
streams a .zip file to the browser. The .zip file contains all the external proxy logs. The internal proxies are
excluded from this log bundle.
For information about downloading logs, refer to Collecting VDP Logs or Diagnostic Information on
page 38.

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Storage Management

This chapter contains the following topics:

Creating New Storage on page 70

Attaching Existing VDP Disks on page 72

Detaching and Reattaching Storage on page 73

Viewing the Storage Configuration on page 74

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Creating New Storage

The Initial Configuration wizard guides you through the storage type selection, device allocation on VDP
storage disks, and the option to run the performance assessment tool.

Limitations
You cannot migrate the appliance to a new host or to a new datastore while you are creating new storage.

Prerequisites

The VDP appliance is deployed and you are logged into the Create Storage page of the Initial
Configuration wizard.

After the OVA deployment, immediately disable vSphere HA on the VDP appliance. After performing the
initial configuration on the VDP appliance, which includes creating a storage, you can enable vSphere HA
for the appliance.

Procedure
1

On the Create Storage page of the Initial Configuration wizard, select Create new storage. When you
create a storage, the process creates a new storage node on the selected datastores.

Select one of the following capacity options and click Next.

0.5

The Device Allocation page appears. When you create new storage, the number of required disks is
known.
3

Select the provision type from the Provision drop-down list.

Thick Lazy-Zeroed (the default and recommended provision type): Thick lazy zeroed provisioning
creates a virtual disk in a default thick format. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated when
the virtual disk is created. Data remaining on the physical device is not erased during creation, but is
zeroed out on demand at a later time on first write from the virtual machine.

Thick Eager-Zeroed: Thick eager zeroed provisioning creates a type of thick virtual disk that is used
when data security is a concern. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated when the virtual disk
is created. When you create a virtual disk using thick eager zeroed provisioning on a datastore that
had previous data, the previous data is erased and cannot be recovered. It might take much longer to
create disks in this format than to create other types of disks.

Thin: For the thin disk, you provision as much datastore space as the disk would require based on
the value that you enter for the disk size. The thin disk starts small and uses only as much datastore
space as the disk needs for its initial operations.

After all of the disks have been allocated to datastores, click Next.
On the Ready to Complete page, you can run a performance analysis on the storage configuration and
click Next to apply the changes. Though you can bypass the performance analysis test, you are strongly
encouraged to run it.

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When you click Next, you are prompted with a warning that the storage configuration will start and
cannot be undone. Click Yes to continue.
Possible results are Passed, Failed, and Conditionally Passed if the seek test is selected (Excluded by
Default). If all tests succeed, the result is Passed. If the write or read tests are unsuccessful, the result is
Failed. If the seek test is selected and if the write and read tests are successful but the seek test fails, the
result is Conditionally Passed.
a

To run the test, select Run performance analysis on storage configuration to ensure that the storage
configuration meets minimum performance expectations. Table 8-11 lists the minimum performance
expectations.
This test performs write, read, and seek performance tests on the disks. Depending on your storage
configuration, performance analysis can take from 30 minutes to several hours to complete.

Select Restart the appliance if successful to automatically restart the appliance after the test succeeds
and click Next to start the test.
The performance analysis test is server-initiated and you can close the browser while the test runs.

If the test succeeds, a message that states that the configuration is complete appears and the
server automatically restarts the appliance.

If the test conditionally passes or fails, the results of the performance analysis appear, but the
server does not automatically restart the appliance. To view the test results, you must relog in to
VDP-Configure and manually restart the client.

NOTE If you do not click Restart within 59 seconds, the appliance automatically restarts and starts the
services. After the VDP appliance restarts, it performs a series of automated configuration steps. These steps
can take 30-45 minutes or more to complete.
The appliance automatically restarts under the following circumstances:

If you opt to perform performance analysis at the end of the VDP Configuration wizard.

In the VDP Configuration wizard, you selected the checkbox to restart the VDP appliance after
the tests succeed.

After the tests succeed.

Minimum Storage Performance

When configuring the VDP appliance, the performance test produces varying results depending on the size of
the appliance being deployed.
Table 8-11 lists the minimum expectations for Read, Write, and Seek performance by VDP appliance size.
Table 8-11. Minimum expectations for storage performance
VDP Appliance Size
(in TB)

Disk Size

Read Minimum

Write Minimum

Seek Minimum

Single datastore

256 GB

10 MB/s

20 MB/s

106 Seeks/s

0.5

256 GB

60 MB/s

30 MB/s

400 Seeks/s

1.0

512 GB

60 MB/s

30 MB/s

400 Seeks/s

2.0

1024 GB

60 MB/s

30 MB/s

400 Seeks/s

4.0

1024 GB

80 MB/s

40 MB/s

400 Seeks/s

6.0

1024 GB

80 MB/s

40 MB/s

400 Seeks/s

8.0

1024 GB

150 MB/s

120 MB/s

400 Seeks/s

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Attaching Existing VDP Disks

The Create Storage page in the Initial Configuration wizard provides the Attach existing VDP disks option.
This option enables you to browse the datastores and select the previously-used VDP disks, and then proceeds
to automatically attach the selected disks to the new VDP appliance. These disks are automatically added to
the new VDP appliance.
CAUTION Do not attempt to manually attach the used VDP disks to the new VDP appliance without following
the steps in this procedure. If you import the used VDP disks, only the restore points are imported, but not the
backup jobs and the configuration information such as, email reports. You must recreate the jobs. The
imported restore points exist in /REPLICATE/VDP_IMPORTS domain. On the vSphere web client, you can
see the actual restore points in /REPLICATE/VDP_IMPORTS domain. If VDP detects an incomplete or invalid
storage configuration, the operation fails.
When you attach existing storage, you do not need to select a capacity option, as you are required to do when
creating new storage.
The following changes occur when previously-used VDP disks are attached to the new VDP appliance:

All backup jobs associated with the previously-used VDP are deleted and must be re-created.

All replication jobs associated with the previously-used VDP are deleted and must be re-created.

Restore points that are associated with the previously-used VDP are kept intact. The restore points appear
with the original VM name appended with a string of random letters.

On the Set Restore Options page of the Restore a backup wizard, the Restore to Original Location option
is disabled for the restore points associated with the previously-used VDP disks.

Email reporting must be reconfigured.

Prerequisites

Before you can attach existing storage, you must install and configure the VDP appliance described in
VDP Installation and Configuration on page 21.

Ensure that you back up all the VDP storage which you intend on attaching to the VDP appliance.

Procedure
1

On the Create Storage page of the Initial Configuration wizard, select Attach existing VDP disks and click
Next.
The Device Allocation dialog box appears.

Click the first ellipsis button:

a

Browse to the first vmdk file you want to attach.

Highlight the vmdk file and click Select.

NOTE You can select to attach only the data disks of the previously-used VDP appliance. You cannot select
the OS boot partition. If you select the primary disk partition of 200 GB (the OS boot partition), an error
message appears.
You can attach vmdk files in any order. After you have selected the first vmdk file, the system analyzes
the disk and defines how many additional disks should be selected.
NOTE At any time during the attach process, you can click Reset to reset the Device Allocation dialog box to
its original state.

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Click the ellipsis button that corresponds to the next disk to be defined:
a

Browse to the next vmdk file you want to attach.

Highlight the vmdk file and click Select.

Each disk is validated as a matching disk before it is added. If the validation fails, an error message
appears. Hover over the red highlighted disk to see the error message.
4

Repeat Step 3 for all remaining disks.

After all disks have been allocated, click Next to validate the complete set of disks.
The Ready to Complete page appears.

Click Next.
The system displays the message:
The following process will start the storage configuration. This cannot be undone. Do you wish to continue?

Click Yes.
The system prompts you to provide the root password associated with the previously-used VDP
appliance.

Type the root password of the previously-used VDP appliance into the Password and Verify Password
text boxes, and then click OK.

Click Finish to apply the changes and reboot.

NOTE After a successful storage configuration, the system automatically reboots and starts the services. After
the VDP appliance reboots, it performs a series of automated configuration steps. These steps can take 30-45
minutes or more to complete.
After the configuration is complete, an integrity check begins.

Detaching and Reattaching Storage

The following procedure explains the steps you must perform if the primary disk partition (the OS boot
partition) on the VDP appliance becomes corrupt or lost, resulting in an unrecoverable VDP appliance.

Prerequisites

At least one validated checkpoint is present on the VDP appliance where the vmdk files are being
detached and reattached.

A new VDP appliance is deployed which is compatible with the older VMDK disk data (the VDP
appliance must be the same version as the disk data or a newer version).

The vmdk files from the previous VDP appliance must be on a datastore that is accessible by the
newly-deployed VDP appliance.

NOTE During the reattach process, you will be prompted to enter the root password for the old VDP
appliance.

Best Practices

Make a backup copy of all vmdk files before reattaching them to a VDP appliance.

If possible, detach the vmdk files from the VDP appliance after shutting down the VDP appliance by using
the Shut Down Guest OS action. Otherwise, as a last resort, power off the VM.

Before detaching a vmdk file from the VDP appliance, note the full path and name of the vmdk file. You
will need this information when reattaching the disk to the newly-deployed VDP appliance.

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Procedure
1

In the vSphere Client, navigate to the VDP appliance and perform a Shut Down Guest OS action on the
virtual machine.

NOTE If the Shut Down Guest OS action is grayed out, navigate to vCenter > Hosts and Clusters, right-click
the VDP appliance, and select Power off VM.
2

Detach the vmdk files from the VDP appliance:

a

From the vSphere Web client, log in as a user who has privileges to edit hardware settings.

Navigate to vCenter > Hosts and Clusters.

In the tree on the left, click the disclosure arrows until the VDP appliance appears.

Right-click the VDP appliance and select Edit Settings.

The virtual machine properties appear. The Hardware tab is selected by default.
Hard disk 1 is always the primary, 200 GB OS boot partition. Do not remove Hard disk 1 from the
VDP appliance.

Click Hard disk 2 from the list.

From the Disk File field, note the full path and name of the vmdk file. You will need this information
when reattaching the disk.

Click Remove.

Under Removal Options, select Remove from virtual machine.

Repeat the removal option for each hard disk (2 through x) in the list.

After removing hard disks 2 through x, click OK.

On the Create Storage page of the Initial Configuration wizard, select Attach existing VDP disks, and
follow the steps in Attaching Existing VDP Disks on page 72.

Viewing the Storage Configuration

The Storage tab provides a storage summary, capacity utilization information, and performance analysis
details.
The Capacity Utilization button displays a page that provides status information for the datastore:

A horizontal bar graph next to the datastore icon shows how full the datastore is as a percentage.

A pie chart shows a breakdown of the space in the datastore. Orange represents the amount of space used
by the datastore. Green represents the amount free space on the datastore. Blue represents the space on
the datastore that is used by other applications that run on virtual machines deployed on the datastore.

A table next to the pie chart lists each data partition name, size, provision type, and vmdk file name. The
following example shows information for a data partition named data 01:
data 01

256GiB

Thin

sample-vdp-241168_6..0.0.117_1.vmdk

In the example, 256 GiB indicates the maximum size that can be utilized.

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The Performance Analysis button displays a table that contains statistics from a performance analysis test.
Column

Description

Datastore

Name of the datastore.

Completed On

Date that the test completed.

Result

A test can display one of the following results:

Never Run

Passed

Failed
If the write or read tests are unsuccessful, the result is Failed.

Conditionally Passed
If the write and read tests are successful, but the seek test (Optional) failed, the result is
Conditionally passed.

Read (MiB/s)

Megabytes per second for the read test.

Write (MiB/s)

Megabytes per second for the write test.

Seek (Seeks/s)

Megabytes per second for the seek test.

Prerequisites
The VDP storage disks are distributed across the available datastore locations, the disks are validated, the
system is rebooted, and the system services are up and running.

Procedure
1

Log in to the VDP-Configure URL:

https://<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Click the Storage tab.

The Storage Summary appears, displaying the available datastores and the amount of total usable storage
and storage capacity that is available for each datastore.

NOTE To refresh the data on the page, click the refresh icon beside Storage Summary.
3

To view status information about the datastore, click Capacity Utilization. This page is the default.

To run a performance test, click Performance Analysis, select a datastore in the table, and then click Run.
The performance analysis test creates a 256 GB vmdk on the datastore, and runs read, write, and seek tests
to check the datastore performance.

Enabling the Seek Test

The Seek test was designed to get Seek performance of desired storage. This is mainly useful where underlying
storage is not thin-provisioned. As most of the field implementations are using thin-provisioned volumes,
Seek test results can be confusing. The Seek test is not suitable for virtual environments; hence, this test is
excluded from default tests that are run as part of the DAT Test Suite. The code will still be present and the
Seek test can be performed if the administrator includes it in the configuration file.
If you specifically want to run the Seek test, you must first change the configuration file using the instructions
below. Then you can run the Performance Analysis Tool which includes the Seek test.

Changing the Configuration File to Enable the Seek Test

1

Using PuTTY, SSH to the VDP appliance.

Open the /usr/local/vdr/etc/benchmark-settings.xml file, which requires write permissions.

Under Options, change <runSeekTest>false</runSeekTest> to <runSeekTest>true</runSeekTest>.

Save the file and exit PuTTY.

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Run the Performance Analysis suite.

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Data Domain Integration

This chapter contains the following topics:

VDP and Data Domain System Integration on page 78

Architecture Overview on page 78

VDP Client Support on page 78

Best Practices on page 79

Pre-integration Requirements on page 80

Preparing the Data Domain system for VDP Integration on page 82

Adding a Data Domain System on page 83

Editing the Data Domain System on page 85

Deleting the Data Domain System from the VDP Appliance on page 85

Backups with VDP and Data Domain on page 87

Replication Control on page 88

Server Maintenance Activity Monitoring on page 89

Restoring Avamar Checkpoint backups from Data Domain systems on page 90

Monitoring Data Domain from the VDP Appliance on page 91

Reclaiming Storage on a Full Data Domain System on page 93

Common Problems and Solutions on page 94

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VDP and Data Domain System Integration

VDP and Data Domain system integration enables the following:

The use of physical Data Domain systems as a backup target for VDP backups

The target destination of backup data, which is set during the creation of a backup job

Transparent user interaction to the backup destination (VDP or Data Domain)

Architecture Overview
A Data Domain system performs deduplication through DD OS software. VDP source based deduplication to
a Data Domain system is facilitated through the use of the DD Boost library.
VDP uses the DD Boost library through API-based integration to access and manipulate directories, files, and
so forth, contained on the Data Domain file system. The DD Boost API gives VDP visibility into some of the
properties and capabilities of the Data Domain system. This enables VDP to control backup images stored on
Data Domain systems. It also enables VDP to manage maintenance activities and to control replication to
remote Data Domain systems.
DD Boost is automatically installed on the VDP appliance during the addition of a Data Domain system.
Figure 9-5 depicts a high-level architecture of the combined VDP and Data Domain solution. With VDP and
Data Domain integration, you can specify whether a specific backup policy targets a VDP appliance or a Data
Domain system.

Figure 9-5. VDP and Data Domain solution

When you select the VDP appliance as the target for backup storage, the VDP appliance performs
deduplication segment processing.
When you select a Data Domain system as the backup target, backup data is transferred to the Data Domain
system. The related metadata that is generated is simultaneously sent to the VDP appliance for storage. The
metadata enables the VDP appliance to perform restore operations from the Data Domain system.

VDP Client Support

VDP and Data Domain system integration supports the following plug-ins:

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VDP Plug-in for SharePoint Server VSS

VDP Plug-in for SQL Server

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Best Practices
What are the VDP limitations with a Data Domain system attached?
VMware suggests protecting up to 25 virtual machines per TB of capacity on a VDP appliance. This variable
is dependent upon the size of the virtual machines, the typical change rate, and the amount of data on each
virtual machine. With these considerations, you can protect up to 200 virtual machines per VDP appliance
backing up to a Data Domain system.
Because the backup data is stored on the Data Domain system, and only the backup job metadata is stored on
the VDP appliance, deploy a 0.5 TB VDP appliance for a standard Data Domain system and a 1 TB VDP
appliance for a 64 TB Data Domain system.
The following list provides the suggested number of VDP appliances deployed per Data Domain system:

1 VDP per DD160 and DD620

1 VDP per DD2200

2 VDP per DD2500 and DD4xxx

3 VDP per DD7200 and DD990

What size VDP appliance do I need if I want all my backups to go to Data Domain?
With a Data Domain system attached to a VDP appliance as the storage device, the VDP appliance only stores
the metadata for backups using the Data Domain system as the destination. It has been determined that a 16
TB Data Domain system only requires a 0.5 TB VDP appliance if all of the backup data is sent to the Data
Domain system. If backups are going to be sent to the VDP appliance as well, the size of the VDP appliance
should be increased accordingly based on the data to be stored on the VDP appliance. With a 64 TB or larger
Data Domain system, you can deploy a 1 TB VDP appliance per 64 TB of Data Domain system storage you
expect to consume with the backup data.

I have many images, pictures, and PDF files in my VMs. Should I set the VDP appliance or
the Data Domain system as the destination for these backups?
The Data Domain system provides better deduplication on images, pictures, and PDF files than the standard
VDP appliance deduplication algorithms.

Data Domain Limitations

The following are current limitations defined for the use of a Data Domain system with a VDP appliance:

If a VDP appliance has a Data Domain system attached to it, the Import Existing storage functionality
of the VDP appliance cannot be used for the VMDKs of the VDP appliance with the Data Domain system
attached.

Only one Data Domain system can be attached to a VDP appliance at a time.

The Data Domain system cannot be deleted from the VDP Configuration UI. Use the manual steps
defined in Deleting the Data Domain System from the VDP Appliance on page 85 to delete a Data
Domain system.

If the Data Domain and VDP connection is broken, the VDP appliance does not monitor the Data Domain
system. Behaviors that might indicate the connection between the appliances are broken include, but are
not limited to, the integrity check, hfscheck or backups failing.

The Data Domain system or VDP appliance cannot be upgraded if the connection between them is broken.

Backup
During a backup, the VDP appliance generates a backup request for the backup destination. If the backup
request includes the option to use a Data Domain system as the destination, backup data is stored on the Data
Domain system. Metadata is stored on the VDP appliance.
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Restore
The process of data recovery is transparent to the backup administrator. The backup administrator uses the
same VDP recovery processes that are native to current VDP implementations.

Security - Encryption
When using a VDP appliance with a Data Domain system attached, there are two potential backup data
streams. If the backup data is being written to the VDP appliance, the backup data is always compressed and
encrypted during flight. If the backup data is being routed to the Data Domain system, the ddboost utility
encrypts the backup data as it is transmitted over the network to the Data Domain system.

Data Migration
You cannot migrate backup data directly from the VDP appliance to the Data Domain system.
To use the Data Domain system as the backup target for backing up a VM or appliance instead of the VDP
appliance, edit the backup job and define the destination as the Data Domain system, and then start
performing backups to the Data Domain system. When you change the backup target to the Data Domain
system, the next backup runs as full backup.
After you successfully perform a backup to the Data Domain system, you can delete the earlier backups from
the VDP appliance. Refer to Deleting a Backup Job on page 117 for information on how to manually delete
backups. If you do not manually delete backups, they expire without intervention.

Pre-integration Requirements
Before you integrate a Data Domain system with a VDP appliance, review the following topics:

Network Throughput on page 80

Network Configuration on page 81

NTP Configuration on page 81

Licensing on page 81

Port Usage and Firewall Requirements on page 81

Capacity on page 81

Data Domain System Streams on page 82

Existing Backup Products in Use with Data Domain on page 82

NOTE This section assumes the VDP appliance and the Data Domain system are installed and configured.

Network Throughput
With VDP, the VDP appliance and Data Domain systems can connect over a Wide Area Network (WAN).
Before using this configuration, validate the firewall port requirements of the Data Domain system. VDP Port
Usage on page 189 provides information.
You can use VDP appliance replication over a WAN to replicate data from source VDP appliance and Data
Domain systems to target VDP appliances, provided they also have a Data Domain system attached.
Before integrating a Data Domain system with an VDP appliance, ensure that enough network bandwidth is
available. To obtain the maximum throughput available on a Data Domain system (for restores, level zero
backups, and subsequent incremental backups after a level-zero backup), verify that the network
infrastructure provides more bandwidth than the bandwidth required by the maximum throughput of the
Data Domain system. To see the network throughput, use the system show performance command on
your Data Domain system:
system show performance [{hr | min | sec} [{hr | min | sec}]]

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For example:
system show performance 24 hr 10 min
This command shows the system performance for the last 24 hours at 10 minute intervals. 1 minute is the
minimum interval.

Network Configuration
Configure (or verify) the following network configuration:

Assign a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) to the Data Domain system.

Use a FQDN (not an IP address) when registering a Data Domain system. This can limit the ability to route
optimized duplication traffic exclusively through a registered interface.

Ensure that DNS on the Data Domain system is properly configured.

Ensure forward and reverse DNS lookups work between the following systems:

VDP appliance

Data Domain system

Backup and restore clients

vCenter server

vSphere hosts

Use Hosts files to resolve hostnames to non-routable IP addresses.

Do not create secondary hostnames to associate with alternate or local IP interfaces.

NTP Configuration
Configure the VDP appliance, vCenter server, vSphere hosts, and Data Domain systems to use the same
Network Time Protocol (NTP) Server.

Licensing
Ensure that the environment meets the licensing requirements in Table 9-12.
Table 9-12. Licensing requirements
Product

Licensing requirement

VDP appliance

The VDP appliance requires a valid vSphere host license (minimum of Essentials Plus).

Data Domain system

The DD Boost license must be installed on the Data Domain system.

Port Usage and Firewall Requirements

To enable communication between the VDP appliance and the Data Domain systems, review and implement
the port usage and firewall requirements that VDP Port Usage on page 189 describes.

Capacity
Carefully assess your backup storage needs when evaluating how much data to store on the Data Domain
system and the VDP appliance. Include estimates from data that is sent to the Data Domain system from any
other servers.
When the Data Domain system reaches its maximum storage capacity, no further backups to the Data Domain
system occur until additional capacity is added or old backups are deleted or expired.
Monitoring Data Domain from the VDP Appliance on page 91 provides details on how to monitor capacity.

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Data Domain System Streams

Each Data Domain system has a soft limit to the maximum number of connection and data streams that can
be sustained simultaneously while maintaining performance. The number of streams varies depending on the
Data Domain system model. For example, the DD990 can support 540 backup streams, while the DD620 can
support 20 backup streams.

Changing the Max Streams Value

As a default, the VDP appliance is configured to use a max streams value of 16.
If you need to modify the number of streams associated to a Data Domain system from the VDP appliance,
perform the following steps. The changes applied using these steps will only take effect during subsequent
edits of or the addition of a Data Domain system to the VDP appliance.
1

Go to the command line of the VDP appliance (either with SSH / Putty or Terminal of the appliance) and
type the following command:
cd /usr/local/vdr/etc/

Use a text editor to edit the vdp-options.properties file.

Insert the field com.vmware.vdp.option.datadomain.maxstreamsoverride=num where num is

the max number of streams for the Data Domain system.

Save the modified file.

Add or edit a Data Domain system. Allow five minutes for the appropriate process to run.

The ddrmaint read-ddr-info file should now contain a max-streams attribute with the value you
configured.

Existing Backup Products in Use with Data Domain

Data Domain systems can use other third-party backup and archiving software. The VDP appliance does not
assume it has sole ownership of the Data Domain system. Ensure that proper sizing is evaluated if the system
is shared with other software products. The VDP appliance does not use the native Data Domain system
snapshot and replication features.
Replication occurs through the DD Boost SDK library by using copying and cloning. However, other third
party products may make use of the native Data Domain system snapshot and replication features. In this case,
a snapshot of an entire Data Domain system or a replication of an entire Data Domain system includes the VDP
appliance data.

Preparing the Data Domain system for VDP Integration

To support VDP and Data Domain system integration, ensure the environment meets the Data Domain system
requirements listed in Table 9-13.
Table 9-13. Data Domain system requirements
Data Domain feature or specification

Requirement for use with the VDP appliance

Data Domain Operating System (DD OS)

VDP integration requires DD OS 5.4.0.8 or DD OS 5.5.x or later.

DD Boost

VDP integration requires DD Boost 2.6.x DD Boost software enables backup

servers to communicate with storage systems without the need for Data
Domain systems to emulate tape.
There are two components to DD Boost: one component that runs on the
backup server and another that runs on the Data Domain system.
The component that runs on the backup server (DD Boost libraries) is
integrated into the VDP appliance. DD Boost software is an optional
product that requires a license to operate on the Data Domain system.

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Table 9-13. Data Domain system requirements

Data Domain device type

The VDP appliance supports any Data Domain system that is running the
supported DD OS version.

DD Boost user account

The DD Boost library uses a unique login account name created on the Data
Domain system. This account name is known as the DD Boost account. Only
one DD Boost account exists per Data Domain system.
If the account is renamed and/or the password is changed, these changes
must be immediately updated on the VDP appliance by editing the Data
Domain configuration options. Failure to update the DD Boost account
information could potentially yield integrity check errors and/or
backup/restore problems. The DD Boost account must have administrator
privileges.

Before you can add a Data Domain system to the VDP configuration, prepare the Data Domain system by
enabling DD Boost and creating a DD Boost user account for the VDP appliance to use to access the Data
Domain system for backups and restores (and replication, if applicable).
To prepare the Data Domain system:
1

Disable DD Boost on the Data Domain system by logging into the CLI as an administrative user and
typing the following command:
ddboost disable

Create a DD Boost account and password:

a

Create the user account with admin privileges by typing the following command:
user add USER role admin

where USER is the username for the new account.

b

Set the new account as the DD Boost user by typing the following command:
ddboost set user-name USER

where USER is the username for the account.

3

Enable DD Boost to allow the changes to take effect by typing the following command:
ddboost enable

IMPORTANT If you change the DD Boost account name or password, make sure to edit the Data Domain
system configuration in the VDP configuration utility. Otherwise all backups, restores, and maintenance
activities fail.

Adding a Data Domain System

A Data Domain system performs deduplication through DD OS software. When you select a Data Domain
system as the backup target, backup data is transferred to the Data Domain system. Only one Data Domain
system can be configured.

Procedure
1

Log in to the VDP configuration utility by using the following URL:

https:<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Click the Storage tab.

The storage summary displays statistics about the total usable storage and available capacity for the Data
Domain system and for each datastore.

From the Action list, select Add Data Domain.

The Host Configuration dialog box appears.

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Specify Data Domain system information:

a

In the Data Domain FQDN or IP box, enter the FQDN or IP address of the Data Domain system to
add.

NOTE Do not use an IP address or a secondary hostname that associates with alternative or local IP interfaces.
It may limit the ability of the VDP appliance to route optimized deduplication traffic.

In the DDBoost User Name box, type the name of the DD Boost account for VDP to use to access the
Data Domain system for backups, restores, and replication.

In the Password box, type the password for the account that VDP should use to access the Data
Domain system for backups, restores, and replication.

In the Confirm Password box, type the password again to verify it.

Click the Enable Checkpoint Copy checkbox to enable checkpoint backup support, which allows
VDP checkpoints to be stored on a Data Domain system (using DD OS 5.3 or later). These checkpoints
are then used if disaster recovery is required.

To configure SNMP, click Next.

The SNMP dialog box appears. The SNMP options to configure for VDP and Data Domain system
integration include the following:

The Getter/Setter Port Number text box lists the port on the Data Domain system from which to
receive and on which to set SNMP objects. The default value is 161.

The SNMP Community String text box lists the community string VDP uses for read-only access to
the Data Domain system.

The Trap Port Number text box lists the trap port. The default value is 163.

Click Next.
The Ready to Complete dialog box appears.

Click Add to save your Data Domain configuration.

A successful Add Data Domain operation causes the following UI changes to occur:

The system creates a new checkpoint which takes approximately ten minutes.

Data Domain information appears on the VDP appliance in the following locations:

Backup tab: The Data Domain system is available as the storage target in the Create a new
backup job wizard.

Restore tab: Displays the Data Domain in the Name column of the Restore backup wizard.

Reports tab: Provides backup status reports for the Data Domain system.

Storage summary: Displays statistics about the total usable storage and available capacity for the
Data Domain. Refer to Viewing the Storage Configuration on page 74 for details.

Email reporting: Displays a summary of the Data Domain configuration.

NOTE When you add a Data Domain system to the VDP configuration, the VDP appliance creates an MTree
on the Data Domain system for the VDP appliance. The MTree refers to the directory created within the DD
Boost path. Data Domain systems support a maximum of 100 MTrees. If you reach the limit, then you cannot
add the Data Domain system to the VDP configuration.

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Editing the Data Domain System

1

Log in to the VDP configuration utility by using the following URL:

https:<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Click the Storage tab.

The storage summary displays statistics about the total usable storage and available capacity for the Data
Domain and for each datastore.

From the Action list, select Edit Data Domain.

The Host Configuration dialog box appears.

Edit the settings for the Data Domain system as necessary. Adding a Data Domain System on page 83
provides details on each setting in the dialog box.

Click Next.

After the edits are complete, click Finish.

NOTE If you edit the Data Domain system hostname, the DD Boost username, or the DD Boost password, the
system automatically creates a new checkpoint, which takes approximately ten minutes. Rolling Back an
Appliance on page 41 provides information about checkpoint.
NOTE If you perform a rollback to a checkpoint with the outdated Data Domain system name or DD Boost
information, then the rollback fails.

Deleting the Data Domain System from the VDP Appliance

Before you delete the Data Domain system from the VDP appliance, note the following:

You must delete all restore points stored on the Data Domain by using the VDP plug-in on the vSphere
web client.

No backup jobs can exist with the Data Domain system. If any backup jobs exist where the Data Domain
system is configured as the destination, you must either edit the backup jobs to set a new destination or
you must delete the backup jobs.

After the restore points are checked and the backup jobs are verified, it is best practice to run an integrity
check from the Configuration tab of the VDP appliance.

Remove the Data Domain system from VDP using the command line interface. See detailed instructions
below.

After the Data Domain system is deleted, run another integrity check from the VDP user interface to verify
the Data Domain system is invalid.

NOTE VMware Knowledge Base Article 2063806 provides information about deleting a Data Domain system.
This is an internal article. Contact Technical Support for assistance.

Procedure
1

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Before you delete the Data Domain system, delete all restore points stored on the Data Domain system.
Use the vSphere web client to delete restore points:
a

Go to the Restore tab of the VDP plug-in.

Select the Manual restore tab on the navigation bar.

For clients that have been backed up to the Data Domain system, remove all restore points where the
location shows that they are stored on the Data Domain server.

Ensure that no backup jobs use the Data Domain system as the destination. If any backup jobs exist with
the Data Domain system as a destination, you must edit the backup job to set a new destination or the
delete the backup job.

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After the restore points have been checked and the backup jobs have been verified, as a best practice run
an integrity check from the configuration tab of the VDP plug-in.

Once the integrity check and validation of the integrity check complete, remove the Data Domain system
from the VDP appliance. Use the command line.
a

SSH or Putty into the VDP appliance.

Run the status.dpn command and verify that the Last checkpoint and Last hfscheck have
completed. If they have not, repeat this step until they show they have completed.

Run the mccli server show-prop command. This command displays results similar to following
output:
Attribute
Value
-----------------------------------------------------State
Full Access
Active sessions
0
Total capacity
575.9 GB
Capacity used
0 bytes
Server utilization
0.0%
Bytes protected
0 bytes
Bytes protected quota
Not configured
License expiration
Never
Time since Server initialization
1 days 20h:58m
Last checkpoint
2014-10-10 09:03:48 MDT
Last validated checkpoint
2014-10-09 09:02:16 MDT
System Name
gs-pod187.test.domain
System ID
1381255529@00:50:56:86:46:10
HFSAddr
gs-pod187.test.domain
HFSPort
27000

The System ID contains a number, then an @ sign, and then the MAC address of the VDP appliance. Note
the number before the @ sign. The Data Domain system refers to this number as the DPN ID.
5

Run the following command:

ddrmaint has-backups dpnid=num ddr-server=DDRSERVER | grep hasbackups

where num is the DPN ID you noted in Step c and DDRSERVER is either the hostname or the IP address of
the DDR server. Note that there is a space in the grep command between the single quote and the word
hasbackups.
This command displays either of the following results:
hasbackups=true

or
hasbackups=false

If the information returned is hasbackups=true, then check if Step 1 and Step 2 need to be repeated.
After you repeat Step 1 and Step 2 (or verify that the steps have been completed), repeat Step 5.

If Step 5 still shows hasbackups=true continue to Step a. Otherwise, you need to run Step 11.
If you have attempted to remove backups from the Data Domain system by using the VDP UI and the
Data Domain system still indicates that the backup data is present, then you must mount the Data Domain
data partition to a Linux VM to clear out the data directory. If a Linux VM is unavailable, you can use the
VDP appliance for the next steps.
By default, all of the data for backups on a Data Domain system is stored under a single logical storage
unit (LSU). The LSU for the VDP is named Avamar-<DPNID> and is located under /data/col1.

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If you are unable to access the file system from the Data Domain operating system interface, you must
grant remote access to the LSU. To do so, you must access the Data Domain system remotely by using the
following steps:
a

Putty or SSH to the Data Domain system.

Run the nfs add /data/col1 <IP of Linux VM> command.

This command should return the results of NFS export for /data/col1 added.
If the command does not return the expected results, type nfs help for a man page on the
command. If the command returns the expected results, exit the SSH or Putty session.

Putty or SSH to the Linux VM used in Step b as the root user.

Run the mkdir /mnt/DataDomain01 command.

Run the mount <IP of DD>:/data/col1 /mnt/DataDomain01 command.

Run the ls ltr /mnt/DataDomain01/avamar-<DPNID> command, where DPNID is the value

noted in Step c. The output should display subdirectories where the VDP backups are stored.

Run the rm rf /mnt/DataDomain01/avamar-<DPNID>/* command where DPNID is the value

noted in Step c. This will remove all data from the VDP backups.

Repeat Step f to verify that all data was removed.

Exit the Linux virtual machine.

10 Putty or SSH to the VDP appliance

11

Run the mccli dd delete --name=<DD IP or hostname> --force=true command.

12

After you delete the Data Domain system, run an integrity check again from the VDP UI. The old
checkpoints with the Data Domain information is now invalid.

Backups with VDP and Data Domain

The following topics describe VDP and Data Domain system backups:

How backups work with VDP and Data Domain system

Selecting a Data Domain target for backups

How Backups Work with VDP and Data Domain

During a backup, the VDP appliance sends a backup request to the vCenter server. If the backup request
includes the option to use a Data Domain system as the target, backup data is stored on the Data Domain
system and metadata is stored on the VDP appliance.
The following topics provide additional details on how backups work with VDP and Data Domain.

Where Backup Data is Stored

All data for a backup is stored under a single dedicated MTree on a single Data Domain system.

How VDP Appliance Manages Backup Data

During a backup, the VDP appliance sends the metadata for the backup from the client to the VDP data
partitions. This process enables the VDP appliance to manage the backup even though the data is stored on a
Data Domain system.
The VDP appliance does not store the original path and file name for a file on the Data Domain system.
Instead, the VDP appliance uses unique file names on the Data Domain system.

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Supported Backup Types

Store all backup types (full, differential, incremental) for a client in the same destination (VDP appliance or
Data Domain system). Backup types should not be distributed across destinations. For example, do not store
the initial full backup of a client in the VDP appliance and subsequent differential backups on the Data Domain
system.

Canceling and Deleting Backups

If you cancel a backup while it is in progress, then the VDP appliance deletes the backup data that was written
to the Data Domain system during the next cycle of the VDP appliance garbage collection process.
If you delete a backup in VDP, then the backup is deleted from the Data Domain system during the next cycle
of the VDP garbage collection process.
Deleting a Backup Job on page 117 provides instructions on how to cancel or delete a backup.

Selecting a Data Domain Target for Backups

After the VDP appliance and the Data Domain system are integrated, any backup target for the VDP appliance
has the option to use the Data Domain storage as the Destination in the Create a new backup job work flow,
as shown in Figure 9-6.

Figure 9-6. Create a new backup job wizard - Destination page

You can use the Edit a backup job wizard to change the destination for a backup job. See Editing a Backup
Job on page 117 for more information on how to edit the backup job.
NOTE If the destination of a backup job is modified, then the next backup performed will be a full backup.
The new destination will not have the previous full backup data stored with it.

Replication Control
When a VDP appliance with a Data Domain system attached replicates backup data, replication occurs
between the Data Domain systems. However, replication jobs are configured by using the VDP user interface.
You configure and monitor replication on the VDP appliance. The replication activity can also be monitored
through the Data Domain system by checking the DD Boost activity. Refer to the Data Domain Operating
Systems Administration Guide for instructions on how to monitor this activity.
Do not use Data Domain replication functionality to initiate replication of data that was backed up from a VDP
appliance. When you use Data Domain replication, the replicated data will not refer to the associated VDP
appliance, because the metadata stored on the VDP appliance was not replicated.

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Replication Data Flow

VDP replicates the data directly from one Data Domain system to another. The replication process examines
each backup to be replicated, and if it determines that the backup data is stored on a Data Domain system, the
process issues a request to replicate the data from the source Data Domain system to the target Data Domain
system by using DD Boost. In this instance, the Data Domain systems are responsible for the replication of the
data. This is analyzed for each backup being replicated.

Replication Schedule
The replication of VDP data on a Data Domain system occurs on the VDP replication schedule. You should not
schedule replication of data on the Data Domain system separately from the replication of data on the VDP
appliance.

Replication Configuration
To configure a replication when you use a Data Domain system as a backup target for VDP, use the VDP
plug-in on the vSphere web client.
Refer to Replication on page 137 for more information on configuring VDP replication.
NOTE When replicating, if the source is a VDP appliance with a Data Domain system attached to it, the target
(whether it be an Avamar server or the VDP appliance) must also have a Data Domain system attached to it.

Replication Monitoring with VDP

To monitor replication activity with the VDP appliance, including replication activities associated with a Data
Domain system, perform the following steps:
1

In the vSphere web client, log in to the vSphere Data Protection plug-in.

Click the Replication tab.

The Replication tab displays all replication jobs, and the last run time as well as the next scheduled
run time.

Selecting a replication job displays the Destination server and the clients included in the replication
job details frame.

If you check the Replication column, the Reports tab displays the replication job and the last
replication run time for each protected client.

Server Maintenance Activity Monitoring

The VDP appliance performs the system maintenance operations for backup data on the Data Domain system,
including VDP integrity checks, checkpoints, rollbacks, garbage collection, and secure backup deletion.
The ddrmaint utility implements all required operations on the Data Domain system for the VDP appliance.
The ddrmaint utility logs all maintenance activities on the VDP appliance in the ddrmaint.log file. This
log file can be located in the /usr/local/avamar/var/ddrmaintlogs directory.
When the ddrmaint.log file reaches 25 MB in size, the existing log version will roll. The existing
ddrmaint.log file will be renamed ddrmaint.log.1 and a new ddrmaint.log file will be created. Any
previous copies of ddrmaint.log.X will have their log counter increased by one as well (ddrmaint.log.1
will migrate to ddrmaint.log.2 and so forth).

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Restoring Avamar Checkpoint backups from Data Domain systems

If you have created VDP checkpoint backups on a Data Domain system, you can restore a checkpoint to a new
VDP appliance in the event the original VDP appliance fails.

Assumptions for the Restore Operation

The procedure in Performing the Checkpoint Restore on page 90 explains how to perform a checkpoint
restore when the following assumptions are true:

You have a valid checkpoint for a VDP appliance on a Data Domain system target.

The VDP appliance that failed has been replaced.

The replacement VDP appliance is a new appliance with no backup data or metadata.

The size of the replacement VDP appliance is either the same as or larger than the original VDP appliance.

The replacement VDP appliance must have the same data partition count as the original VDP appliance.

The replacement VDP appliance must use the same hostname and IP address as the original VDP
appliance.

Performing the Checkpoint Restore

To restore a checkpoint from a Data Domain system to a new VDP appliance:
1

Log in to the VDP appliance as root and from a CLI prompt query the available checkpoints to recover by
typing the following command:
ddrmaint cp-backup-list --full --ddr-server=Data_Domain_system --ddr-user=DD_Boost_user_name
--ddr-password=DD_Boost_user_password

where

Data_Domain_system is the Data Domain system with the VDP appliance checkpoint backup.

DD_Boost_user_name is the DD Boost user account used for VDP and Data Domain system
integration.

DD_Boost_user_password is the DD Boost user account password used for VDP and Data Domain
system integration.

The output will be similar to the following example:

================== Checkpoint ==================
VDP Advanced Name: a4dpe223d
VDP Advanced MTree/LSU: avamar-1346892530
Data Domain System Name: griffin-dd10.asl.lab.emc.com
VDP Advanced Client Path: /MC_SYSTEM/avamar-1346892530
VDP Advanced Client ID: 8b75468f70dc8ff0fa2e5118cec8ecdddf7fccee
Checkpoint Name: cp.20140919184604
Checkpoint Backup Date: 2014-09-19 11:51:12
Data Partitions: 6
Attached Data Domain systems: griffin-dd10.asl.lab.emc.com

Restore the backups stored on the VDP appliance from the checkpoint stored on the Data Domain system
(requires the Data Domain server name and credentials of the default backups target Data Domain
system) by using the cprestore command.
The cprestore command is used for the restore operation. The cprestore command completes the
following tasks:

90

Creates NFS export on Data Domain system.

Mounts Data Domain NFS export on the VDP appliance.

Copies the backup files needed on the VDP appliance from the backup checkpoint on the Data
Domain system to the corresponding VDP appliance checkpoint directory in each data partition.
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Undoes NFS mount and export.

To restore the backups on the Data Domain system, type the following command on the VDP appliance:
/usr/local/avamar/bin/cprestore --hfscreatetime=VDP_ID --ddr-server=Data_Domain_system
--ddr-user=DD_Boost_user_name --cptag=Checkpoint_name

where:

VDP_ID is determined from the output of Step 1. From the VDP appliance
MTree/LSU:avamar-1346892530 field, the VDP_ID is 1346892530.

Data_Domain_system is the Data Domain system with the VDP appliance checkpoint backup. In the
previous checkpoint output example, the value is griffin-dd10.asl.lab.emc.com.

DD_Boost_user_name is the DD Boost user account used for VDP and Data Domain system
integration. In the previous checkpoint output example, the value is VDP.

Checkpoint_name is the checkpoint name. In the previous checkpoint output example, the value is
cp.20140919184604.

Stop the VDP appliance by typing the following command:

dpnctl stop

A confirmation message, Do you wish to shut down the local instance of EMS? appears. Type Y.
4

To initiate a rollback, type the following command:

dpnctl start --force_rollback

A message appears that the appliance was shut down. A list of choices also appears.
5

Select option 3, Select a specific checkpoint to which to roll back.

Wait for the rollback to complete. The rollback might take up to one hour, depending on the amount of
data present in the VDP appliance. When the rollback is complete, the command prompt returns.

Open the user-defined temporary file created during the rollback and verify that the rollback successfully
completed without errors.

If the internal proxy is enabled, first disable it and then re-enable it by using the VDP configuration utility.

If there are any orphan proxies, that is, the external proxies that were deployed on an older VDP
appliance, perform the following steps by using the the VDP configuration utility:

Delete the orphan proxies.

Change the password of the VDP appliance.

Add the external proxies.

Create a new checkpoint on the VDP appliance:

a

On the VDP Configuration tab, select Create integrity check to create a new checkpoint.

When the checkpoint has been initiated, click OK.

Monitoring Data Domain from the VDP Appliance

To review high-level information about the capacity of theData Domain system that is attached to a VDP
appliance, use either the vSphere web client or the VDP configuration utility.

On the vSphere web client, open the VDP plug-in and navigate to the Configuration tab to view the
capacity summary for the Data Domain system.

In the VDP configuration utility, open the Storage tab to view the storage summary for the Data Domain
system.

NOTE To refresh the data on the page, click the refresh icon beside Storage Summary.

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When the Data Domain system reaches its capacity limit, you can reclaim space on the device by using
the instructions in Reclaiming Storage on a Full Data Domain System on page 93.
Table 9-14. Capacity thresholds for Data Domain
Threshold

Value

Behavior

Capacity warning

80%

VDP issues a warning event.

Capacity error

95%

Tasks are not generated on the vCenter for backup jobs when Data
Domain capacity is more than 95%.

Healthcheck limit

95%

Existing backups are allowed to complete, but new backup activities

are suspended. VDP issues error events for Data Domain.

NOTE When the Data Domain system reaches 99% capacity, maintenance operations fail. The best practice
recommendation is to limit Data Domain capacity usage to 80%.

Monitoring by Using the vSphere Web Client

1

On the vSphere web client, open the VDP plug-in.

On the Configuration tab, the Storage Summary section displays the following information:

Data Domain system FQDN or IP address

Capacity of the Data Domain system

Free Space on the Data Domain system

Used Capacity on the Data Domain system

On the left, a color container variant is presented to check the Data Domain capacity:

When the storage capacity used is less than 80%, the container is green.

When the storage capacity used is between 80% and 95%, the container is yellow. The following
message appears:
The Data Domain storage is nearly full.

When the storage capacity used is between 95% and 100%, the container is red. The following
message appears:
The Data Domain storage is nearly full.

When the storage capacity used is 100%, the container is red. The following message appears:
The Data Domain storage is full.

Monitoring by Using the VDP Configuration Utility

1

Log in to the VDP configuration utility by using the following URL:

https://<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

On the Storage tab, the Storage Summary section displays the following information:

DD hostname or IP address

Total usable storage

Storage available

Capacity consumed (in percentage)

NOTE To refresh the data on the page, click the refresh icon beside Storage Summary.

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On the left, a color container variant is presented to check the Data Domain capacity:

When the storage capacity used is less than 80%, the container is green.

When the storage capacity used is between 80% and 95%, the container is yellow. The following
message appears:
The Data Domain storage is nearly full.

When the storage capacity used is between 95% and 100%, the container is red. The following
message appears:
The Data Domain storage is nearly full.

When the storage capacity used is 100%, the container is red. The following message appears:
The Data Domain storage is full.

Reclaiming Storage on a Full Data Domain System

If you use all of the storage space on a Data Domain system, the following issues may occur:

Backups do not succeed and may not start.

Operations that change information on the Data Domain system fail, including the deletion of
checkpoints, active backups, and expired backups during garbage collection. These operations may fail
because they involve directory renames, which are not allowed on a full Data Domain system.

To reclaim the used storage on a full Data Domain system, perform the following steps:
1

Determine the source of the data that is using the storage. The data may be from a specific client, a group
of clients associated with a specific VDP appliance, or a different backup product that stores data on the
Data Domain system.

Cancel any backups that are in progress. You must do this from the command line of the VDP appliance.
a

Open an SSH or Putty session to the VDP appliance and run the following commands:
su admin
ssh-agent bash
ssh-add .ssh/dpnid

Run the mccli activity show command.

This command returns results similar to the following sample output:

admin@gs-pod192:~/>: mccli activity show

0,23000,CLI command completed successfully.
ID
Status Error Code Start Time
Elapsed End Time
Type
Progress Bytes New Bytes Client
Domain
---------------- --------- ---------- -------------------- ----------- -------------------- ---------------- -------------- --------- --------9138660744236309 Running 0 2013-12-09 09:44 MST 00h:27m:25s 2013-12-10 09:44 MST On-Demand Backup 54.3 GB
4.2%
Win2008R2-GSClone /10.7.242.175/VirtualMachines
9138660744234709 Completed 0 2013-12-09 09:44 MST 00h:02m:51s 2013-12-09 09:47 MST On-Demand Backup 40.0 GB
<0.05% GermanExchange /10.7.242.175/VirtualMachines
9138660718256909 Completed 0 2013-12-09 09:39 MST 00h:01m:06s 2013-12-09 09:40 MST On-Demand Backup 40.0 GB
<0.05% GermanExchange /10.7.242.175/VirtualMachines
9138660744235609 Completed 02013-12-09 09:44 MST 00h:20m:37s 2013-12-09 10:04 MST On-Demand Backup 40.0 GB
2.6%
ActiveDirectory /10.7.242.175/VirtualMachines \

To run the command that cancels the running backup jobs, you need to know the appliance password
(entered as the 'AppliancePassword' value below). You also need to note the ID of any Running jobs.

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Type the mccli activity cancel --mcsuserid=MCUser

--mcpasswd=AppliancePassword --id=XXXXX command, where AppliancePassword is the
appliance password and XXXX is the ID of the Running job you wish to cancel. This command returns
results similar to the following output:
admin@gs-pod192:~/>: mccli activity cancel --mcsuserid=MCUser --mcspasswd=Test12345 --id=9138660744236309
0,22205,Backup cancelled via console
AttributValue
-------------------------activity-id9138660744236309

Repeat Step c for all jobs in the Running state.

Suspend backups and restores. On the VDP appliance, this can be done by disabling the proxies from the
command line. Verify with end users that there are no critical backups or restores that must be performed
before you run these commands.

Open an SSH or Putty session to the VDP appliance.

Run the service avagent-vmware stop command.

Suspend server maintenance operations on the VDP appliance.

a

Log in to the VDP configuration utility by using the following URL:

https://<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure

If the Maintenance services appear as Running, click the Stop button

On the Data Domain system, manually delete the existing STAGING, DELETED, or cur/DELETED
directories for the VDP appliance.

Use the Data Domain Enterprise Manager to initiate the Data Domain file system cleaning operation.
This process should free enough space to enable VDP appliance service maintenance operations to
complete successfully.

Restart server maintenance operations on the VDP appliance.

a

Log in to the VDP configuration utility by using the following URL:

https://<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure

b
9

If the Maintenance services appear as Stopped, click the Start button.

Restart the proxies on the VDP appliance so that backups and restores can run.
a

Open an SSH or Putty session to the VDP appliance.

Run the service avagent-vmware start command.

Common Problems and Solutions

This section lists common problems and solutions when you store VDP appliance backups on a Data Domain
system.

Backup Fails if the Data Domain System is Offline

If the Data Domain system is offline when a backup starts, then the backup may take five minutes or more
before it fails. The failure occurs because there is a minimum timeout period of five minutes for almost all DD
Boost operations.
To resolve the failed backup, set the Data Domain system online, and then retry the backup.

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Rolling Back after Deleting a Data Domain System

If you roll back to a checkpoint after following the procedure for Deleting the Data Domain System from the
VDP Appliance on page 85, the rollback should bring you to a state where the Data Domain system is
removed from the VDP appliance.
To add the Data Domain system back to the VDP appliance, use the VDP Configuration UI. Refer to Adding
a Data Domain System on page 83 for more information.
If you rolled back to a checkpoint before the deletion of the Data Domain system, then the Data Domain system
should be still attached and properly configured. To remove the Data Domain system, follow the procedure
for Deleting the Data Domain System from the VDP Appliance on page 85.
If a rollback of the appliance leaves you in a different state than these, it is best to contact support to define the
proper resolution.

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VDP Disk Expansion

10

This chapter contains the following topics:

Prerequisites on page 98

VMFS Heap Size Recommendations on page 98

Performing Disk Expansion on page 99

Performance Analysis on page 101

Disk Expansion with Essentials Plus on page 101

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Prerequisites
Ensure that your configuration meets the following requirements before disk expansion. Failure to meet these
requirements can corrupt VDP and require a restoration from a clone or VDP backup.

Confirm that the minimum CPU and memory requirements are met for the new configuration:

The minimum number of virtual CPUs is 4 for VDP capacity options of 2 TB, 4 TB, 6 TB, and 8 TB.

The minimum amount of memory per VM depends on the capacity:

Capacity size

Required memory

2 TB

6 GB

4 TB

8 GB

6 TB

10 GB

8 TB

12 GB

Confirm that both CPU and Memory Hot-Add are enabled. The CPU and Memory Hot-Add options are
disabled by default in the case of an upgraded appliance.

NOTE

If you have an Essentials Plus license, you cannot hot-plug the required memory. You must manually
increase the memory assigned to VDP. See Disk Expansion with Essentials Plus on page 101 for
additional details.

Confirm that you have available disk space for the expansion. You can check your disk space from the
Storage tab. See Viewing the Storage Configuration on page 74.

Perform disk expansion during the backup window when no backup jobs or any other VDP tasks are
running, such as restores or integrity checks. Ensure that all the VDP services are in a running state before
attempting disk expansion. See Starting and Stopping Services on page 37 for additional details.

Confirm that you have administrative privileges in the vCenter. See User Account Configuration on
page 24 to determine if you have if you have administrative privileges for the vCenter.

Confirm that VMFS heap size is set to the correct value for the amount of virtual disk space associated
with the vSphere host. See VMFS Heap Size Recommendations on page 98 for additional details.

Make a note of the MAC address for the appliance before cloning. The MAC address will be used later in
cases where storage has failed.

Create a clone or backup of the VDP appliance and verify that it is valid before disk expansion.

VMFS Heap Size Recommendations

VMFS heap size determines the amount of virtual disk space that each vSphere host supports. If you exceed
the amount of virtual disk space beyond what is configured for VMFS heap size, the following can occur:

Virtual machines behave erratically

Cannot allocate memory error messages appear

Virtual machines may crash or fail to start

Before disk expansion, confirm that VMFS heap size is configured properly for the new virtual disk capacity.
Increasing VMFS heap size increases the amount of memory allocated to the vSphere host kernel and requires
a system reboot for the changes to take effect.

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VMFS3 and VMFS5 use the same settings and are defined in Table 10-15.
Table 10-15. VMFS heap size settings

Default heap
amount

Default
allowed open
VMDK
storage per
host

Minimum
heap amount

Maximum
heap amount

Maximum
heap value

Maximum
open VMDK
storage per
host

vSphere Host
5.0 Update 2
(914586) and
earlier

80 MB

8 TB

N/A

256 MB

255

25 TB

vSphere Host
5.0 Patch 5
(1024429) and
later

256 MB

60 TB

256 MB

640 MB

255

60 TB

vSphere Host
5.1 Patch 1
(914609) and
earlier

80 MB

8 TB

N/A

256 MB

255

25 TB

vSphere Host
5.1 Update 1
(1065491) and
later

256 MB

60 TB

256 MB

640 MB

255

60 TB

Version/build

NOTE vSphere 5.5 and later include a much improved heap eviction process, so that there is no need for the
larger heap size that consumes memory. vSphere 5.5 and later support a maximum heap size of 256 MB and
enables hosts to access all address space of a 64 TB VMFS.
VMware Knowledge Base Article 1004424 describes the steps to change the VMFS heap size settings.

Performing Disk Expansion

VDP enables you to expand the datastore capacity by using the Expand Storage wizard. Disk expansion
enables you to expand the VDP storage to 1 TB, 2 TB, 4 TB, 6 TB, or 8 TB.
NOTE You cannot change the provision type from thin provisioning to thick provisioning. The disks inherit
the provision type that was assigned to them during initial configuration.
When extending a VMDK which is thick eager-zeroed, the extended part is only thick lazy-zeroed.
VMware Knowledge Base Article 1035823 describes the steps to increase the size of the VMDK and make the
VMDK thick eager-zeroed.

Prerequisite
During the initial configuration, the VDP storage disks are validated.

Procedure
1

Log in to the VDP configuration utility by using the following URL:

https://<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Click the Storage tab.

The available datastores appear in the Storage Summary section, along with the amount of total usable
storage and storage capacity that is available for each datastore.

NOTE To refresh the data on the page, click the refresh icon beside Storage Summary.
3

From the Action list, select Expand Storage.

The Expand Storage wizard appears, displaying the current capacity.

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Determine if you are expanding the size of the disks or increasing the number of disks.

NOTE During expansion to up to 2 TB, the number of disks remains at 3, but the size of the existing disks
grows. When disks are expanded, the controls to select the number of disks on each datastore are disabled.

To expand the size of the disks, select a new capacity from the list. You can expand VDP storage to 1
TB, 2 TB, 4 TB, 6 TB, or 8 TB.

To add disks, increase the number of disks in the Disks column until the total number of available
storage disks are allocated. You can allocate all disks to a single datastore or you can distribute the
disks across multiple datastores.

Click Next.
The Device Allocation dialog box displays the datastores that are known to be available for allocation and
the number of disks to be allocated.
A warning message appears if the system detects that a performance analysis has failed, has never been
run, or is out of date on one or more of the selected datastores. Based on whether or not you want to run
the performance analysis on the selected datastore, do one of the following:

Click Yes to abort the wizard and run the performance analysis on the selected datastore. To run the
performance analysis tool, refer to Performance Analysis on page 101.

Click No to continue with the disk expansion.

Click Next to go to the next page of the Expand Storage wizard.

The CPU and Memory dialog box displays the minimum CPU and Memory requirements for the current
configuration.

Select the number of virtual CPUs for each virtual machine.

The maximum number of virtual CPUs allowed for a VDP virtual machine is 8.

Select the amount of memory to be allocated to the VDP virtual machine.

The minimum amount of memory per VM depends on the capacity:

2 TB capacity requires 6 GB memory

4 TB capacity requires 8 GB memory

6 TB capacity requires 10 GB memory

8 TB capacity requires 12 GB memory

The maximum amount of memory allowed for a VDP virtual machine is 64 GB.

On the Ready to Complete dialog box, click Finish to apply the changes.

NOTE After a successful storage configuration, the system automatically creates a checkpoint and runs an
integrity check.

Viewing the Storage Configuration

After the storage expansion completes, you can use the Storage Summary section on the Storage tab to verify
the amount of total usable storage and storage capacity that is available for each datastore.

Known Limitation
Immediately following disk expansion, load balancing occurs and the result is used capacity displays incorrect
values. The values appear correctly, however, after the next maintenance window has completed.

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Procedure
1

Log in to the VDP configuration utility by using the following URL:

https://<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8580/vdp-configure

Click the Storage tab.

The Storage Summary section displays total usable storage and storage capacity for each datastore.
NOTE To refresh the data on the page, click the refresh icon beside Storage Summary.

Performance Analysis
The performance analysis test performs the write, read, and seek performance tests. During the initial
configuration, the performance analysis test evaluates the read, write, and seek capabilities of the configured
VDP disks. After the initial configuration, the tests measure the performance of the datastores by creating a
temporary disk of 256 GB on the datastores.
Possible test results are as follows:

Unknown

Failed

Passed

Running the Performance Analysis Test

1

Log in to the VDP configuration utility by using the following URL:

https://<IP_address_VDP_appliance>:8543/vdp-configure

On the Storage tab, click Performance Analysis.

The performance analysis test creates a temporary disk on the selected datastore and runs the test on that
disk. The temporary disk is automatically removed once the performance analysis completes.

Select the datastores on which the performance analysis test will run.

Click Run to start the performance analysis.

NOTE You can click Cancel at any time to stop a performance analysis test.

Disk Expansion with Essentials Plus

If you have an Essentials Plus license, you cannot enable Memory Hot-Add. You must manually adjust the
memory assigned to VDP, as required for the target capacity.
NOTE This limitation is true with vSphere 5.x hosts. You must manually set the minimum required memory
for a vSphere host using the memory requirements listed in Table 10-16.
VDP requires the following memory based on capacity size.
Table 10-16. Memory requirements for virtual hardware
Capacity size

Required memory

2 TB

6 GB

4 TB

8 GB

6 TB

10 GB

8 TB

12 GB

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Procedure
To perform disk expansion with an Essentials Plus license complete the following steps.
1

From a web browser, access the vSphere web client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter_Server>:9443/vsphere-client/

Before the expansion, shut down the VDP appliance by using the Shut Down Guest OS action on the
virtual machine.
This action automatically performs a clean shutdown of the VDP appliance. If the appliance is powered
off without the Shut Down Guest OS action, corruption might occur. It can take up to 30 minutes to shut
down and restart the VDP appliance. You can monitor the status through the virtual machine console.

Increase the memory assigned to the VDP appliance by using the requirements listed in Table 10-16.
a

From a web browser, access the vSphere web client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter_Server>:9443/vsphere-client/

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In the vSphere web client, log in as a user who has privileges to edit hardware settings.

Click vCenter > Hosts and Clusters.

In the tree on the left, click the disclosure arrows until the VDP appliance appears.

Right-click the VDP appliance and select Edit Settings.

Click the Virtual Hardware tab.

Increase the amount of memory by entering the value in the Memory field.

Click OK.

To restart the VDP appliance, right-click the VDP appliance and select Power On.

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Using VDP

11

This chapter includes the following topics:

Accessing VDP on page 104

Accessing the VDP Appliance by Using CLI on page 104

Understanding the VDP User Interface on page 105

Switching VDP Appliances on page 106

VDP User Interface on page 106

Viewing Information from the Reports Tab on page 106

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Accessing VDP
Use vSphere web client to access and manage VDP.
NOTE You cannot use VDP without a vCenter server. In linked mode, the VDP appliance works only with the
vCenter server with which it is associated. If the VDP appliance fails to appear in the vSphere web client,
remove your vCenter from linked mode.

Prerequisites
Before using VDP, you must install and configure the VDP appliance described in VDP Installation and
Configuration on page 21.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access the vSphere web client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter_Server>:9443/vsphere-client/

In the Credentials page, enter an administrative vCenter username and password, and click Login. The
specified user account must have administrative privileges.

In the vSphere web client, select VDP.

On the Welcome to VDP page, select the VDP appliance and click Connect.

Accessing the VDP Appliance by Using CLI

Currently, users can access the VDP appliance command line using the vSphere Client console, SSH, or Putty
sessions. With the VDP 5.8 and later releases, the ability to use SSH or Putty to log on to the VDP appliance
with the root user has been removed.
To use SSH or Putty to access the appliance, you must log in as the admin user.
With the VDP 5.8 and later releases, the default password for the admin user has also changed. This password
only applies when the user logs in to the VDP appliance before completing the configuration of the appliance
from the VDP Configuration UI. In this scenario, the admin password is 88RttoTriz!!
After the configuration of the appliance is complete, the newly-configured appliance password can be used to
access the command line as the admin user.

Useful Commands
The following table lists some of the useful commands:
Table 11-17. Useful VDP commands

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Command

Description

status.dpn

Displays VDP status.

dpnctl status

Displays VDP service status.

emwebapp.sh - - test

Tests the VDP Enterprise Manager web application status.

capacity.sh

Analyzes space consumption from the last 30 backup jobs, and displays the size
of new data and the space that the garbage collection has recovered.

cplist

Displays checkpoint status.

mccli server show-prop

Displays the VDP appliance properties that is the same as that appears in the
vSphere web client.

mccli activity show

Displays backup jobs information. Each activity is a backup job from a single
virtual machine.

mccli dd show-prop

Displays Data Domain systems properties.

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Table 11-17. Useful VDP commands

Command

Description

mccli client show --domain=/vCenter

FQDN or IP/VirtualMachines
--recursive=true

Lists the protected virtual machines.

mccli backup show --name=/ vCenter

FQDN or IP/VirtualMachines/Virtual
Machine name --recursive=true

Lists the backups of a virtual machine.

mccli -help

Lists the available command options.

Understanding the VDP User Interface

The vSphere web client for vSphere Data Protection is used to configure and manage VDP.

Figure 11-7. vSphere Data Protection user interface

The vSphere Data Protection user interface consists of six tabs:

Getting Started: Provides an overview of VDP functionality and quick links to the Download Application
Backup Client, Create Backup Job, Verify a Backup, Restore Backup and See an Overview.

Backup: Provides a list of scheduled backup jobs as well as details about each backup job. You can also
create and edit backup jobs from this page. This page also provides the ability to run a backup job
immediately. Viewing Information from the Reports Tab on page 106 provides more information.

Restore: Provides a list of successful backups that you can restore. Restore Operations on page 130
provides more information.

Replication: Provides a list of successful backups that you can replicate. Replication Jobs on page 138
provides more information.

Reports: Provides backup status reports on the virtual machines on the vCenter server. Viewing
Information from the Reports Tab on page 106 provides more information.

Configuration: Displays information about how VDP is configured and enables you to edit some of these
settings. Configuring VDP on page 51 provides more information.

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Switching VDP Appliances

Each vCenter server supports 20 VDP appliances. You can switch appliances by choosing an appliance from
the drop-down list to the right of the Switch Appliance option.
NOTE The VDP appliances in the drop-down list are sorted alphabetically, and the first item in the list that is
displayed on the screen may not match the current appliance. On the VDP screen, the appliance name on the
left is the current appliance, and the appliance name in the drop-down list is the first in the list of available
appliances.

VDP User Interface

The VDP user interface includes the following features:

Guest-level backups of Microsoft Exchange Servers, SQL Servers, and SharePoint Servers.

Growing and adding disks (disk expansion)

Backing up to a Data Domain system

Granular level recovery (GLR)

Verifying automatic backups

These options are described in VDP Application Support on page 160, which also specifies how to perform
application-level backups and restores.

Viewing Information from the Reports Tab

The Reports tab displays the following information:
Appliance Status Information

Appliance status: The status of the VDP appliance.

Integrity check status: Click the green right arrow to initiate the integrity check. The status value is either
Normal or Out of Date.

Normal indicates that a successful integrity check has been completed in the past two days.

Out of Date indicates that an integrity check has not run or has not completed successfully in the past
two days.

Used capacity: A percentage of the total VDP capacity that is occupied by backups.

Used DDR capacity: A percentage of the total capacity that is occupied by the Data Domain system (if
applicable.

Recent failed backups: The number of virtual machines that failed to back up in the most recently
completed backup job.

Recent failed backup verifications: The number of backup verification jobs that have recently failed.

Recent failed replications: The number of replication jobs that have recently failed.

Total VMs protected: The total number of virtual machines that are protected on the VDP appliance.

NOTE The VDP appliance supports 400 virtual machines. If the maximum numbers of virtual machines are
exceeded, an alarm is generated and the Log tab displays the error message.

Refresh
Click the Refresh button at any time to update the data in the Reports tab.

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Task Failures Tab

The Task Failures tab displays details about jobs that have failed within the last 72 hours.
Failure Time: The date and time the job failed.
Reason: The reason the job failed.
Client/Source Name: The client associated with the vCenter.
Job Name: The name of the job that failed.
Job Type: The type of job that failed; for example, Scheduled Backup or On Demand Backup.
Next Run Time: The date and time the job is next scheduled to run.
View Log: Click to launch the Job Failure Client Log dialog box, where you can view the client log details. If
log files are not available in the Client Log dialog box, one of three error messages may appear:

Failed to retrieve log file. This message appears in the following circumstances:

Management services were recently restarted.

Regular log maintenance has removed old log files.

Logs may be empty or non-existent.

An error may have occurred.

Failed to retrieve log. Logs are regularly removed 72 hours after the job finished.

Log file retrieved is empty.

NOTE Not all replication source and replication destination logging is available through the Job Failures tab.
However, you can retrieve replication logs from the VDP configuration utility by using the regular log bundle.
See Collecting VDP Logs or Diagnostic Information on page 38 for more information.

Actions icon
You can perform the following tasks from the Actions icon list, located on the right side of the Task failures
tab:

Rerun Task: Highlight the failed job and click to rerun the failed job. The Rerun job feature is not enabled
for Restore failures.

NOTE To run a backup only for the failed client, select Backup only out of date source under Backup Now
on the Backup tab.

Export to CSV: Click to export the current table to a comma-separated values (.CSV) file.

Show All Columns: Hide one or more columns by clicking X on the column name, and then click Show
All Columns to show the hidden columns on the UI.

Filter
You can filter and customize the job failure details by selecting one of the following criteria. The information
appears for job failures that occurred within the last 72 hours.

Show All: Shows all job failure information for the virtual machines. Show All is the default.

Error: Filters job failure information by errors messages.

Job: Filters job failure information for a selected job.

Client: Filters job failure information for a given client.

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Job Details Tab

The Job Details tab allows you to select the type of job (Backups, Replication, or Backup verification) and
display the details for the selected job. Backups is the default job type.
Job details are grouped into three sections:

Client Information

Client Name: The client associated with the vCenter. Regular VM clients and retired VM clients from
the Replicate domain displays the hashed mask value appended to the replicated, recovered, and
imported names.

Type: Displays the type as Image, MS SQL Server, MS SharePoint Server, or MS Exchange Server.
Applications (MS SQL Servers, MS SharePoint Servers, or MS Exchange Servers) are supported only
on the VDP appliance.

Jobs: The job name. Multiple job names appear if a virtual machine resides in two different jobs.

Last Execution

Job Name: The name of the job.

Completion: The date and time the job completed.

Result: Whether the job succeeded, failed, succeeded with exceptions, or was canceled.
If the job succeeded with exceptions, click the View Log link to review the logs for information about
the exceptions.

Next Execution

Job Name: The next scheduled job name appears. If a virtual machine resides in two different jobs
with different schedules, the next scheduled job name appears.

Scheduled: The date and time the job is next scheduled to run.

Actions icon
You can perform the following tasks from the Actions icon list, located on the right side of the Job Details tab:

Export to CSV: Click to export the current table to a comma-separated values (.CSV) file.

Show All Columns: Hide one or more columns by clicking X on the column name, and then click Show
All Columns to show the hidden columns on the UI.

Filter
You can filter and customize the job details by selecting one of the following criteria. The information appears
for job failures that occurred within the last 72 hours.

Show All: Shows all job details for the virtual machines. Show All is the default.

Client: Filters job failure information by client.

Last Execution: Filters job details for the last executed job.

Next Execution: Filters job details for the next scheduled job.

Unprotected Clients Tab

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Client Name: The name of the unprotected client.

IP Address: The IP address or hostname of the unprotected client.

VM Path: The path where the virtual machine resides.

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Actions icon
You can perform the following task from the Actions icon list, located on the right side of the Unprotected
Clients tab:

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Export to CSV: Click to export the current table to a comma-separated values (.CSV) file.

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Managing Backups

12

This chapter includes the following topics:

Backup Jobs on page 112

Choosing the Virtual Machines on page 112

Specifying the Backup Schedule on page 113

Setting the Retention Policy on page 113

Creating a Full Image Backup Job on page 114

Creating a Backup Job on Individual Disks on page 115

Viewing Status and Backup Job Details on page 117

Editing a Backup Job on page 117

Cloning a Backup Job on page 117

Locking and Unlocking a Backup on page 119

Migrating Backup Jobs from VDP to Avamar on page 119

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Backup Jobs
Backup jobs consist of a set of one or more virtual machines that are associated with a backup schedule and
specific retention policies. Backup jobs are created and edited on the Backup tab using the Create a new
backup job wizard.

Limitations

VDP will not back up the following specialized virtual machines:

VDP appliances

vSphere Storage appliances (VSA)

VMware Data Recovery (VDR) appliances

Templates

Secondary fault tolerant nodes

Proxies

Avamar Virtual Edition (AVE) servers

The wizard allows you to select these VMs. When when you click Finish to complete the wizard, you
receive a warning that these specialized virtual machines were not added to the job.

Virtual machines that contain special characters in their names cannot be added to any backup job. The
following characters cannot be used: ~!@$^%(){}[]|,`;#\/:*?<>'"&. In addition, diacritical characters cannot
be used (for example: , , , , and ).

Using snapshots to perform a backup on VMs configured with bus sharing is not supported. If you require
SCSI bus sharing, refer to the following Knowledge Base article: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1006392.

Prerequisites

VDP is installed and configured on your vCenter server.

You are logged in to the vSphere web client and connected to the VDP appliance.

Choosing the Virtual Machines

You can specify collections of virtual machines, such as all virtual machines in a datacenter or select individual
virtual machines. If an entire resource pool, host, datacenter, or folder is selected, any new virtual machines
added to that container are included in subsequent backups. If a single virtual machine is selected, any disk
subsequently added to the virtual machine is included in the backup. If a virtual machine is moved from the
selected container to another container that was not originally selected, it is no longer part of the backup.
You can manually select a virtual machine to be backed up, which ensures that virtual machine is backed up,
even if it is moved.

Identifying retired virtual machines

The following conditions cause a VM client to be retired and unavailable as candidates for backups, restores,
or replication jobs:

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Host: Removed from inventory (this also occurs when any parent container of a host is removed, such as
a cluster, a host folder, a datacenter, or a datacenter folder)

Virtual machine: Deleted from disk

Virtual machine: Removed from inventory

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The following conditions exist when the VM client is not retired and the child VM remains in the inventory:

Resource pool: Removed from inventory

vApp: Removed from inventory

Host: Disconnected

Host: Enters maintenance mode

Host: Shuts down

Specifying the Backup Schedule

On the Schedule page of the Create new backup job wizard (Step 7) of the procedure below, you can specify
the time intervals to back up the virtual machines in your backup job. Backups occur as near to the startup of
the backup window as possible. The available time intervals are daily, weekly, or monthly.

Setting the Retention Policy

Retention policies for the VDP appliance are set individually per backup job. As each restore point is created
from a backup job, it retains the retention policy at the time it was created. If a backup jobs retention policy is
modified, the new policy only affects newly-created restore points. Previously-created restore points retain the
previous retention policy.
On the Retention Policy page of the Create Backup Job wizard (Step 8), you specify the retention period for
backups.
The first three options, Forever, for, and until, apply to all the backups of all the virtual machines in the group
equally. The fourth option, this Schedule or Custom Retention Schedule, applies only to backups that are
internally assigned special Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly tags.
NOTE The this Schedule default is 60 days. The Custom Retention default is Never.
The first backup of the day receives a Daily tag. If this backup is also the first backup of the week, the month,
and the year, the backup also receives the Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly tags.The time intervals specified by the
this Schedule or Custom Retention Schedule options only apply to backups with the internal tags.
Table 12-18 describes Retention Policy options.
Table 12-18. Retention Policy Options
Option

Description

Forever

Sets backup job to never expire. All backups for the virtual machines in this backup
job are never deleted.

for

Sets a specific number of days, weeks, months, or years for the backup job. All
backups for the virtual machines in this backup job are stored until the specified time
interval has elapsed from their creation date. For example, if you set a retention
policy to 30 days for a backup job, each job that runs has an expiration date of 30 days
in the future.

until

Sets a specific expiration date. All backups for the virtual machines in this backup job
are deleted on the date specified in the until field.

this Schedule
or Custom Retention Schedule

Sets the retention time intervals for backups that are assigned internal tags of Daily,
Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly.
Backups can have more than one of these internal tags. The tag with the longest time
interval has precedence. For example, if you set backups with a Weekly tag to be
retained for 8 weeks, and backups with the Monthly tag to be retained for 1 month,
then backups with both the Weekly and Monthly tags would be retained for 8 weeks.

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Creating a Full Image Backup Job

Prerequisites

VDP is installed and configured on your vCenter server.

The disks are supported by VDP. VDP does not support the following virtual hardware disk types:

Independent

RDM Independent - Virtual Compatibility Mode

RDM Physical Compatibility Mode

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP.

Click the Backup tab.

The Backup tab displays a list of the backup jobs that have been created. The columns in the list are
described in the following table:
Table 12-19. Column descriptions on Backup tab

Column

Description

Name

The name of the backup job.

State

Whether the backup job is enabled or disabled. Disabled backup jobs will not run.

Type

The type of backup, such as Application or Image.

Last Start Time

The last time the backup job was started.

Duration

How long it took to complete this job the last time it ran.

Next Run Time

When the backup job is scheduled to run again

Success Count

The number of virtual machines that were backed up successfully the last time the backup
job ran. This number is updated after each backup job

Failure Count

The number of virtual machines that did not back up successfully the last time the backup
job ran. This number is updated after each backup job.

From the Backup Job Actions menu, select New to run the Create new backup job wizard.
You can also run the Create a new backup job wizard from the Getting Started tab. To do this, click Create
Backup Job under Basic Tasks.

On the Job Type page, select Guest Images, and then click Next.
The Applications option enables you to create backup jobs on Microsoft Exchange Servers, Microsoft SQL
Servers, and Microsoft SharePoint Servers. VDP Application Support on page 159 provides details.

On the Data Type page, click Next.

NOTE Selecting the Fallback to non-quiescence failure option enables backups to be performed as
non-quiescent in case of a quiescent failure, and marks the restore points as crash-consistent.
6

On the Backup Sources page, click the disclosure arrows to progressively disclose the VMs. Select the
checkboxes next to the items to add to the backup job, and then click Next.

NOTE If a Data Domain system is configured as the backup target, there is an additional step to configure the
target destination. Select either local storage or Data Domain storage.
7

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On the Schedule page, select the schedule for the backup job and click Next.

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On the Retention Policy page, select a retention period and click Next. The retention periods from which
you can choose are described as follows.

Forever: All backups for the virtual machines in this backup job will never expire.

for: All backups for the virtual machines in this backup job will expire after the specified time interval
has elapsed from their creation date. The time interval can be specified in days, weeks, months, or
years.

until: All backups for the virtual machines in this backup job will expire on the date specified.

this Schedule: Specifies the retention time intervals for backups that are assigned internal tags. When
you perform scheduled daily backups on a regular basis, some of the backups are automatically
assigned one of the following retention types:

Daily: The first successful scheduled backup each day.

Weekly: The first successful scheduled backup each week.

Monthly: The first successful scheduled backup each month.

Yearly: The first successful scheduled backup each year.

The this Schedule default for on-demand backup jobs is 60 days.

For the purpose of assigning retention types, each day begins at 00:00:01 GMT, each week begins on
Sunday, each month begins on the first calendar day of that month, and each year begins on January 1.
As backups may have more than one of these internal tags, the tag with the longest time interval has
precedence. For example, if you were to set backups with a Weekly tag to be retained for 8 weeks, and
backups with the Monthly tag to be retained for 1 month, then backups that were assigned both the
Weekly and Monthly tags would be retained for 8 weeks.
CAUTION Upon entering a new maintenance period following the expiration of a backup, the VDP appliance
removes its reference to the backup data and thereafter you cannot restore the expired backup. The VDP
appliance determines if the backup data is being used by any other restore point and, if the system determines
that the data is not being used, the data is removed and the disk capacity frees up.
9

On the Name page, type a name for the backup job and click Next.
The backup job name must be unique and can be up to 255 characters long. The following characters
cannot be used in the backup job name: ~!@$^%(){}[]|,`;#\/:*?<>'"&. In addition, diacritical characters
cannot be used (for example: , , , , and ).

10

On the Ready to Complete page, review the summary information for the backup job and click Finish.
An information dialog box will confirm the backup job was created successfully. The backup operation
can take several minutes.

11

Click OK.

The newly created backup job is now listed on the Backup tab.

Creating a Backup Job on Individual Disks

A full image backup job aggregates all disks in the entire virtual machine into a single image backup.
Individual disk backup jobs allow you to select only the disks you need. This capability allows you to filter
based on certain configuration criteria, such as by operating system or by retention policy.

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Unsupported disk types

When planning for individual disk backups, make sure the disks are supported by VDP. Currently, VDP does
not support the following virtual hardware disk types:

Independent

RDM Independent - Virtual Compatibility Mode

RDM Physical Compatibility Mode

Virtual disks attached to the SCSI controller with bus-sharing enabled

NOTE If a virtual machine contains a VMDK that is not supported, the VMDK is grayed out and the checkbox
is unavailable.
For more information about backing up unsupported disk types, refer to Single VMDK Backup and Restore
on page 16.

Limitation
To perform a backup of a single VMDK on the virtual machine that includes multiple VMDKs, the datastore
must have enough space for snapshots of all of the VMDKs on the virtual machine. Even though the backup
job is meant to back up a single VMDK, the backup process performs a snapshot of all of the VMDKs on the
virtual machine.

Prerequisites
The VDP appliance is installed and configured on your vCenter server.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP.

Click the Backup tab and, from Backup Job Actions, click New to launch the Create a new backup job
wizard.

NOTE You can also launch the Create a new backup job wizard from the Getting Started tab. To do this, click
Create Backup Job under Basic Tasks.
3

To back up individual virtual machine disks, select Individual Disks as the data type, and then click Next.
The Virtual Machines page displays an inventory tree. This tree contains all the objects and virtual
machines in the vCenter server.
Click on the disclosure arrow to progressively disclose the contents of the tree. Select the checkboxes next
to the items to add to the backup job, and then click Next.

On the Schedule page, select the schedule for the job and click Next.

On the Retention Policy page, accept the default retention policy or specify an alternate retention policy
and click Next.

On the Name page, enter a backup job name and click Next.
The backup job name must be unique and can be up to 255 characters long. The following characters
cannot be used in the backup job name: ~!@$^%(){}[]|,`;#\/:*?<>'"&. In addition, diacritical characters
cannot be used (for example: , , , , and ).

On the Ready to Complete page, review the summary information for the backup job, and then click
Finish.
An information dialog box will confirm the backup job was created successfully. The backup operation
can take several minutes.

Click OK.

The newly-created backup job is now listed on the Backup tab.

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Migration on Individual Disks

VMware Storage VMotion (SVMotion) is a component of VMware vSphere that provides an intuitive
interface for live migration of vmdk files with no downtime or disruption in service. You can find complete
information about migrating with vMotion and SVMotion at the VMware vSphere Documentation Center web
site:
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/index.jsp.
Users have two options when migrating a virtual machine from one datastore to another:

Migrate the full virtual machine all at once to another datastore.

Migrate individual disks to another datastore, where disks for a single virtual machine may reside on a
different datastore.

When a full virtual machine is migrated, the VDP appliance updates the backup jobs with the new locations
of the protected VMDKs.
From the VDP 6.0 and later releases, when you migrate individual disks (vmdk files) from one datastore to
another, VDP recognizes the change in datastore and appropriately backs up vmdk during the next backup.

Viewing Status and Backup Job Details

The Backup tab displays a list of backup jobs that have been created with VDP. By clicking on a backup job,
you can see the details of the job on the Backup Job Details pane:

Name: The name of the backup job.

Status: Whether the backup job is enabled or disabled.

Sources: A list of the virtual machines in the backup job.

Out of Date: A list of all the virtual machines that failed to back up the last time the job ran.

Editing a Backup Job

After you create a backup job, you can edit the job by highlighting the backup job and selecting Backup Job
Actions > Edit.

Cloning a Backup Job

After you create a backup job, you can use the job as a template for creating a different job by highlighting the
backup job and selecting Backup Job Actions > Clone.
Performing the clone action launches the Cloning backup job wizard and uses information from the original
job to automatically fill in the first three pages of the wizard (Virtual Machines, Schedule, and Retention
Policy). The cloned job requires a unique name. Except for the data type (because an image backup cannot be
changed to an individual disk backup and vice versa), any of the settings that were copied from the original
job can be modified.
NOTE You can clone full image backups and individual disk backups.

Deleting a Backup Job

You can delete the job by highlighting the backup job and selecting Backup Job Actions > Delete.
NOTE When using Delete on the Backup tab you are only deleting the job. Any backups previously made by
the job are still retained by VDP in accordance with the retention policy of the job. To delete backups, use
Delete on the Restore tab.

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Enabling or Disabling a Backup Job

If you want to temporarily stop a backup job from running in the future, you can disable it. You can edit and
delete disabled backup jobs. VDP will not run a disabled job until it has been enabled.
You can enable or disable backup jobs by highlighting the backup job and selecting Backup Job Actions >
Enable/Disable.

Running Existing Backup Jobs Immediately

You can run backup jobs immediately by using one of the following methods:

Choosing to backup up a protected virtual machine

Choosing to run an existing backup job

Immediately Backing Up a Protected Virtual Machine

1

Select the protected virtual machine you want to immediately back up by using one of the following
options:

Right-click the virtual machine in an inventory tree and select All VDP Actions > Backup Now. The
virtual machine must belong to a backup job for this selection to appear.

Click the virtual machine in an inventory tree, and then click the Actions button. Select All VDP
Actions > Backup Now. The virtual machine must belong to a backup job for this selection to appear.

Click the virtual machine (on the Reports tab), click the Actions icon, and then select Backup Now.

The Backup Now dialog appears.

2

Select the VDP appliance and the backup job, and then click OK.
An information dialog appears telling you the backup job has been initiated.

Click OK.
VDP starts the backup job.

Immediately Running a Backup Job

1

From the Backup tab in the VDP user interface, click the job you want to run immediately.
Multiple selections are allowed on the Backup tab by using Ctrl- or Shift-click. Hold down the Ctrl key
and click multiple, specific backup jobs. Hold down the Shift key and click a range of backup jobs.

Click Backup Now.

A drop-down selection appears with the following options:

Backup all Sources: Backs up all the virtual machines in the backup job.

Backup only out of date sources: Backs up only the virtual machines that did not back up
successfully the last time the backup job ran.

Click the sources you want to back up immediately.

Click OK when you see the message that the backup has been requested.
VDP starts the backup job.
The Backup Now option immediately initiates backup jobs if VDP is in the backup window or the
maintenance window.

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Locking and Unlocking a Backup

During maintenance periods, VDP examines the backups in the appliance and evaluates whether the backup
retention period has expired. If it has expired, VDP removes the expired backup from the appliance. However,
if you want to prevent VDP from deleting a backup, you can lock it. VDP will not evaluate the retention period
on that backup again, until it is unlocked.
NOTE Data in the VDP database drives the locked status. The VDP database is cleared when disks are
imported (see Attaching Existing VDP Disks on page 72). When disks are imported, the original expiration
date for locked backups is reassigned to never, and therefore, those disks cannot be unlocked.
NOTE You cannot lock individual disk backups. You can only lock full image backups.

Prerequisites

VDP is installed and configured on your vCenter server.

You are logged in to the vSphere web client and connected to the VDP appliance.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP.

From the Restore tab in the VDP user interface, click the disclosure arrow associated with the backups
shown in the table to locate the backup you want to lock.

Select the checkbox next to the backup you want to lock.

Click the Lock/Unlock icon.

Locking a backup overlays a lock icon on the backup icon (

). The backup is now locked.

To unlock a backup, select the Lock/Unlock icon again.

The lock overlay is cleared and VDP evaluates the retention date of the backup during the next
maintenance period.

Migrating Backup Jobs from VDP to Avamar

VDP 6.1 enables you to migrate backup jobs and backup verification jobs to Avamar. The migration makes the
backup group and the VM backup validation group visible and fully executable on the target Avamar server.
After the migration completes:

There will be a new records of Groups, Clients, and related records such as, Datasets, Retentions,
Schedules, and so on, on the target Avamar server.

Avamar can use the same policies to protect the same VM clients as VDP did before the migration.

Guidelines

VDP migration is a one-time process. Once executed, VDP disables further migrations.

The migration process migrates only the details of backup jobs and backup verification jobs.

In case of application backup jobs, reregister the application clients on the Avamar server instead of the
VDP server to properly execute the newly migrated jobs.

Recommendations
You replicate all the existing backups to the target Avamar server before you perform migration.

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Prerequisites

You have registered the source vCenter client to the target Avamar server. Otherwise, you cannot perform
the migration and you must manually add the source vCenter as a new VMware vCenter client on the
target Avamar server.

You have deployed and configured VMware Image Proxy on the target to work with the source vCenter.

Procedure
1

Open a web browser and type the following URL in the address bar:
https://<IP_address_of_VDP_Appliance>:8543/vdp-configure/

Type appropriate VDP username and password in the respective fields.

On the Avamar Migration tab, review the information.

Presence of migration history in the information indicates that VDP has been already migrated, and
cannot be migrated again.

Click Migrate.
The Migration wizard appears.

On the Backup Jobs Migration page:

a

Thoroughly review the information regarding job migration and perform necessary tasks to avoid
failures.

Select the relevant option to enable the migration.

Click Next.

On the Destination Selection page:

a

Type the destination Avamar server location and the server credentials in the relevant fields.

Click Verify Authentication to test the connection between VDP and the destination Avamar server.

Click Next.

On the Job Selection page:

a

From the tables on the Backup Jobs and Backup Verification Jobs tabs, select the jobs to migrate.
All the jobs are selected by default. You can either select or deselect all the jobs by either selecting or
clearing the check box on the table header.

Click Next.

On the Validation page, review the results of validation and click Next.

On the Ready to Complete page, review the summary of the selected jobs and click Migrate.

After the migration completes, you notice the following status:

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VDP is disabled and the Avamar Migration tab displays the migration history.

In the disabled state, only the following VDP features are enabled:

Full Image restore

Disk restore

File level restore

Emergency restore

vSphere web client and VDP configuration client display the alert messages.

Retention of the existing backups remain the same.

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You can perform the following additional steps:

To reactivate the inactivated features, click Activate.

If there are application backup jobs that contain the clients that are not registered on the destination
Avamar server, you must register these clients on the destination Avamar server to properly execute the
newly migrated jobs. To register the clients, you must review the information in the User Interventions
dialog box before closing the Migration wizard. The User Interventions dialog box contains a list of the
clients and the domains on which you must register the clients. To check this list, click Destination clients.

Troubleshooting

After the migration completes, you can see the list of failed jobs. You can either retry or exit the migration.

Click the more info... link to see additional information about the failed jobs.

See the avamar-migration.log file for more information.

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Automatic Backup Verification

13

This chapter includes the following topics:

About Automatic Backup Verification on page 124

Creating a New Backup Verification Job on page 125

Editing a Backup Verification Job on page 127

Cloning a Backup Verification Job on page 127

Executing and Running a Backup Verification Job on page 127

Monitoring Backup Verification on page 128

Enabling and Disabling a Backup Verification Job on page 128

Deleting a Backup Verification Job on page 128

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About Automatic Backup Verification

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. Because the NIC is disabled, you cannot perform a ping test.

After the backup verification job completes, temporary virtual machines, also referred to as validating
VMs, are removed and deleted from the inventory.

Only the last successful full image backup for any VM is verified. The Recent Tasks pane and Event log
report which backup has been verified.

Limitations

Backup verification is not supported for the following configurations:

Single VMDK backups.

Image backups of RDM disks (physical mode). RDM virtual dependent disks are supported.

Application database backups of Microsoft applications (Exchange Servers, SharePoint Servers, and
SQL Servers) are not supported.

Replicated backups.

Backups from imported disks.

The verification fails if the path to the destination host is changed. If the host is moved to a new location,
you must edit the verification job and select the destination host again.

Similarly, if the datastore name is changed, you must edit the verification job to reselect the same or
different datastore before you can successfully run the job again.

In some cases, VDP fails to automatically delete the validating VM from the vCenter inventory. In this
scenario, you must manually delete the validating VM.

vSphere hosts before version 4.0 are not supported as destination hosts to where temporary VMs will be
restored.

Best Practices
Timing and Resource Conflicts
You can take steps to avoid timing and resource conflicts when using the backup verification feature.
1

When you first install VDP, run initial full backups.

After the initial backups run, let the first incremental backups run.

Determine how long it takes for the backups to run, and schedule backup verification jobs to run after the
incremental backups have completed.

Selecting the Destination

Consider the following recommendations while selecting the destination:

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Load balance if multiple verification jobs are to be run at the same time. Limit the number of jobs to five
if they are run simultaneously.

Make sure there are sufficient resources available on the host and the datastore where the temporary VM
will be restored.

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General

Verify VMware Tools are installed on the VM at the time the VM is backed up.

Set the heartbeat timeout interval to its optimal value, depending on the environment. Note that some
VMs may take longer to send and receive the VMware Tools heartbeat than others.

Periodically verify the availability of the destination host and a datastore. Edit the job and reconfigure the
destination if needed. If the destination host or datastore is unavailable, edit the job and choose a new
destination.

Before you select Verification Script as the advanced verification option, manually run the script on the
guest OS to verify it executes successfully.

Creating a New Backup Verification Job

The backup verification job runs on demand or as part of a schedule. The Backup Verification section of the
Backup tab allows you to create and manage backup verification jobs.

Prerequisites

A backup job or a restore point must exist before you create a verification job for a virtual machine. The
backup job and restore type must be full image.

VMware Tools must be installed on virtual machines at the time of backup. If no VMware Tools are found
on the validating VM, the heartbeat verification will fail.

The selected datastore must have sufficient space available.

If you plan to use a verification script, the verification script must not be dependent on connecting to other
VMs in the network.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP.

Click the Backup tab.

On the Backup tab, click Backup Verification.

From the Backup Verification Job Actions menu, select New.

The Create a new backup verification job wizard opens to the Virtual Machines page.

On the Virtual Machines page, select a virtual machine for which you want to create a verification job, and
then click Next.

You can select only one virtual machine per verification. Multiple selections are not supported.

The virtual machine must be a part of a full image backup job or it can have restore points.

You can filter the virtual machines by name, if needed.

VMware Tools must be present on the virtual machine backups or the verification job will fail.

On the Verification Options page, select an option:

Heartbeat Verification: This is the default option for verification of a backup, regardless of whether
you select script verification. The heartbeat verification checks whether the VMware Tools heartbeat
has been received within a specific timeframe after the VM has powered on. If the VMware Tools
heartbeat is received, the guest OS has booted successfully and is in a healthy state.

NOTE The Guest OS Heartbeat is the default option for verification.

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Script Verification: This is the advanced verification option. Use script verification if you want to
verify the virtual machine for the health status of applications and services that run on the guest OS.
The script must be predefined and must pre-exist on the guest OS. The verification script must not be
dependent on connecting to other virtual machines in the network.
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If you choose to execute a script on a guest OS, supply the following information:

Username: Type the user ID used to log in to the guest OS.

Password: Type the password used to log in to the guest OS.

Confirm Password: Retype the password.

Verification Script on Guest: Type the full path to the location of the script on the guest OS.

For script configuration details, refer to Verification Script Configuration on page 126.
7

Click Next.

On the Destination page, select a destination:

Destination Path: The destination host must be compatible with the validating virtual machine and
must have sufficient resources to restore the validating virtual machine. You must select a standalone
host or a host inside a cluster as a destination where backups will be temporarily restored for the
purpose of verification. Resource pools and vApps are not supported as valid destinations. vSphere
hosts before version 4.0 are not supported.

Datastore: Depending upon the host that is selected, a list of datastores is displayed. You must select
one datastore where the validating virtual machine will be restored. Make sure the selected datastore
has sufficient space available.

Click Next.

10

On the Schedule page, select the schedule for the backup verification job to run. Settings made on this
page determine how often and at what time of the day your verification job will run.
a

Backup verification schedule: Specify the time intervals as daily, weekly, or monthly.

Start time on server: Specify the time for the backup verification to occur on the scheduled day.

11

Click Next.

12

On the Job Name page, type a unique name to identify the verification job, and then click Next.
The verification job name can include all alphabets and numbers. The only special characters allowed are
spaces, underscores, hyphens, and periods.

13

On the Ready to Complete page, review the summary of the backup verification job that you are creating.
If needed, you can change the jobs configuration by clicking Back to the appropriate page. When you are
ready to save the job, click Finish.

NOTE You can also review the summary of the backup verification job from the Backup Verification section
under the Restore tab.
14

Click OK when you see the message that the backup verification job was created successfully.

Verification Script Configuration

If you plan to use a verification script, supported script formats are .bat, .cmd, .sh, and .exe. A valid script file
runs by double-clicking it in the file manager or Explorer view. If the script is an unsupported format, you
must enclose the execution of the script inside a supported format.
For example, a Windows Power Shell (.ps1) script cannot be called and run directly by using VDP, because the
.ps format is not supported. You can, however, call the .ps script through a supported format (such as .bat),
and then specify the full path to the location of the script on the guest OS. Make sure to set the execution policy
to Unrestricted before you run the script.
The script must return a 0 or non-0 integer. If 0 is returned, the script verification succeeded. If a non-0 value
is returned, the script verification failed.

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Editing a Backup Verification Job

After you create backup verification jobs, you can edit them as needed.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP.

Click the Backup tab.

On the Backup tab, click Backup Verification.

Select the backup verification job that you want to edit, and then select Edit from the Backup Verification
Job Actions menu.
The Editing backup verification job: job_name wizard opens to the Virtual Machines page.

Step through the wizard, making changes as needed.

When you have completed your changes, click Finish.

Click OK when you see the message that changes to the backup verification job were saved successfully.

Cloning a Backup Verification Job

You can use a verification job as a template for creating another job by highlighting the verification job and
selecting Backup Verification Job Actions > Clone.
Performing the clone action launches the Cloning backup verification job wizard and uses information from
the original job to automatically fill in the first three pages of the wizard (Virtual Machines, Schedule, and
Retention Policy). The cloned job requires a unique name.

Executing and Running a Backup Verification Job

After you create a backup verification job, you can invoke verification by running on-demand verification or
by waiting for the schedule to start the backup verification job. The complete backup verification cycle is as
follows:

Restore: The latest backup for the selected VM is restored into a temporary VM that is deleted after
backup verification.

Power On: After the temporary VM has been restored, it will be configured to disable the NIC before it is
powered on.

Boot OS: Wait for the guest OS to boot completely after the VM is powered on.

Heartbeat Verification: After the guest OS has booted, the appliance waits to receive the VMware Tools
heartbeat from the restored VM. In an event the heartbeat is not received for any reason, the verification
job fails and the backup is not in a good state.

Verification Script: The script is executed only when you have selected the advanced level of verification
(Verification Script). This feature runs a customized script defined and specified by the user to verify the
state of applications running on the guest OS.

Power Off: After the script verification completes, the VM is powered off.

Delete VM: In this final step, the restored VM is deleted and the results of the verification is reported by
the vCenter (in the Recent Tasks pane and in the Events log).

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Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP.

Click the Backup tab.

On the Backup tab, click Backup Verification.

Select the backup verification job that you want to run, and then click Verify Now.

Click OK when you see the message that the backup verification request or requests have been issued
successfully.

Monitoring Backup Verification

Only the last, successful backup for any VM is verified. You can use any of the methods below to check
verification job results:

vCenter Tasks/Events

Reports tab. See Viewing Information from the Reports Tab on page 106 for more information.

Email reports. See Configuring the Email Notifications and Reports on page 55 for more information.

Client logs. You can download client logs from https://<IP address or hostname of VDP>:8543/vdp-configure.

Enabling and Disabling a Backup Verification Job

After you create backup verification jobs, you can enable and disable them as needed. When you disable a
backup verification job, it will not run again until you enable it.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP. Refer to Backup Jobs on page 112 for instructions.

Click the Backup tab.

On the Backup tab, click Backup Verification.

Select the backup verification job that you want to enable or disable, and select Enable/Disable from the
Backup Verification Job Actions menu.

Click OK when you see the message that the backup verification job has been successfully enabled or
disabled.

Deleting a Backup Verification Job

You can delete backup verification jobs when they are no longer needed.

Procedure

128

From a web browser, access VDP. Refer to Backup Jobs on page 112 for instructions.

Click the Backup tab.

On the Backup tab, click Backup Verification.

Select the backup verification job that you want to delete, and select Delete from the Backup Verification
Job Actions menu.

Click Yes when you are asked if you are sure you want to delete the selected job.

Click OK when you see the message that the backup verification job has been deleted successfully.

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Managing Restores

14

This chapter includes the following topic:

Restore Operations on page 130

Selecting Backups to Restore on page 130

Filtering for List of Backups on page 131

Restores when Snapshots Are Present on page 131

Restoring Image Backups to the Original Location on page 131

Restoring Image Backups to a New Location on page 133

Restoring Backups to Individual SCSI Disks on page 134

Deleting a Backup from the Restore Tab on page 135

Clearing all Selected Backups from the Restore Tab on page 135

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Restore Operations
After you back up virtual machines, you can restore the backups to either the original location or an alternate
location.
Restore operations are performed on the Restore tab. The Restore tab displays a list of virtual machines that
have been backed up by the VDP appliance. By navigating through the list of backups, you can select and
restore specific backups. The list shows specific icons for crash-consistent and application-consistent backups.
For icon related information, see the legend at the bottom left of the page. Before you select a backup to restore,
note the crash-consistent backups and the expiration date of the backup.
NOTE Detection of the application-consistent backups applies only to the Windows clients. The
application-consistent backups on the Linux clients appear with the Consistency level not applicable icon.
The information displayed on the Restore tab eventually becomes out-of-date. To see the most up-to-date
information about the backups that are available for restore, click Refresh.
The following figure illustrates the Restore tab:

Limitations

The Restore wizard does not allow you to select multiple restore points for the same MSApp client. You
can select only one restore point from the same client at a time.

If the target VM has SCSI bus sharing configured, restores to that VM are not supported.

Selecting Backups to Restore

Backups can be restored through the following options:

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Click Restore a Backup on the Getting Started tab of the VDP UI.

From the Restore tab, select a restore point and click Restore.

Right-click a protected virtual machine in the vCenter inventory list, and then select All VDP Actions >
Restore Rehearsal. The Select Backup page displays a list of backups.

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Filtering for List of Backups

The list of backups that can be restored can be filtered by using drop-down arrows in the following ways:

Backup date: Filtered by is before, is after, is on, or is not on

Client name: Filtered by contains, does not contain, is, or is not

Location: Filtered by location of backup

Clear the filter by clicking Refresh or by selecting Show All from the filter drop down menu.
The Select Backup page allows you to choose the virtual machines to restore.

Restores when Snapshots Are Present

Previous versions of VDP allowed users to perform restores to the original virtual machine even if the virtual
machine contained snapshots. With VDP version 5.5 and later, snapshots are not allowed on the virtual
machine.
CAUTION Before you perform restores, remove any snapshots that might exist from the virtual machine. The
restore job fails if the target virtual machine contains snapshots.
Refer to the following Knowledge Base articles about how to properly use snapshots:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1025279

https://community.emc.com/thread/145249?start=0&start=0

Restoring Image Backups to the Original Location

You can restore backups manually by using the Restore backup wizard.
There are three scenarios where, if the individual disks are selected to be restored instead of the entire VM,
you cannot restore to the original location:

The original disk is marked as independent-persistent.

The original disk has been removed from the target VM.

The original disk has been deleted from the target VM.

NOTE A restore job of the same disk or disks from two different timestamps is not permitted. If you attempt
to restore a disk that has been backed up with two different timestamps, you are presented with the option of
removing the duplicated hard disk. The restore will not proceed until the duplicated hard disk is removed.

Prerequisites

VDP is installed and configured on your vCenter server.

You are logged in to the vSphere web client and connected to the VDP appliance.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP.

Click the Restore tab.

If necessary, filter the backups to narrow your search.

Select a virtual machine listed in the Name column. When you click on a virtual machine, it expands to
list the backups that have been performed. You can select one or more backups, or you can click a backup
to locate the disk to restore.

NOTE The client (virtual machine) name is renamed to append a string of random characters in the
VDP_IMPORT domain on the Restore tab if storage is imported from a different VDP appliance during initial
configuration.

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Select the checkbox beside one or more items to select them for restore.

Click Restore to start the Restore backup wizard.

On the Select Backup page:

Review the list of selected backups for crash consistent backups. If you do not want to restore the
crash consistent backups, remove them.

Click Next.

On the Set Restore Options page:

a

Leave the Restore to original location option selected. If the vmdk file still exists at the original
location, it is overwritten.

NOTE If the virtual disk on the original VM has been removed or deleted, the restore to original location
option is not allowed. The VMDK must be restored to a new location.

If you want to restore the virtual machine along with its configuration, select Restore virtual machine
along with configuration.

Click Next.

On the Ready to complete page:

a

Review the summary of your restore request.

The summary displays the following information:

The number of machines that will be replaced or restored to their original location, and created
or restored to a new location

A checkbox for your consent to proceed with the restore if the list of selected backups to restore
contains crash consistent backups
If you select the checkbox to proceed with the crash consistent restore, the restore sometimes
fails.

If you want to change any of the restore settings, click either the Back button on the wizard page or
click the appropriate numbered step title on the left side of the wizard page to go to the appropriate
page.
b

Click Finish to start the restore operation.

A message that states that the restore has been successfully initiated appears.

c
10

Click OK.

Monitor the progress of the restore in the Recent Tasks panel.

NOTE If you selected Reconnect NIC during the restore process, confirm the network configuration for the
newly-created virtual machine. It is possible that the new virtual machine NIC is using the same IP address as
the original virtual machine, which will cause conflicts.

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Restoring Image Backups to a New Location

You can restore backups manually by using the Restore backup wizard. On the Set Restore Options page of
the Restore a backup wizard, you can specify to where you want the image backup restored.

Prerequisites

VDP is installed and configured on your vCenter server.

You are logged in to the vSphere web client and connected to the VDP appliance.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP.

Click the Restore tab.

If necessary, filter the backups to narrow your search.

Select a virtual machine listed in the Name column. When you click on a client (virtual machine), it
expands to list the backups that have been performed. You can select one or more backups, or you can
click a backup to drill down further until you locate the disk or application that you want to restore.

NOTE The client name that appears in the Name column is renamed to append a string of random characters
if the storage has been imported from a different VDP appliance during initial configuration.
5

Select the checkbox beside one or more items to select them for restore.

Click Restore to start the Restore backup wizard.

On the Select Backup page, click the backup that you want to restore and click Next.

On the Set Restore Options page:

a

Clear the Restore to Original Location box to set the restore options for each backup that you are
restoring to a new location.

Specify the following fields:

c
9

New VM Name: Type a new name for the restored VM.

Destination: Click Choose and select the new destination.

Datastore: Select the datastore in which the VM will be restored.

Click Next.

On the Ready to Complete page:

a

Review the summary of your restore requests.

This summary identifies how many machines will be replaced (or restored to their original location)
and how many will be created (or restored to a new location).
If you want to change any of the settings for your restore request, click the Back button to return to
the appropriate screen, or click the appropriate numbered step title on the left side of the wizard
screen.

Click Finish to start the restore operation.

A message that states that the restore has been successfully initiated appears.

c
10

Click OK.

Monitor the progress of the restore in the Recent Tasks panel.

NOTE If you selected Reconnect NIC during the restore process, confirm the network configuration for the
newly-created virtual machine. It is possible that the new virtual machine NIC is using the same IP address as
the original virtual machine, which will cause conflicts.

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Disabling the vMotion Feature Before Performing Restores to a New Location

vSphere vMotion is a feature that enables live migration of the running virtual machines from one physical
server to another. Ensure that the vMotion operations do not run on the VDP appliance while you perform
backups or restores. Storage vMotion operations are not allowed during active backup operations on
page 200 provides information.
Disable the vMotion feature at the VM and datastore levels, in the backup window and before you perform a
restore to a new location.
1

From a web browser, access the vSphere web client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter_Server>:9443/vsphere-client/

Select vCenter > Hosts and Clusters.

On the DRS tab, select Manual for all the DRS clusters that are listed in the left menu.

Select Inventory > Datastores.

For each datastore on which VMs, proxies, and VDPs reside:

a

Select the datastore.

Select Edit Settings.

On the left menu, under General, click SDRS Automation.

In the right panel, select No automation (Manual).

Select Virtual Machine Settings.

Ensure that all VMs show either Disabled or Manual for the SDRS Automation.

Restoring Backups to Individual SCSI Disks

You can restore backups to individual SCSI disks by using the Restore backup wizard. On the Set Restore
Options page of the Restore a backup wizard, you can specify to where you want the individual SCSI disks
restored.
NOTE SCSI ID does not support multiple restore requests of different VMs. Although you can initiate multiple
restore operations, only the first restore is successful. When restoring multiple disks as new disks on either the
original or existing VM, all the disks to be restored must come from the same backup and the same VM.

Prerequisites

VDP is installed and configured on your vCenter server.

You are logged in to the vSphere web client and connected to the VDP appliance.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP.

Click the Restore tab.

If necessary, filter the backups to narrow your search.

Select a virtual machine listed in the Name column. When you click on a client (virtual machine), it
expands to list the backups that have been performed. You can select one or more backups, or you can
click a backup to drill down further until you locate the disk or application that you want to restore.

NOTE The client name that appears in the Name column is renamed to append a string of random characters
if the storage has been imported from a different VDP appliance during initial configuration.

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Select the checkbox beside one or more items to select them for restore.

Click Restore to start the Restore backup wizard.

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Chapter 14 Managing Restores

On the Select Backup page, click the backup to restore and click Next.

On the Set Restore Options page, clear Restore to original location to set the restore options for each
backup that you are restoring to a new location.
a

Specify the following information:

Destination: To select a new destination, click Choose. You can select a new location destination
container (vApp, Resource pool, host, or datacenter) where the backup will be restored, or you
can accept the default destination, which is the original location of the existing VM.

New VM Name: The New VM Name field auto-populates with the existing VM name. You can
modify this field to give the VM a new name if you are restoring to a container. If you are
restoring to an existing VM, you cannot modify the name.

Datastore: Lists the datastore in which the first disk currently resides. If you are restoring a disk
to an existing VM, this field is not editable. If you are restoring a disk to a new container, select
the datastore in which the VM will be restored.

Disk ID: Lists the SCSI disk ID slots available as restore targets. The list shows only empty SCSI
slots of the SCSI controllers that are currently attached to the virtual machine. Select a SCSI
virtual disk slot as the restore target from the list.
You cannot restore to IDE-configured virtual disks. Only SCSI virtual disks are supported. A
maximum of 15 disks are allowed on a SCSI controller. Slot 7 is reserved and unavailable.

NOTE The Restore backup wizard does not automatically add a new controller if there are not enough SCSI
slots available. You must add a new SCSI controller before initiating the disk restore.
b
9

Click Next.

On the Ready to Complete page:

a

Review the summary of your restore requests.

This summary identifies how many machines will be replaced (or restored to their original location)
and how many will be created (or restored to a new location).
If you want to change any of the settings for your restore request, click the Back button to return to
the appropriate screen, or click the appropriate numbered step title on the left side of the wizard
screen.

Click Finish to start the restore operation.

A message that states that the resore has been successfully initiated appears.

c
10

Click OK.

Monitor the progress of the restore in the Recent Tasks panel.

Deleting a Backup from the Restore Tab

VDP deletes backups according to the retention policies that were set in the backup jobs. However, you can
manually delete backups from the Restore tab by selecting the backup jobs for deletion and clicking the Delete
icon.

Clearing all Selected Backups from the Restore Tab

1

From the Manual Restore tab, select the backups you want to clear from the list of backups, and then click
Clear All Selections.

Click the Refresh button to update the data in the Restore tab.

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15

Replication

15

This chapter includes the following topics:

Replication Jobs on page 138

Creating a Replication Job on page 141

Managing Destinations on page 145

Editing a Replication Job on page 145

Cloning a Replication Job on page 145

Deleting a Replication Job on page 146

Enabling or Disabling a Replication Job on page 146

Viewing Status and Replication Job Details on page 146

Running Existing Replication Jobs Immediately on page 146

Replication Back to the Source on page 146

Replication Recovery Compatibility on page 147

Enabling or Disabling Replication Recovery on page 148

Replication Recovery on page 148

Multi-Tenancy on page 149

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Replication Jobs
Replication enables you to avoid data loss if the source VDP appliance fails because copies of the backups are
available on the destination target. Replication jobs determine which backups are replicated, and when and to
where the backups are replicated. With scheduled or ad hoc replication jobs for clients that have no restore
points, only the client gets replicated on the destination server. Backups created with the VDP appliance can
be replicated to another VDP appliance, to an Avamar server, or to a Data Domain system.

Replication Compatibility
Table 15-20 and Table 15-21 indicate which backups can and cannot be replicated, depending on which VDP
product was used to create them.
The following abbreviations are used in these tables:

VDP-A: VDP Advanced appliance

RTI: Replication Target Identity

IMPORTANT VDP Advanced applies to VDP 5.8 and earlier. RTI applies only to VDP 5.8.

DD: Data Domain System

N: No, the target is not supported

Y: Yes, the target is supported

(R): Recommended

(NR): Not Recommended

(HP): Hashed Password

Table 15-20. Replication Source Matrix - Part 1

138

VDP 6.1.x + DD

VDP 6.1.x

VDP 6.0.x + DD

VDP 6.0.x

VDP-A 5.8.x + DD

VDP-A 5.8.x

VDP 5.8.x

VDP-A 5.5.6.x + DD

VDP-A 5.5.6.x

VDP 5.5.6.x

VDP-A 5.5.5.x + DD

VDP-A 5.5.5.x

VDP 5.5.5.x

VDP 5.1.x

Backups created
with this product...

VDP 5.5.1.x

Can be replicated to these targets...

VDP 5.1.x

VDP 5.5.1.x

VDP 5.5.5.x

VDP-A 5.5.5.x

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

VDP-A 5.5.5.x + DD

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

VDP 5.5.6.x

VDP-A 5.5.6.x

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

VDP-A 5.5.6.x + DD

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

VDP 5.8.x

VDP-A 5.8.x

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

VDP-A 5.8.x + DD

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

RTI 5.8.x

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

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Table 15-20. Replication Source Matrix - Part 1 (Continued)

VDP 6.1.x + DD

VDP 6.1.x

VDP 6.0.x + DD

VDP 6.0.x

VDP-A 5.8.x + DD

VDP-A 5.8.x

VDP 5.8.x

VDP-A 5.5.6.x + DD

VDP-A 5.5.6.x

VDP 5.5.6.x

VDP-A 5.5.5.x + DD

VDP-A 5.5.5.x

VDP 5.5.5.x

VDP 5.1.x

Backups created
with this product...

VDP 5.5.1.x

Can be replicated to these targets...

RTI 5.8.x + DD

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

VDP 6.0.x

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

VDP 6.0.x + DD

VDP 6.1.x

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

VDP 6.1.x + DD

Table 15-21. Replication Source Matrix - Part 2

Avamar 7.1.x.x + DD

Avamar
7.0.0.427

Avamar
7.0.1.56

Avamar 7.1.x.x

Avamar SP2
6.1.2.47

VDP 5.5.1.x

VDP 5.5.5.x

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

VDP-A 5.5.5.x + DD

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

VDP 5.5.6.x

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(R)

Y
(R)

VDP-A 5.5.6.x + DD

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

VDP 5.8.x

Y
(R)

VDP-A 5.8.x

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(R)

VDP-A 5.8.x + DD

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

RTI 5.8.x

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(R)

RTI 5.8.x + DD

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

Y
(NR)

Y
(R)

VDP 6.0.x

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

VDP 6.0.x + DD

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

VDP-A 5.5.5.x

VDP-A 5.5.6.x

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VDP 6.0.x

VDP 5.1.x

RTI 5.8.x

Avamar SP1
6.1.1.87

VDP 6.0.x + DD

Backups created
with this product...

RTI 5.8.x + DD

Can be replicated to these targets...

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Table 15-21. Replication Source Matrix - Part 2

Avamar 7.1.x.x + DD

Avamar 7.1.x.x

Avamar
7.0.1.56

Avamar
7.0.0.427

Avamar SP2
6.1.2.47

Avamar SP1
6.1.1.87

VDP 6.0.x + DD

VDP 6.0.x

RTI 5.8.x

Backups created
with this product...

RTI 5.8.x + DD

Can be replicated to these targets...

VDP 6.1.x

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(R)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

VDP 6.1.x + DD

Y
(HP)

Y
(HP)

Replication and Data Domain

If the source VDP appliance has a Data Domain system as its backup target, the replication destination VDP
appliance must also have a Data Domain system. Similarly, if replicating from VDP to an Avamar server, the
Avamar server must have a Data Domain system.
NOTE Data Domain Boost 2.6 and Data Domain 5.4.1.1 or later, 5.5.x, and 5.6 are supported.
The Replication job fails if Data Domain and Avamar backup targets are combined into a single replication job.
You must either configure all Data Domain clients or all Avamar clients as the backup targets.

Best Practices for Replication

Because only completed client backups are replicated, make every effort to schedule replication during
periods of low backup activity. This ensures that the greatest number of client backups replicate during
each replication session.

If you change the user ID or password for the root account on the replication target server, you must
update the destination user ID and password on the source server with the new password.

Using replication destination management, you can update the information for one or more replication
jobs that are associated with the same replication destination server.

Replication of dynamic or non-static data is not supported. Therefore, you must run the replication during
a period of low backup activity.

You cannot run simultaneous replication and/or recovery of multiple clients if simultaneous, multiple
backup and/or restore operations are running.

Though replication between servers of different versions is supported, ensure that the VDP version on the
destination server is either the same or later than the VDP version on the source server.

While creating the replication job policy, optimize the size of the replication group so that all the clients
successfully replicate during each scheduled replication operation. If the group size is very large,
replication takes more time to complete. So, split the group into two smaller groups that you can
independently schedule.

Multiple replication jobs, which are part of a single job, for different VMs run do not parallely run. To
change this behavior, add the com.vmware.vdp.option.replicate.maxtreams property to the
/usr/local/vdr/etc/vdp-options.properties file.
For example, com.vmware.vdp.option.replicate.maxstreams=8

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Limitations

When a replication job starts, it can process only quiescent, static data that resides on the source server.
Therefore, any operation that writes data to the source server and has not fully completed (for example,
an in-process backup job) will not be part of that replication job. The data will, however, be replicated
during the next replication operation.

On the source VDP appliance, as the number of backups for replicated clients increases, the time required
to browse each client increases.

You can replicate the imported backups only by selecting the replicated backup types.
For imported backups, the import process moves the clients and accounts from their current account path
to /REPLICATE/VDP_IMPORTS/. The name of the domain at this level includes a timestamp, which is
appended to the end of the name. The import process also deletes all jobs. To replicate these backups, you
must select replicated backups for the type, and then select imported backups.

Defining Backup Types for a Replication Job

You specify the retention policy and backup schedule when you create backups. Consider these factors when
defining the backup types you will use for the replication job.

Retention policy. Refer to Setting the Retention Policy on page 113 for detailed information.

On-demand or scheduled backup types:

If any backup job is run by using the Backup Now option, it is considered to be an on-demand
backup and is not associated with any backup type. To replicate this backup, you must select the User
Initiated backup type (Step 6 of the Create a new replication job wizard).

To schedule the backup, specify the scheduling options (Step 10 of the Create a new replication job
wizard).

Creating a Replication Job

You create replication jobs by using the Create a new replication job wizard.
NOTE Clients or restore points that have already been replicated from a different source server are available
in the Create a new replication job wizard.

Prerequisites

VDP is installed and configured on your vCenter server.

You are logged in to the vSphere web client and connected to the VDP appliance.

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Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP. Refer to Accessing VDP on page 104 for instructions.

Click the Replication tab.

The Replication tab displays a list of the replication jobs that have been created. The following table lists
the columns and their description:
Table 15-22. Column descriptions for the Replication tab
Column

Description

Name

The name of the replication job.

State

The state of the replication job.

Destination

The location where the client backups are replicated.

Last Run Time

The last time the replication job ran.

Duration

How long the replication took to complete the last time the job ran.

Next Run Time

When the replication job is scheduled to run again.

# of Clients

The number of clients whose backups are being protected and replicated in the job. This
value changes only when the user adds or removes clients from a replication job using the
Edit feature.

From the Replication Job Actions menu, select New to start the Create a new replication job wizard.

On the Select Type page, choose whether to replicate guest images (local backups) or replicated backups,
and then click Next.
The Select Type page appears. On this page, the appropriate clients appear, based on the type of
replication you selected.
If the type is replicated backups:

The VDP appliance displays replicated backups and recovered backup clients as options to replicate
to another target server.

The client table shows the source path in the Source Path column, rather than the last known path.

NOTE Both guest images and application backup options are available.
5

On the Select Clients page, perform one of the following tasks:

To replicate all client backups, click All clients, and then click Next.

To replicate backups from specific clients only, click Select clients individually, and then select the
type from the Type list. Options include Image, MS SQL Servers, MS Exchange Servers, and MS
SharePoint Servers.

NOTE Both regular and retired VM backups are supported for replication. If a retired VM is re-added as
a regular VM, the system lists the VM twice with an identical name. The retired VM name is appended
with a suffix. When selecting clients, select the regular VM without the suffix.
If you choose Select clients individually, you can select one or more clients. If preferred, you can filter the
clients before you make any selections. To filter clients:
a

Beside Filter, click Show All and select Client.

To filter by client name, select Name. The following information appears for the vCenter Client.

142

Name: Is, Is not, Contains, or Does not contain filters used to query the client name.

Status: Values are Powered On, Powered Off, Suspended, Activated, or Not Activated.

Client Type: The type of client.

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Chapter 15 Replication

Click Next.
The Backup Selection page appears. On this page, you can limit the number of backups that are
replicated when the job runs. If you choose not to select backup options, every backup for the selected
virtual machines will be replicated.

On the Backup Selection page of the Create a new replication job wizard:
a

Select a Backup Type:

Daily: Only daily backups will be replicated.
Weekly: Only weekly backups will be replicated once.
Monthly: Only monthly backups will be replicated.
Yearly: Only yearly backups will be replicated.
User Initiated: Only those backups that were user-initiated will be replicated.

NOTE User-initiated backups do not retain advanced retention options. These backups must be flagged as a
separate backup type.
b

Specify the Maximum backups to replicate per client:

No Limit: When this option is selected, all existing backups for a client that meet the Backup Type
criteria will be replicated. The number of backups is unlimited.
Number of Backups: When this option is selected, the backups to be replicated are based on
chronological order. The most recent backup is selected, regardless of whether it is an on-demand
backup or a scheduled backup. The maximum number of backups is 999.

Specify the Date Restrictions:

None: All backups that meet the Backup Type and Maximum backups to replicate per client criteria
will be replicated. There are no other restrictions.
Last: Select a number and a time unit. This option restricts the selection of backups by including only
those backups that were created during the specified number of days, weeks, months, or years.
By Range: Select a From date and time, and select a To date and time. You can specify from a specific
date forward, until a specific date, or between two dates.

Click Next.
The Destination page appears. On this page, you specify connection information for the destination
where the client backups will be replicated.
You can use an Avamar server as a replication destination. To do this, supply the Avamar servers IP
address, port, and login credentials on the Destination page.

NOTE If you change the name of the VM client, VDP displays the renamed client in the Name column on the
Create a new replication job wizard. If you perform a replication of a renamed VM client and the destination
is an Avamar server or Avamar Virtual Edition (AVE), the changed name is not reflected in Avamar. The
Avamar server displays the older name that was previously registered before the name was changed. This is
a known issue.
7

On the Destination page of the Create a new replication job wizard, provide the following information:

NOTE All references to Destination refer to either the Avamar server or the VDP appliance to which the
backup data is being replicated.

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Hostname or IP: The hostname or IP address of the destination.

Port: The port number over which VDP communicates with the destination. The default value is
29000, which is the standard port for SSL encrypted replication.

Username: The username used to log in to the destination.

Password: The password used to log in to the destination.

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Path: The unique name that identifies the domain, used for multi-tenancy configurations. Refer to
Multi-Tenancy on page 149 for details about multi-tenancy configuration.

For replication and recover replicated backup operations, use the repluser username. The credentials of
the repluser username are kept in sync with the root user.
8

Click Verify Authentication to test the connection between VDP and the destination.

Click Next.
The Schedule page appears. On this page, you specify how often backups will be replicated and what
time of the day the replications will occur.

10

On the Schedule page of the Create a new replication job wizard:

a

Select one of the schedule options:

Daily: Select this option to replicate the backups every day.

Weekly performed every: Select this option, and select a day to replicate the backups on that day
every week.

The .... of every month: Select this option, and select a number and a day to replicate the backups
on that day of every month.

Select a Start Time on Server to specify the time that the replication will take place on the scheduled
day.
Best practice: Because only completed client backups are replicated, you should make every effort to
schedule replication during periods of low backup activity. This ensures that the greatest number of
client backups replicate during each replication session.

Click Next.
The Retention page appears. On this page, you specify when replicated backups will expire on the
destination machine.

11

On the Retention page of the Create a new replication job wizard:

a

To use each backups current expiration date, select Keep the current expiration for each backup.

To specify expiration dates based on backup type, select Set expiration by backup type, and select
the number of days, weeks, months, or years for each type.

To keep the replication job forever, select Keep forever.

Click Next.
The Name page appears. On this page, you name the replication job.

12

On the Name page of the Create a new replication job wizard:

a

Type a name for the replication job.

The replication job name must be unique and can be up to 255 characters long. The following
characters cannot be used in the job name: ~!@$^%(){}[]|,`;#\/:*?<>'"&. In addition, diacritical
characters cannot be used (for example: , , , , and ).

Click Next.
The Ready to complete page appears. On this page, you can review a summary of the replication job
that you are creating before saving the job.

13

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On the Ready to complete page of the Create a new replication job wizard:
a

Review the information.

Click Finish to create the job.

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Managing Destinations
You can select existing replication jobs from the Replication tab and then change the destination connection
information for all of them using the 3-step Manage Destination wizard.

Best Practice
All replication jobs associated with the same specific replication destination server should be updated, rather
than selecting a combination of replication jobs with various destination servers.

Procedure
1

From a web browser, access VDP. Refer to Accessing VDP on page 104 for instructions.

Click the Replication tab.

The Replication tab displays a list of the replication jobs that have been created

Highlight the replication job, and select Replication job actions > Manage Destination.
The Manage Destination Wizard appears.

On the Replication Jobs page, click the replication job to update its associated destination, and then click
Next. You can select multiple jobs.

On the Destination page of the Manage Destination wizard, provide the following information:

NOTE All references to Destination refer to either the Avamar server or to the VDP appliance to which the
backup data is being replicated.

Hostname or IP: The hostname or IP address of the destination.

Port: The port number over which VDP communicates with the destination. The only allowable port
is 29000. This port is the standard port for SSL encrypted replication.

Username: The username used to log in to the destination.

Password: The password used to log in to the destination.

Path: The unique name that identifies the domain. This field is used for multi-tenancy configurations.
Refer to Multi-Tenancy on page 149 for details about multi-tenancy configuration.

For Replication and Recover Replicated backup operations, use the repluser username. The credentials of
the repluser username are kept in sync with the root user.
6

Click Verify Authentication to test the connection between VDP and the destination.

Click Next.

On the Ready to Complete page, review the destination that will be assigned to the selected replication
jobs. Click Finish to update the replication job, or click Back to make changes.

Editing a Replication Job

You can edit a replication job by highlighting it and selecting Replication job actions > Edit.

Cloning a Replication Job

You can use a replication job as a template for creating a different job. Highlight the replication job, and select
Replication job actions > Clone.
Performing the clone action launches the Cloning replication job wizard and uses information from the
original job to automatically fill in the information. The cloned job requires a unique name. You can modify
any of the settings that were copied from the original job.

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Deleting a Replication Job

You can delete a replication job by highlighting it and selecting Replication job actions > Delete.
NOTE You can select multiple replication jobs to delete. Deleting a replication job will decrement the count of
replication jobs associated with a particular replication destination. If the replication jobs being deleted result
in replication destinations with no associated replication jobs, then you are given an option to remove
replication destinations as part of the delete request.

Enabling or Disabling a Replication Job

If you want to temporarily stop a replication job from running in the future, you can disable it. You can edit
and delete disabled replication jobs. VDP will not run a disabled job until it has been enabled.
You can enable or disable a replication job by highlighting the job and selecting Replication job actions >
Enable/Disable.

Viewing Status and Replication Job Details

The Replication tab displays a list of replication jobs that have been created with VDP. You can see the details
of a replication job by clicking the job. The details are displayed in the Replication Job Details pane:

Name: The name of the replication job.

State: The state of the replication job.

Destination: Where the backups specified in the job were replicated.

Clients: A list of the clients whose backups are replicated by the job.

Last Run time: The last time the replication job ran.

Duration: How long the replication took to complete the last time the job ran.

Next Run time: The date and time the job is next scheduled to run.

Running Existing Replication Jobs Immediately

You can run a replication job immediately by highlighting the job and clicking Replicate Now.

Replication Back to the Source

A replication job can be set up to replicate backup data from one VDP appliance to another VDP appliance.

Node Structure for Recovered Backups

The first time a valid recovery action initiates using the source server, the recovery action creates the source
server node under the /REPLICATE link. All recovered backups are displayed under that /REPLICATE link on
the Restore tab of the source VDP appliance.
After a successful replication from the source VDP appliance to a replication target server, when a recovery
occurs from the replication source server for replicated backups located at a target server, the fully qualified
domain name (FQDN) of the source server appears under the /REPLICATE link on the Restore tab. Recovered
backups do not display the target server FQDN from which it recovered.

Node Structure of Backups Replicated Again

When a user replicates a replicated backup, the replication source node is not displayed under the
/REPLICATE link on the replication target server.
After a successful replication of replicated backups, the Restore tab of the subsequent target server displays
the parent source server information (on the source server where the virtual machine was originally backed
up) under the /REPLICATE link on the Restore tab.
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After a successful replication of replicated backups from server B to server C (where the virtual machine was
originally backed up using server A), the Restore tab on the VDP appliance of server C displays the
information for server A under the /REPLICATE link, rather than displaying information for the actual
replication source server B.

Replication Destinations
The following are examples of where the replication destination is required:

A backup that exists on the local VDP appliance is replicated to a remote replication target, and then the
backup is removed or deleted from the local appliance. With the Replication Back to the Source feature,
you can browse the backups that reside on a remote destination and recover specific backups by copying
them back to the local appliance. After the backup is recovered back on the local appliance, it can be
restored with the usual process.

A new VDP appliance must be installed to replace a corrupted VDP. Specific backups that have already
been replicated to a replication destination must be recovered. The Replication Back to the Source feature
allows you to connect to a replication destination, browse the backups that reside there, and recover
specific backups by copying them back to the local appliance. After the backup is recovered back on the
new VDP appliance, it can be restored with the usual process.

NOTE The Recover wizard is not available on the Avamar server. The ability to replicate back to the source is
not an option on the Avamar server.

Replication Recovery Compatibility

Table 15-23 lists the supported replication recovery target and replication recovery source servers.
Table 15-23. Replication Recovery Compatibility Matrix
Replication Recovery Target

Replication Recovery Source (Recover To)

(Recover From)
VDP 5.8

VDP Advanced
5.8

VDP Advanced 5.8

Target Identity

VDP 6.0

VDP 6.1

VDP 5.8.0.x

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

VDP Advanced 5.8.0.x

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

VDP Replication Target Identity 5.8.0.x

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

VDP 5.5.1.356

No

No

No

No

No

VDP 5.5.5.180

No

No

No

No

No

VDP Advanced 5.5.5.180

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

VDP 5.5.6.56

No

No

No

No

No

VDP Advanced 5.5.6.56

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Avamar server 7.0.x

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Avamar Virtual Edition (AVE) 6.0.x

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Avamar server / AVE 7.1.x

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

AVE 7.2.x

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

VDP 6.0

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

VDP 6.1

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

IMPORTANT VDP Advanced applies to versions 5.8 and earlier. Replication Target Identity applies only to
VDP 5.8.

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Enabling or Disabling Replication Recovery

For VDP versions 5.5 and later, port 29000 is used when replicating from a VDP appliance to a replication
target destination, such as an Avamar storage server or a Data Domain system.
To enable the replication recovery feature, port 29000 must be open on the replication source server. Opening
port 29000 allows replicated backups to the replication target destination. If port 29000 is closed, the
replication recovery becomes disabled and you are unable to verify the destination as a valid replication
recovery target.
By default port 29000 is open on a VDP appliance. Refer to standard Linux server documentation for
procedures on how to open and close port 29000.

Replication Recovery
On a newly installed VDP, you can specify a destination (a machine to where backups have been replicated)
by using the Create a new replication job wizard. After the destination is added, you can recover and restore
any replicated backups.
NOTE With the current implementation of replication recovery, if a virtual machine client is renamed on a
local VDP appliance, then that name change will not be propagated to backups on a remote VDP Advanced
appliance that is used as a replication target. The new virtual machine name is reflected in the local restore
points, but it is not reflected in the destination.
The Select a replication target option is disabled after a vCenter server change and is not enabled until a new
replication job is created after the vCenter server change.
1

From a web browser, access VDP. Refer to Accessing VDP on page 104 for instructions.

Click the Restore tab.

From the Restore tab, click Recover replicated backups.

The Recover wizard appears.

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On the Destination page, select one of the following options:

Select a destination to use from an existing replication job

Specify a new remote destination

Click Verify Authentication.

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On the Clients and Backups page, select a remote client and backups to recover back to this appliance. You
can expand a client by clicking on the arrow to view its backups.

On the Ready to Complete page, review the items to recover.

Click Finish to start the recover request, or click Back to return to the previous screen if you need to make
changes.

Multi-Tenancy
VDP includes multi-tenancy support, which enables multiple customers or organizations to have separated
accounts on a single VDP appliance. Each customer or organization can replicate to the VDP appliance as well
as use the Replication Recovery feature to access their replicated data. Replicated data for a given customer or
organization is only accessible using the customer or organization account credentials. Built-in credentials
with full privileges such as root and repluser have access to all replicated data. These credentials should not
be shared with individual customers or organizations. The replicated data for an account is isolated from the
replicated data for all other accounts.
VDP, VDP Replication Target (available only in VDP 5.8), Avamar (version 7.1 or later recommended), and
Avamar Virtual Edition (version 7.1 or later recommended) are the supported targets for multi-tenancy.
You can create multi-tenancy accounts by using the create_av_domain.rb script, which is provided on all
VDP appliances. The create_av_domain.rb script defines the following parameters:
Usage: create_av_domain.rb
-c,
-d,
-u,
-p,
-h,

--company=<Company-Name>
--department=<Department-Name>
--username=<User-Name>
--password=<User-Password>
--help

(Required)
(Optional)
(Required)
(Required)

The company value should contain the name of the customers company or organization. The optional
department value allows for the setup of multiple accounts sharing the same company value but each having
unique department values. The combined company and department values comprise an account. Each
account has its own isolated bucket that can hold replicated data. The username and password parameters
define the access credentials for an account. To create more than one set of access credentials for a single
account, you can run the create_av_domain.rb script multiple times with the same values for company
and department, but different values for username and password.
Follow these steps to execute the create_av_domain.rb script:
1

Log in (SSH) to the replication target server as the admin user.

Run the following command and provide the root password:

su root

Change to the following directory:

cd /usr/local/vdr/configure/bin

Execute the following command and specify appropriate values for the account being created:
./create_av_domain.rb --company=<Company-Name> --department=<Department-Name> --username=<User-Name>
--password=<User-Password>

for example:
./create_av_domain.rb --company=Acme --department=Marketing --username=fred --password=topsecret

After you create the account, enter the account information when you define a replication destination on the
VDP appliance. The replication destination page requires a hostname or IP for the remote destination, the user
credentials (username and password), and a path value. The path value is the account identifier, which is
composed of the company and department values supplied when setting-up the account with the
create_av_domain.rb script. A single forward-slash separates the company and department values. In the
example above, the path value would be Acme/Marketing.
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Using File Level Restore

16

This chapter includes the following topics:

Introduction to the VDP Restore Client on page 152

Logging in to the Restore Client on page 153

Mounting Backups on page 155

Filtering Backups on page 155

Navigating Mounted Backups on page 155

Performing File Level Restores on page 155

Monitoring Restores on page 157

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Introduction to the VDP Restore Client

VDP creates backups of entire virtual machines. These backups can be restored in their entirety using the VDP
user interface through the vSphere web client. However, if you only want to restore specific files from these
virtual machines, then use the VDP Restore Client (which is accessed through a web browser). This is called
File Level Restore (FLR).
The Restore Client allows you to mount specific virtual machine backups as file systems, and then browse the
file system to find the files you want to restore.
The Restore Client service is only available to virtual machines that have backups that are managed by VDP.
This requires you to be logged in, either through the vCenter console or some other remote connection, to one
of the virtual machines backed up by VDP.
NOTE To perform an FLR from the restore points that have been imported from the previously-used VDP
disks, take at least one backup of the VM by using the new VDP.
CAUTION See Software Requirements on page 22 for web browsers supported by vSphere 6.0. Internet
Explorer 10 is not supported, and unreliable with the restore client.

LVM and EXT Support

Note the following when considering logical volumes managed by the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and
extended file systems:

One physical volume (.vmdk) must be mapped exactly to one logical volume.

Only ext2, and ext3 formatting (primary partition with master boot record (MBR) and standalone without
MBR) are supported.

LVM and ext4 are supported only with an external proxy.

File Level Restore Limitations

FLR has the following limitations:

VMware Tools must be installed on the target virtual machine. For best results, ensure that all virtual
machines are running the latest available version of VMware Tools. Older versions are known to cause
failures when browsing during the file-level restore operation.

You cannot browse or restore the symbolic links.

Browsing either a given directory contained within a backup or a restore destination is limited to a total
of 5,000 files or folders.

You cannot restore more than 5,000 folders or files in the same restore operation.

When partitions are created, the lower ordered indices must be filled first. You cannot create a single
partition and place it at the partition index 2, 3, or 4. The single partition must be at the partition index 1.

FLR does not work if the VM is behind Network Address Translation (NAT).

If the network appliance is using NAT, and sending all the VDP traffic through a proxy or a firewall, the
FLR displays an error message that the client cannot be located in the VDP.

FLR fails if you are using an older version of VMware tools. Ensure that you install the latest version of
VMware tools on the target virtual machines.

You cannot restore ACLs.

You cannot log in to the Restore Client on a virtual machine if the virtual machine has been restored from
a backup. The authentication fails because the Universal Unique Identifier (UUID) of the restored virtual
machine is different.
Workaround: Back up the new virtual machine and log in to the Restore Client by using the Advanced
Login mode. Advanced Login on page 154 provides information.

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FLR does not work for Novell NSS volumes.

Unsupported VMDK Configurations

FLR does not support the following virtual disk configurations:

Unformatted disks

Dynamic disks (Windows)

GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks

Extended partitions (Types: 05h, 0Fh, 85h, C5h, D5h)

Virtual disk with more than one partition

Two or more virtual disks mapped to a single partition

Encrypted folders or files

SCSI disks only are supported when restoring files or folders to the original virtual machine

Zero-byte files

Compressed partitions

NOTE In some cases (most notably extended partitions), you can restore the entire backup image to a
temporary virtual machine, and then selectively copy the folders or files.

Unsupported Windows Configurations

FLR does not support the following Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 configurations:

Deduplicated New Technology File System (NTFS)

Resilient File System (ReFS)

Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) bootloader

Logging in to the Restore Client

The Restore Client operates in either Basic or Advanced mode. You can only restore files from a Windows
backup to a Windows machine, and you can only restore files from a Linux backup to a Linux machine.
NOTE If you are attempting to log in to Restore Client from a Windows 7 virtual machine, you must set the
User Access Control (UAC) settings to the least restrictive settings for FLR to be able to function.

Basic Login
With basic login, you connect to the Restore Client from a virtual machine that has been backed up by VDP.
You log in to the Restore Client with the local administrative credentials of the virtual machine to which you
are logged in, as shown in Figure 16-8.

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vSphere
client
vCenter server

Virtual machine

Requires authentication
to the Restore Client

Restore only to local VM

VDP appliance
Restoring from the VDP appliance
Note: The backups must
exist on the VDP appliance

Figure 16-8. FLR Basic Login

For login instructions, refer to Using the Restore Client in Basic Login Mode on page 155.
With basic login, the Restore Client only displays backups for the local virtual machine. For example, if you
are logged in to the Restore Client in basic mode from a Windows host named WS44 then you are only able
to mount and browse backups of WS44.

Advanced Login
With advanced login, you connect to the Restore Client from a virtual machine that has been backed up by
VDP. You log in to the Restore Client with the local administrative credentials of the virtual machine you are
logged in to, as well as with the administrative credentials used to register the VDP appliance to the vCenter
server, as shown in Figure 16-9.

vSphere
client
vCenter server

Virtual machine

Requires authentication to the

Restore Client.
In addition, requires authentication
to the vCenter server

Restore to any VM in the vCenter server

VDP appliance
Restoring from the VDP appliance
Note: The backups must
exist on the VDP appliance

Figure 16-9. FLR Advanced Login

For login instructions, refer to Using the Restore Client in Advanced Login Mode on page 156.
After connecting to the Restore Client, you are able to mount, browse, and restore files from any virtual
machine that has been backed up by VDP. All restore files are restored to the virtual machine to which you are
currently logged in.
FLR advanced login requires you to use the same vCenter user credentials specified when the VDP appliance
is installed. See VDP Installation on page 29 for additional information.

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Mounting Backups
After you successfully log in, the Manage mounted backups dialog appears, and by default, displays all the
backups that are available to be mounted. The format of this dialog varies depending on how you log in.

If you use basic login, the dialog lists all the backups from the client you logged into that can be mounted.

If you use advanced login, the dialog lists of all clients that have backed up to VDP. Under each client,
there is a list of all available backups to be mounted.

NOTE You can mount up to 254 vmdk file images by using the Mount, Unmount, or Unmount all buttons on
the bottom right-hand corner of the dialog.

Filtering Backups
In the Manage mounted backups dialog, you have the option of displaying all the backups or of filtering the
list of backups. The list can be filtered in the following ways:

All restore points display all backups.

Restore point date display only backups within the specified date range.

VM name displays only backups of hosts whose display name contains the text entered in the filter field.
(This option is not available with basic login because only the backups belonging to the virtual machine
you logged in with are displayed.)

Navigating Mounted Backups

After backups have been mounted, you can navigate the contents of the backup by using the tree display on
the left side of the Restore Client user interface. The appearance of the tree will vary depending on whether
you used basic or advanced login.

Performing File Level Restores

Using the main screen of the Restore Client, you can restore specific files by navigating the file system tree in
the left-hand column, and then clicking directories in the tree or clicking files or directories in the right-hand
column.

Using the Restore Client in Basic Login Mode

Use the Restore Client on a Windows or Linux virtual machine in basic login mode to access individual files
from restore points for that machine, rather than restoring the entire virtual machine.

Prerequisites

Verify that vSphere Data Protection (VDP) is installed and configured on your vCenter server.

For basic login, you can only log in to the Restore Client from a virtual machine that has been backed up
by VDP.

VMware Tools must be installed on the virtual machine in order to perform file-level restores from
backups. Refer to the VMware website for list of operating systems that support VMware Tools.

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Procedure
1

Use Remote Desktop or a vSphere web client to access the local host that has been backed up through
VDP.

Access the VDP Restore Client:

https://<IP_address_of _VDP_appliance>:8543/flr

On the Credentials page under Local Credentials, specify the Username and Password for the local host
and click Login.
The Manage Mounted Backups dialog box appears and lists all of the restore points for the client you are
accessing.

Select the mount point to restore and click Mount.

After the mounting completes, the drive icon will appear as a green networked drive

Click Close.

In the Mounted Backups window, navigate to and select the folders and files to restore.

Click Restore selected files.

In the Select Destination dialog box, navigate to and select the drive and the destination folder to restore.

Click Restore.
An Initiate Restore confirmation dialog box appears.

10

Click Yes.
A successfully initiated dialog box appears.

11

Click OK.

12

Select the Monitor Restores tab to view the status of the restore and ensure that the restore succeeds.

Using the Restore Client in Advanced Login Mode

Use the restore client on a Windows or Linux virtual machine in advanced login mode to access virtual
machines on a vCenter server that contain restore points to perform file-level recovery.

Prerequisites

Verify that VDP is installed and configured on your vCenter server.

FLR advanced login requires you to use the same vCenter user credentials specified when the VDP
appliance is installed. See VDP Installation on page 29 for additional information.

VMware Tools must be installed on the virtual machine in order to perform file-level restores from
backups. Refer to the VMware website for list of operating systems that support VMware Tools.

Procedure
1

Log in remotely using Remote Desktop, or use a vSphere web client to access a virtual machine.

Access the VDP Restore Client:

https://<IP_address_of _VDP_appliance>:8543/flr

On the Credentials page, under Local Credentials, specify the Username and Password for the local host.
In the vCenter Credentials field, specify the vCenter administrator Username and Password and click
Login.
The Manage Mounted Backups dialog box appears. It lists all the restore points for all the clients of the
same type that are backed up to VDP.

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Select the mount point to restore and click Mount.

After the mounting completes, the drive icon will display as a green networked drive

Click Close.

In the Mounted Backups window, navigate to and select the virtual machine, folders, and files for
recovery.

Click Restore selected files.

In the Select Destination dialog box, navigate to and select the drive and destination folder for recovery.

Click Restore.
An Initiate Restore confirmation dialog box appears.

10

Click Yes.
A successfully initiated dialog box appears.

11

Click OK.

12

Select the Monitor Restores tab to view the status of the restore and ensure that the restore succeeds.

Monitoring Restores
To monitor current and past activity of the Restore Client, click the Monitor Restores button. The monitor
restore screen displays information about current and recently-completed restore operations.
The columns in this table are sortable by clicking on the column heading. Clicking multiple times on a table
heading will reverse the sort order, and an up or down arrow reflects whether the sort order is ascending or
descending.
By default, Monitor Restores shows all the jobs that in are either in progress or that have completed during
the current session. If you want to see jobs that completed or failed in a previous session, select Show
Completed Activities. All the previous completed and failed jobs are displayed along with running and
pending jobs.

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VDP Application Support

17

This chapter includes the following topics:

VDP Application Support on page 160

Backing Up and Restoring Microsoft SQL Servers on page 161

Backing Up and Restoring Microsoft Exchange Servers on page 170

Backing Up and Restoring Microsoft SharePoint Servers on page 182

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VDP Application Support

VDP supports granular guest-level backup and recovery support for Microsoft Exchange Servers, SQL
Servers, and SharePoint Servers. To support guest-level backups, a VDP client is installed on the Exchange
Servers, SharePoint Servers, and SQL Servers.

Installing Application Agents

To install application agents, refer to the following application-specific instructions:

Installing VDP for SQL Server Client on page 162

Installing VDP for Exchange Server Client on page 171

Installing VDP for SharePoint Server Client on page 183

Checking the User Account Control Setting on Microsoft Windows

The User Account Control (UAC) feature limits application software to standard user privileges. You must
provide administrator privileges for certain tasks, such as installing software. UAC is enabled by default.
If you start an VDP client or plug-in installer without administrator privileges on a computer with UAC
enabled, the software does not install correctly. You can disable or bypass UAC. The installation procedures in
this chapter provide one method to bypass UAC. Other methods and additional information are available in
the Microsoft documentation.

Installing VDP Clients when UAC is Enabled

When you attempt to install VDP clients with UAC enabled, the installation displays the following error:
The VMware VDP for <Microsoft Application> Server cannot be installed. Please confirm that you are logged in as an administrator
and that all installation prerequisites have been met.

To resolve this issue, you must run the installer with administrative privileges by performing the following
steps:
1

In Windows, right-click the Command Prompt icon and select Run as administrator.

In the Command Prompt window, change the working directory to the location of the installation package
by typing the following path:
cd install_path

where install_path is the full path of the temporary folder that contains the installation package.
3

Type the appropriate command to start the installer:

msiexec /i VMwareVDPExchange-windows-x86_64-<version>.msi
msiexec /i VMwareVDPMoss-windows-x86_64-<version>.msi
msiexec /i VMwareVDPSQL-windows-x86_64-<version>.msi
msiexec /i VMwareVDPSQL-windows-x86_32-<version>.msi

where version is the VDP client version.

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Backing Up and Restoring Microsoft SQL Servers

VDP supports enhanced backup and restore options for Microsoft SQL Servers.
This section covers the following topics:

Microsoft SQL Server Support on page 161

Installing VDP for SQL Server Client on page 162

Creating Backup Jobs for Microsoft SQL Servers on page 166

Restoring Backups of Microsoft SQL Servers on page 168

Microsoft SQL Server Options

The following options are supported for Microsoft SQL Servers:

Backup selected SQL Servers

Select entire database instances for backup

Select individual databases for backup

Support for full, differential, or incremental backups

Support to use incremental backups after full backups

Support for multi-streaming backups (up to six streams)

Support for simple-mode database backups (skips incremental)

Restore to original or alternate location

Restore a database in the original instance using specified path

Restore a database to a different instance using specified path

Hardware Requirements
Table 17-24 lists the hardware requirements for the Microsoft SQL Server.
Table 17-24. Hardware Requirements for Microsoft SQL Server
Requirement

Minimum

Memory (RAM)

512 MB (2 GB recommended)

Hard drive space

1 GB permanent hard drive space for software installation.

The Microsoft SQL Server software also requires an additional 12 MB of permanent hard
drive space for each 64 MB of physical RAM. The space is necessary for local cache files.

Microsoft SQL Server Support

VDP supports the following versions of the SQL Server:

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SQL Server failover clusters for the following SQL versions:

SQL Server 2014

SQL Server 2012

SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2

SQL Server 2005

SQL AlwaysOn clusters for the following SQL versions:

SQL Server 2014

SQL Server 2012

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SQL Server 2014

SQL Server 2014 (x86/x64) on Windows Server 2012

SQL Server 2014 (x86/x64) on Windows Server 2008 SP2 or later

SQL Server 2014 (x86/x64) on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later

SQL Server 2012 (x86/x64) on Windows Server 2012

SQL Server 2012 (x86) on Windows Server 2008 SP2 or later

SQL Server 2012 (x64) on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later

SQL Server 2008 R2 and later on:

Windows Server 2008 or later (x86/x64)

Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64)

Windows Server 2012

SQL Server 2008 SP1 or later on:

Windows Server 2008 SP1 or later (x86/x64)

Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64)

Windows Server 2012

SQL Server 2005 SP3 on:

Windows Server 2008 SP1 or later (x86/x64)

Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64)

SQL Server 2005 SP2 on Windows Server 2008 (X86/x64)

Installing VDP for SQL Server Client

To support guest-level backups, the VDP for SQL Server Client must be installed on each SQL Server for
backup and restore support.
To install the VDP for SQL Server Client in a cluster, install the VDP for SQL Server Client on each node,
register each node, and then configure the VDP cluster client. To install the VDP for SQL Server Client in a
cluster, perform the following steps:
1

Install the VDP for SQL Server Client in the same folder on each node in the cluster.
The installation process installs the software, and then registers and activates each node in the cluster with
the VDP appliance.

Use the VMware VDP Windows Cluster Configuration Wizard to configure the VDP appliance.

Prerequisites

162

Before using VDP, you must install and configure the VDP appliance described in VDP Installation and
Configuration on page 21 and you must have administrative rights to the SQL Server.

The following software must be installed on the SQL Server:

.NET 4.0

SQL Server Installation Component

Client Tools SDK

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Procedure
1

On each SQL Server client, access the vSphere web client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter_Server>:9443/vsphere-client/

In the Credentials page, enter an administrative vCenter username and password and click Login.

In the vSphere web client, select VDP.

In the Welcome to VDP page, select the VDP appliance and click Connect.

Click the Configuration tab.

In Client Downloads, click Microsoft SQL Server 32-bit or Microsoft SQL Server 64-bit (based on the
version of the SQL Server client).

Depending on your browser, you can save .msi file or you can run it. When you run the .msi file, the
VMware VDP for SQL Server Setup wizard starts. Click Next.

On the End-User License Agreement page, read the license and if acceptable, click I accept the terms in
the License Agreement, and click Next.

On the appliance Registration Information page, type the name of the VDP appliance that will back up
the SQL Server, and click Next.

10

On the Ready to install VMware VDP for SQL Server page, click Install.

11

On the Completed the VMware VDP for SQL Server Setup Wizard page, click Finish.

Repeat this procedure for additional SQL Servers.

Configuring the Cluster Client in a Failover Cluster

The VDP cluster client in a failover cluster enables you to back up and restore SQL Server data on shared
storage in the cluster, regardless of which node is managing the data at the time of the backup or restore. The
VMware VDP Windows Cluster Configuration Wizard provides the steps to configure the cluster client for the
SQL Server plug-in in a failover cluster.

Procedure
1

Log in to the active node in the cluster as a domain administrator. The account must also be a member of
the local Administrators group on each cluster node.

Start the VMware VDP Windows Cluster Configuration Wizard:

On Windows Server 2012, open the Start screen and select VMware VDP Windows Cluster
Configuration Wizard.

On Windows Server 2008, open the Start menu and select Program Files > VMware VDP > VMware
VDP Windows Cluster Configuration Wizard.

On the Welcome page, click Next.

On the Plug-Ins page, select SQL and click Next.

The Cluster Nodes page appears with a list of nodes and their status.

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On the Cluster Nodes page, ensure that the environment meets the following requirements and click
Next:

The status for each SQL Server node is Up.

The installation status of the Windows client software for each node is Installed.

The installation status of the SQL Server plug-in on each node is Installed.

On the Operations page, select Configure a new cluster client for all nodes and click Next.

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On the Prerequisites page, ensure that the environment meets all prerequisites.
A check mark next to a prerequisite indicates that the environment meets the prerequisite.
If the environment does not meet a prerequisite, exit the wizard, resolve the issue, and then restart the
wizard.

Select the IP version that the environment uses and click Next.

On the SQL Settings page:

a

10

Select the cluster group, service, or role for the cluster client from the list:

On Windows Server 2012, select the cluster role for the cluster client from the Cluster role for
cluster client list.

On Windows Server 2008, select the cluster service for the cluster client from the Cluster service
for cluster client list.

Select the shared volume for the cluster client from the Shared volume for the cluster client list.

Click Next.

On the Server Settings page, specify the settings for the VDP appliance:
a

Type either the DNS name of the VDP appliance in the Name box or the IP address in the IPv4/IPv6
address box.

Type the data port for VDP client/server communication in the Port number box.

NOTE Port 28001 is the default port that the VDP client uses to communicate with the VDP appliance.
c

Type the name of the folder or volume in the Cluster clients var directory box, or click Browse to
select a folder or volume.
This folder or volume stores the cluster client configuration and log files. All nodes in the cluster must
have write access to this folder or volume.

NOTE Select a volume that the cluster owns instead of a remote pathname on the network.
d
11

Click Next.

On the Summary page, review the configuration settings and click Configure.
The Progress page provides the status of the configuration.

12

On the Results page, review the information and click Close.

Configuring the Cluster Client for an AlwaysOn Availability Group

The VDP cluster client for an AlwaysOn availability group enables you to back up and restore SQL Server
databases in an availability group. The VMware VDP Windows Cluster Configuration Wizard provides the
steps to configure the VDP cluster client for the SQL Server plug-in in an AlwaysOn availability group.

Procedure

164

Log in to a cluster node as a domain administrator. The account must also be a member of the local
Administrators group on each cluster node.

Start the VMware VDP Windows Cluster Configuration Wizard:

On Windows Server 2012, open the Start screen and select VMware VDP Windows Cluster
Configuration Wizard.

On Windows Server 2008, open the Start menu and select Program Files > VMware VDP > VMware
VDP Windows Cluster Configuration Wizard.

On the Welcome page, click Next.

On the Plug-Ins page, select SQL AlwaysOn and click Next.

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On the Cluster Nodes page:

a

Ensure that the environment meets the following requirements:

The status for each SQL Server node is Up.

The installation status of the Windows client software for each node is Installed.

The installation status of the SQL Server plug-in on each node is Installed.

Click Next.

On the Operations page, select Configure a new cluster client for all nodes and click Next.

On the Prerequisites page, ensure that the environment meets all prerequisites.
A check mark next to a prerequisite indicates that the environment meets the prerequisite.
If the environment does not meet a prerequisite, then exit the wizard, resolve the issue, and restart the
wizard.

Select the IP version that the environment uses and click Next.

On the SQL AlwaysOn Settings page:

a

Select the cluster group, service, or role for the cluster client from the list:

On Windows Server 2012, select the cluster role for the cluster client from the Cluster role for
cluster client list.

On Windows Server 2008, select the cluster service for the cluster client from the Cluster service
for cluster client list.

The name of the cluster client appears in the Cluster client name field.
NOTE You must configure an availability group listener for each availability group. Do not configure a cluster
client for an availability group that does not have a listener.
b
10

Click Next.

On the Server Settings page, specify the settings for the VDP appliance:
a

Type either the DNS name of the VDP appliance in the Name box or the IP address in the IPv4/IPv6
address box.

Type the data port for VDP client/server communication in the Port number box.

NOTE Port 28001 is the default port that the VDP appliance uses to communicate.
c

Type the name of the folder or volume in the Cluster clients var directory box, or click Browse to
select a folder or volume.
This folder or volume stores the cluster client configuration and log files. All nodes in the cluster must
have write access to this folder or volume.

NOTE Select a volume that the cluster owns instead of a remote pathname on the network.
d
11

Click Next.

On the Summary page, review the configuration settings and click Configure.
The Progress page provides the status of the configuration.

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On the Results page, review the information and click Close.

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Creating Backup Jobs for Microsoft SQL Servers

The VMware VDP for SQL Server Client must be installed on each SQL Server that will be available for backup.
See Installing VDP for SQL Server Client on page 162 for additional information on client installation.
1

On the vSphere web client, select the Backup tab.

In the Backup tab, click Backup Job Actions and select New to start the Create a new backup job wizard.
On the Job Type page of the wizard, select Applications. This option lets you back up the full server or
selected databases.

Backing up Applications
If you select Applications on the Job Type page, you can choose to back up application servers or individual
databases.
1

On the Job Type page of the Create a new backup job wizard, select Applications and click Next.

On the Data Type page, select one of the following options and click Next:

Full Server: This option lets you back up entire applications servers.

Selected Databases: This option enables you to back up individual application server databases.

On the Backup Sources page, click the arrow beside one of the following backup sources to expand the
list:

Microsoft SQL Server(s): Select for SQL Server backup.

Microsoft SQL Failover Cluster(s): Select for SQL Failover Cluster backup.

Microsoft SQL AlwaysOn Cluster(s): Select for SQL AlwaysOn availability group backup.

Perform one of the following steps:

If you chose to back up a full server, select the checkbox next to the SQL server that you want to back
up, and then click Next.
NOTE Best practice is to select only one SQL Server per backup job.

If you chose to back up selected databases, click the arrow beside an SQL Server, continue drilling
down until you can select the database or storage group that you want to back up, and click Next.

On the Backup Options page, select a backup type of Full, Differential, or Incremental. The options that
you can configure depend on which one you select.

Full: The Full option backs up the entire database, including all objects, system tables, and data. The
options for full backup are described as follows:

Force incremental backup after full backup: Selecting or clearing this checkbox specifies
whether to force an incremental backup that contains the transactions that occur between full
backups. This creates a point-in-time recovery to a point between full backups.
Do not use this option on databases that use the simple recovery model because those databases
do not support transaction log backups. This includes system databases such as the master and
msdb databases.
For simple model recovery databases, use the For simple model recovery databases option.

Enable multi-stream backup: You can either back up multiple databases in parallel with one
stream per database, or back up a single database using multiple parallel streams. If you choose
to back up a single database with multiple parallel streams, you can specify the minimum size
of each stream during the backup.
After you determine the minimum stream size, you can calculate the number of streams used to
back up the database using the following equation:
Database size/minimum stream size = Number of streams

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For example, if a database is 1,280 MB and you set the minimum stream size to the default setting
of 256 MB, then the number of streams that are used to perform a full backup of the database is
five, as shown in the following equation:
1,280 MB/256 = 5
For transaction log and differential backups, the size of the data to back up, and not the total
database size, is used to calculate the number of streams. If the database size is less than the
minimum stream size, VDP uses a single stream to back up the database.
If you calculate the number of streams for a database based on the minimum stream size, and the
number exceeds the maximum number of streams that you configured for the backup, the
backup of the database uses only the maximum number of streams.

For simple recovery model databases: This option specifies how VDP handles incremental
(transaction log) backups of databases that use the simple recovery model, which does not
support transaction log backups:
Skip incremental with error (default setting): If you select databases with different recovery
models for the backup, the backup does not include the databases with the simple recovery
model. The backup completes with exceptions, and an error message is written to the log. If you
select only databases with the simple recovery model for the backup, the backup fails.
Skip incremental with warning: If you select databases with different recovery models for the
backup, the backup does not include databases with the simple recovery model. The backup
completes successfully, and a warning is written to the log for each database that uses the simple
recovery model. If you select only databases with the simple recovery model for the backup, the
backup fails.
Promote incremental to full: A full backup occurs automatically instead of a transaction log
backup for databases that use the simple recovery model.

Truncate database log: This option specifies how database transaction log truncation behavior
is controlled. Truncate options include the following:
Only for incremental backup (default setting): The database transaction log is truncated if the
backup type is set to incremental (transaction log). No log truncation occurs if the backup type
is full or differential.
For all backup types: The database transaction log is truncated regardless of the backup type.
This setting breaks the chain of log backups and should not be used unless the backup type is set
to full.
Never: The database transaction log is not truncated under any circumstances.

Authentication method: The authentication method specifies whether to use NT authentication

or SQL Server authentication to connect to SQL Server. If you select SQL Server authentication,
specify the SQL Server login name and password.

Availability group replica for backup: There are four options:

Primary: If selected, the backup is executed on the primary replica of selected AlwaysOn
availability group.
Prefer secondary: If selected, the backup is executed on the secondary replica of selected
AlwaysOn availability group. If no secondary replica is available, the backup will be performed
on the primary replica.
Secondary only: If selected, the backup is executed on the secondary replica of selected
AlwaysOn availability group. If no secondary replica is available, the backup will be interrupted
and an appropriate error message will be written to the log file.
SQL Server defined: If selected, the backup is executed on the primary or secondary replica
based on the SQL server configuration. If Automated_Backup_Preference is set to none the
backup will be executed on primary replica.

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Differential or Incremental: The Differential option backs up any data that has changed since the
last full backup. The Incremental option backs up only the transaction logs. The only configuration
option that differs from a full backup is that you can force a full backup rather than an incremental
backup.

Force full backup: Selecting or clearing the checkbox determines whether to perform a full
backup when VDP detects a log gap or when there is no previous full backup, from which a
transaction log (incremental) or differential backup can be applied. Effectively, this option
automates taking a full backup when necessary.
If you select Differential or Incremental, you should leave this option selected (the default
setting). Otherwise, you might not be able to restore data in the event that no existing full backup
is present on VDP.

Click Next.

On the Schedule page, select the backup schedule and start time for the backup job and click Next.
Specifying the Backup Schedule on page 113 provides additional information about how to configure
the schedule.

On the Retention Policy page, select an option for how long to keep the backup and click Next.
Setting the Retention Policy on page 113 provides additional information about how to configure the
retention policy.

On the Name page, type a name for the backup job and click Next.

10

On the Ready to Complete page, review the summary information about the backup job and click Finish.

11

Click OK when you see the confirmation that the backup job was created successfully.

Restoring Backups of Microsoft SQL Servers

Once backups have been run on Microsoft SQL Servers, you can restore these backups to their original location
or to an alternate location.

Procedure
1

In the vSphere web client, select the Restore tab.

Select the backup that you want to restore. While you can select multiple SQL Servers, you can only select
one restore point for each SQL Server.

Click Restore.

On the Select Backup page, select the backup job that you want to restore and click Next.

On the Select Restore Options page:

a

Perform one of the following steps:

Leave the Restore to Original Location option selected (the default setting) to restore the backup
to its original location.

Clear the Restore to Original Location option to restore the backup to an alternate location, and
then do the following:
i

Click Choose to select the destination client.

ii

In the SQL instance box, type the name of the SQL instance. If you use local, it must be in
parentheses.

iii

In the Location path box, type the existing full Windows path where the database files will
be restored.
If the Location path does not exist, it will not be created, and the restore will fail.

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iv
b

In the Log file path box, type the existing full Windows path where the log files will be
restored.

If you want to specify advanced options, click the arrow beside Advanced options to expand the list.
The options are described as follows:

Use SQL REPLACE: This option specifies that the SQL Server should create any necessary
database and related files even if another database or file already exists with the same name.
This option overrides a SQL Server safety check that is intended to prevent you from accidentally
overwriting a different database or file. This safety check is described in the Microsoft
Transact-SQL Reference Manual under the RESTORE command section.

Restore only on primary replica: Sets the --recover-primary-only flag, which disables the
automatic recovery of secondary replicas and performs the recovery only on the primary replica.
By default, the check box is enabled, so the recovery will be performed only on the primary
replica. This option is enabled only for databases that reside in an AlwaysOn availability group.

NOTE After you restore a database on only the primary replica, the corresponding database on the secondary
replica is in a restoring state.

Tail-log backup: To perform a tail-log backup during the restore process, the database must be
online and using either the full or bulk-logged recovery model. You cannot perform a tail-log
backup on the system databases because those databases use the simple recovery model (for
example, the master and msdb databases).
Do not select tail-log backup if you are performing a redirected restore to a different SQL Server
instance.

Restore system databases: You rarely need to restore only system databases. However, the
restore might be required if one or more system databases are damaged.
You will more likely need to restore system databases at the same time that you restore user
databases. When you select both the system and user databases for restore, the system databases
are restored first.
When you restore system databases, the VDP Microsoft SQL Server Client automatically restores
the databases in the correct order (master, msdb, then model) managing SQL Server services.

Authentication method: The authentication method specifies whether to use NT authentication

or SQL Server authentication to connect to SQL Server. If you select SQL server authentication,
specify the SQL Server login name and password.

Recovery operation: Select the appropriate valueRECOVERY or NORECOVERY if you are

performing the restore in a SQL AlwaysOn cluster environment.

Click Next.

On the Ready to complete page, review the restore requests and click Finish.

In the message box that states that the restore has been successfully initiated, click OK.

Monitor the restores progress in the Recent Tasks panel.

Monitoring Client Activity

You can monitor tasks and events for all the client activity by collecting and analyzing the client logs. The client
logs are Microsoft application (MSApp)-related logs. The aggregated client log includes any replication,
backup, restore, or automatic backup verification (ABV) job that passed with exceptions or failed. For more
information, refer to Collecting VDP Logs or Diagnostic Information on page 38.

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Uninstalling the VDP Plug-in for SQL Server

To uninstall the VDP Plug-in for SQL Server:

On Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2008, use Programs and Features.

On Windows Server 2003, use Add/Remove Programs.

Backing Up and Restoring Microsoft Exchange Servers

This section covers the following topics:

Microsoft Exchange Server Support on page 170

Installing VDP for Exchange Server Client on page 171

Using the VMware Exchange Backup User Configuration Tool on page 174

Manually Configuring the VDP Backup Service on page 175

Creating Backup Jobs for Microsoft Exchange Servers on page 175

Restoring Backups of Microsoft Exchange Servers on page 177

Granular Level Recovery on Microsoft Exchange Servers on page 179

Uninstalling the Exchange Server Plug-in on page 179

Microsoft Exchange Server Options

VDP supports the enhanced backup and restore options for Microsoft Exchange Servers:

Backup selected Exchange Servers

Backup selected individual Exchange databases or storage groups

Ability to perform incremental backups

Support for multi-streaming backups (up to ten streams)

Support for circular logging (promote, circular, and skip)

Ability to restore Exchange to original location or alternate location

Option for no replay logs during restore

Recovery Storage Groups (RSG)/Recovery database (RDB)

Granular-level restores

Microsoft Exchange Server Support

Table 17-25 lists the Microsoft Exchange Server versions and operating systems that the VDP plug-in for
Microsoft Exchange supports.
Table 17-25. Supported Microsoft Exchange Server Versions and Operating Systems
Exchange Server version

Operating systems

Exchange Server 2013

Windows Server 2012 (x64)

Exchange Server 2013 database availability group (DAG)

Windows Server 2012 R2 (x64)

Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64)

Exchange Server 2010 SP3

Windows Server 2012 (x64)

Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Group (DAG)

Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64)

Windows Server 2008 SP2 (x64)

Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64)

Windows Server 2008 SP2 (x64)

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Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Requirement

The Exchange Server VSS plug-in requires installation of Microsoft .NET Framework 4 on each server in the
Exchange Server forest. Search the Microsoft Download Center for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 to find
downloads and additional information.

Hardware Requirements
Table 17-26 lists the hardware requirements for the VDP Plug-in for Microsoft Exchange Server.
Table 17-26. Hardware Requirements for Microsoft Exchange Server
Requirement

Minimum

Memory (RAM)

64 MB

Hard drive
space

Software installation requires at least 100 MB of permanent hard drive space, with 1 GB
recommended.
Local cache files require an additional 12 MB of permanent hard drive space for each 64 MB of physical
RAM.

Unsupported Microsoft Exchange Servers

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 clusters (SCC, CCR, SCR) are not supported with the VDP plug-in for
Microsoft Exchange Server.

Installing VDP for Exchange Server Client

To support guest-level backups, the VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP) for Exchange Server Client must
be installed on each Exchange Server for backup and restore support.

Prerequisites
Before using VDP, you must install and configure the VDP appliance described in VDP Installation and
Configuration on page 21 and you must have administrative rights to the Exchange Server.

Procedure
1

On each Exchange Server client, access the vSphere web client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter_Server>:9443/vsphere-client/

In the Credentials page, enter an administrative vCenter username and password, and then click Login.

On the vSphere web client, select VDP.

In the Welcome to VDP page, select the VDP appliance and click Connect.

Click the Configuration tab.

In Client Downloads, click Microsoft Exchange Server 64-bit.

Depending on your browser, you can save the .msi file or run it. When you run the .msi file, the
VMware VDP for Exchange Server Setup wizard starts. Click Next.

On the End-User License Agreement page, read the license and if acceptable, click I accept the terms in
the License Agreement and click Next.

On the Appliance Registration Information page, type in the IP address or fully qualified domain name
of the VDP appliance that will back up the Exchange Server and click Next.

10

(Optional) Select the option to install the Exchange Server GLR plug-in if you plan to use the server for
granular level recovery.

NOTE You must reboot the Microsoft Exchange Server if you select the Exchange Server GLR option.
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On the Ready to install VMware VDP for Exchange Server page, click Install.

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On the Completed the VMware VDP for Exchange Server Setup Wizard page, click Finish.

If you selected the VDP Exchange Backup User Configuration Tool checkbox, proceed to Using the VMware
Exchange Backup User Configuration Tool on page 174.
If you did not select the VDP Exchange Backup Configuration Tool checkbox, proceed to Manually
Configuring the VDP Backup Service on page 175.
Repeat this procedure for additional Exchange Servers.

Installing in a DAG or Cluster Environment

Procedure
1

Exchange for VDP consists of a single, standalone installer. Install the VDP for Exchange Client Plug-in
on each Microsoft Exchange server with the Mailbox server role.
To use a server for granular level recovery, select the options to install both the Exchange GLR plug-in and
the Exchange VSS plug-in. In a DAG environment, you should configure at least one server for GLR.

NOTE You must restart the Exchange server after you install the Exchange GLR plug-in.
2

Register each Exchange server as a client with the VDP appliance.

Create and configure the VmwareVDPBackupUser account.

Use the VMware VDP Windows Cluster Configuration Wizard to configure the Exchange DAG client or
the VDP cluster client.

Configuring an Exchange DAG Client

Configuring an Exchange DAG client allows you to perform federated backups of databases in an Exchange
Server 2013 or 2010 DAG.

Prerequisites
Verify that the DAG cluster environment meets the following prerequisites before configuring the Exchange
DAG client.

The VDP Windows Client has been installed.

The VDP Backup Plug-in for Exchange DAG has been installed.

The DAG Group exists if the DAG client is already configured for any nodes.

An unused static IP address is available to be assigned to the new VDP Exchange DAG Client.

The machine accounts for all the cluster nodes must have full access to the SMB share.

The Exchange DAG federated backup must have a network share created (to be used as the var
directory).

Procedure

172

Log in to an Exchange server in the DAG with the VmwareVDPBackupUser account.

Start the VMware VDP Windows Cluster Configuration Wizard:

On Windows Server 2012, open the Start screen and select VMware VDP Windows Cluster
Configuration Wizard.

On Windows Server 2008, open the Start menu and select Program Files > VMware VDP > VMware
VDP Windows Cluster Configuration Wizard.

On the Welcome page, click Next.

On the Plug-Ins page, select Exchange DAG and click Next.

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On the DAG Nodes page:

a

Ensure that the environment meets the following requirements:

The status for each Exchange server is Up.

The installation status of the Windows client software for each server is Installed.

The installation status of the Exchange VSS plug-in on each server is Installed.

Click Next.

On the Operations page, select Configure a new DAG client for all nodes and click Next.

On the Prerequisites page:

a

Ensure that the environment meets all prerequisites.

A check mark next to a prerequisite indicates that the environment meets the prerequisite.
If the environment does not meet a prerequisite, then exit the wizard, resolve the issue, and restart
the wizard.

Select the Internet Protocol versionIPv4 or IPv6 that the environment uses.

Click Next.

On the DAG Client Settings page, specify the client settings for the cluster group for the DAG client:
a

Select the network in the network list.

Type the IP address for the DAG client cluster group in the Exchange DAG client IPv4/IPv6 address
box. The IP address must be a unique, unused IP address. Do not use the IP address for the DAG.

Type the network mask for the DAG client cluster group in the Exchange DAG client IP subnet mask
box.

Click Next.

On the User Settings page:

a

b
10

Select one of the following login accounts:

Local System account

This account, and specify the Account Name and Password for the VmwareVDPBackupUser
account.

Click Next.

On the Server Settings page, specify the settings for the VDP appliance:
a

Type either the DNS name of the VDP appliance in the Name box or the IP address in the IPv4/IPv6
address box.

Type the name of the VDP domain for the Exchange DAG client in the VDP client domain for the
DAG client box.

Type the data port for the VDP client/server communication in the Port number box.

Type the path to the var folder for the cluster client in the Cluster client's var directory box, or click
Browse to select a location.
The var folder stores the Exchange DAG client configuration and log files. The
VmwareVDPBackupUser account and all nodes in the cluster must have write access to this location.

NOTE Select a volume that each server in the DAG can access.
e
11

Click Next.

On the Summary page, review the settings that you specified in the wizard and click Configure.
The Progress page provides the status of the configuration.

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On the Results page, review the information and click Close.

Using the VMware Exchange Backup User Configuration Tool

If the Launch Exchange Backup User Configuration Utility checkbox is selected during VMware VDP for
Exchange Server Client installation, the VMware Exchange Backup User Configuration Tool starts
automatically after installation completes.

VMwareVDPBackupUser Account
The VDP Microsoft Exchange Server Client requires direct access to the Exchange Server. A special user
account, called VMwareVDPBackupUser, is required to provide VDP with appropriate domain and
administrator-level permissions. This user account is set up through the VDP Exchange Backup User
Configuration Tool, which runs by default after the VDP Microsoft Exchange Server Client installation.
NOTE The VDP Backup Agent service is no longer required to be run under this account, nor is the user
required to select the Configure Backup Agent checkbox. If the VDP Backup Agent is configured to run under
the Local System account, the user is required to enter credentials when creating backup jobs or when
performing backup and restore operations.
VMwareVDPBackupUser is configured with the following:

The user account is added and activated for the appropriate Active Directory, Exchange, and group
accounts. The user account is added to the following groups:

Backup Operators

Domain Users

Domain Admin (for Exchange Server 2007)

Exchange Servers

Exchange Organization Management (in Microsoft Exchange Security Groups) for Exchange Servers
2010 and 2013

Exchange Organization Administrators for Exchange Server 2007

A mailbox is created, activated, and tested for the user account.

A user account is set up and activated in the Exchange domain, and then on each Exchange Server running
the VDP Microsoft Exchange Server Client. VDP Backup services must be configured to use the
VMwareVDPBackupUser account.

Prerequisites

Before using VDP, you must install and configure the VDP appliance described in VDP Installation and
Configuration on page 21.

The Launch Exchange Backup User Configuration Utility checkbox must be selected during VMware
VDP for Exchange Server Client installation. If the user does not select the checkbox at installation, the
user can start the VMware Exchange Backup User Configuration Tool manually from the following
location:
x:\program files\avp\bin\vmbackupusercfg.exe

.NET 4.0 must be installed on the Exchange Server:

Procedure

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In the VMware Exchange Backup User Configuration Tool, select New user or Existing user depending
on the status of the user you are configuring.

In the User Name field, type a username for the VMwareVDPBackupUser Account. You can use the
default name of VMwareVDPBackupUser if needed.

In the Password field, type a password for the account.

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In the Confirm password field, re-type the password.

In the Exchange Server field, select the name of the Exchange Server that the VDP Microsoft Exchange
Server Client was installed on.

In the Storage group field (only active for Exchange Server 2007), select the Storage group name.

In the Mailbox store field, select the mailbox database for the VMwareVDPBackupUser account.

Click Check to test the new user settings. If the user does not exist in Active Directory, the check fails.

Click Configure Services.

10

The message log lists a set of tests that have passed or were successful. If all of the check test pass, click
Close.

Manually Configuring the VDP Backup Service

If you have already run the VDP Exchange Backup User Configuration Tool, the VMwareVDPBackupUser
account is created. The following steps are used to manually configure the VMwareVDPBackupUser account
to run the VDP Backup Service.

Before using VDP, you must install and configure the VDP appliance described in VDP Installation and
Configuration on page 21.

The VMwareVDPBackupUser account has been created through the Launch Exchange Backup User
Configuration Utility.

Procedure
1

Log in to the Exchange Server as VMwareVDPBackupUser or as another user with Administrative rights.

Start the Services application by selecting Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Services.

From the Services window, right-click Backup Agent in the Services list, and select Properties.

From the Backup Agent Properties dialog box, click the Logon tab.

Select the This account button and specify the username created by the VDP Exchange Backup User
Configuration Tool (VMwareVDPBackupUser by default).

Type the password for the VMwareVDPBackupUser account in the Password and Confirm password
fields, and then click OK.

Right-click the Backup Agent service in the Services list and select Restart.

NOTE If GLR is installed, you must repeat this procedure on the VMware VDP Exchange GLR Service as
well.

Creating Backup Jobs for Microsoft Exchange Servers

Microsoft Exchange Server clients must have the VMware VDP Microsoft Exchange Server Client installed in
order to be available for backup. See Installing VDP for Exchange Server Client on page 171 for additional
information on client installation.
1

On the vSphere web client, select the Backup tab.

In the Backup tab, click Backup Job Actions, and select New to start the Create a new backup job wizard.

On the Job Type page of the wizard, select Applications. This option lets you back up the full server or
selected databases.
The job type that you choose determines the options that you can select from here on. Based on your
selection, follow the instructions in the appropriate section below.

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Backing up Applications
If you select Applications on the Job Type page, you can choose to back up application servers or individual
databases.
1

On the Job Type page of the Create a new backup job wizard, select Applications and click Next.

On the Data Type page, select one of the following options and click Next:

Full Server: This option lets you back up entire applications servers.

Selected Databases: This option lets you back up individual application server databases.

On the Backup Sources page, click the arrow beside Microsoft Exchange Servers(s) to expand the list.

Do one of the following:

NOTE Best practice is to select only one Exchange Server per backup job.

If you chose to back up a full server, select the checkbox next to the Exchange Server that you want
to back up, and then click Next.

If you chose to back up selected databases, click the arrow beside an Exchange Server, continue
drilling down until you can select the database or storage group that you want to back up, and then
click Next. Note that if the client is running as a local system account, the user must provide Exchange
Administrator credentials to drill down the Exchange server.
NOTE If the backup target is an Exchange 2007 Server, you cannot select an individual database, and
must select a storage group instead.

On the Backup Options page:

a

Select a backup type of Full or Incremental. Incremental backups are automatically promoted to full
backups if a full backup does not exist.

NOTE If the client is running as a Local System account, the user must provide Exchange Administrator
credentials. If not running as a Local System account, credentials are not required.
If you select Incremental, you can specify circular logging options. Circular logging allows you to
reduce the number of transaction logs resident on the system. For mixed environments where some,
but not all, storage groups or databases have circular logging enabled, you can select one of these
settings to specify how VDP handles incremental backups.

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Promote (default setting): This option promotes an incremental backup to a full backup if any
database in the saveset has circular logging enabled. All databases will be backed up whether
they have circular logging enabled or not. If one or more databases has circular logging enabled,
all databases in the saveset will have any incremental backup promoted to a full backup.

Circular: This option promotes all incremental backups of all databases with circular logging
enabled to a full backup and skips any databases that do not have circular logging enabled.

Skip: This option performs an incremental backup of all databases that have circular logging
disabled and skips any databases that have circular logging enabled.

(Available for DAG clusters only) In the Preferred server order list box, specify the priority of servers
to use to back up the Exchange databases. Specify the server name, not the FQDN. Separate multiple
entries with commas. If you do not specify a list, the Exchange VSS plug-in adds all servers in the
DAG to the list in alphabetical order.

(Available for DAG clusters only) From the Set the preference for what types of database to back up
list, select the type of database to back up:

Select Prefer passive to back up a passive copy of each database, if a healthy passive copy is
available. If a healthy passive copy is not available, the VDP appliance backs up the active copy.

Select Active only to back up only the active copy of each database.

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Select Passive only to back up only the passive copy of each database. If a healthy passive copy
is not available, the backup does not include the database.

Select the Enable multi-stream backup option if you want to allow the parallel processing of backup jobs
using multiple processors. Use the slider bar to select the number of streams to use.
You can use as many as ten streams. Each stream requires a separate processor core. By taking advantage
of multi-processors, you can improve backup performance.

Click Next.

On the Schedule page, select the backup schedule and start time for the backup job, and then click Next.
Specifying the Backup Schedule on page 113 provides additional information about how to configure
the schedule.

On the Retention Policy page, select an option for how long to keep the backup, and then click Next.
Setting the Retention Policy on page 113 provides additional information about how to configure the
retention policy.

10

On the Name page, type a name for the backup job, and then click Next.

11

On the Ready to Complete page, review the summary information about the backup job, and then click
Finish.

12

Click OK when you see the confirmation that the backup job was created successfully.

Restoring Backups of Microsoft Exchange Servers

After you run backups on Microsoft Exchange Servers, you can restore these backups to their original location
or to an alternate location.
CAUTION The target Microsoft Exchange Server must have the same Microsoft Exchange Server version and
service pack as the Exchange Server on which the backup occurred. Otherwise, the restore will fail.

Procedure
1

On the vSphere web client, select the Restore tab.

Click the client whose backup you want to restore.

Click the backup that you want to restore.

To restore the entire contents of the backup, select the Exchange Information Store checkbox.

After you select all the targets, click the Restore button.

NOTE If the client is running as a local system account, the user must provide Exchange Administrator
credentials. If not running as a local system account, credentials are not required.
6

On the Select Restore Options page, the Restore to Original Location option is the default setting and
cannot be modified.

(Optional) For GLR, on the Select Restore Options page, do the following.

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Restore to Original Location: Clear this box if you would like to select a different client to create the
RDB on or to restore to a different mailbox.

Destination Client: This is the Exchange Server where the RDB will be created and mounted from
the backup. This client must be an Exchange Server with the VDP Exchange GLR plug-in installed.

Destination Mailbox: Set to the email address of the mailbox where the selected mailboxes should
be restored to.

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If you want to specify advanced options, click the arrow beside Advanced options to expand the list.
Specify the following options:

Allow database overwrite: Forces any existing databases to be overwritten that have the same name
or names included in the restore job. When this option is selected, it modifies the Allow File Restore
flag, which is internal to the Exchange Server.

Restore into RSG/RDB: Restore Storage Groups (RSG) are used in Exchange Server 2007 and
Recovery Databases (RDB) are used in Exchange Server 2010 and Exchange Server 2013. RSG/RDB is
used to restore to an RSG/RDB instead of to a production database. When you select Restore into
RSG/RDB, you can configure the following options:

Overwrite existing RSG/RDB: Overwrites any existing RSG/RDB. Use this option with caution.

RSG/RDB name: The name of the RSG/RDB that is used for the restore. If a RSG/RDB with the
specified name does not already exist, it will be created. If an RSG/RDB with the specified name
already exists, use the Overwrite existing RSG/RDB option to overwrite it.

RSG/RDB database path: The path where the RSG/RDB database file will be restored (for
example, C:\myrdb). This is an optional field. The default location is used if this field is left
blank.

RSG/RDB log path: The path where the RSG/RDB log file will be restored (for example,
C:\myrdb). This is an optional field. The default location is used if this field is left blank.

Select whether to restore but not replay transaction logs by selecting or clearing the Do not replay
the transaction logs checkbox. When you select this option, you can manually copy additional
transaction logs before you mount the database.

If log file conflicts occur during the restore, use the Move logs path box to specify a location to move
the existing log files to before the restore. If you do not specify a path for the log files and there is a
gap in the transaction log, the restore process automatically moves the current transaction logs to a
subfolder named logs_time_date. The time and date values are the time and date of the restore.
The subfolder is in the transaction log folder for the database or storage group. You can use these logs
to analyze the restore operation, if necessary, or apply those logs up to where the failure occurred.

For Restore Options in Exchange DAG Cluster configurations, refer to Suspending Replication in a
DAG or Cluster on page 178.

On the Ready to complete page, review the restore requests and click Finish.

10

In the message box that states that the restore has been successfully initiated, click OK.

11

Monitor the restores progress in the Recent Tasks panel.

Suspending Replication in a DAG or Cluster

The VDP appliance automatically suspends replication from active databases or storage groups to passive
databases or storage groups during a restore when you select the Automate replication suspension checkbox
during a restore.
You also can manually suspend replication to the passive databases or storage groups by using the Exchange
Management Shell before you perform the restore.

Procedure
In Exchange Server 2013 or 2010, type the following command in the Exchange Management Shell on any
server in the DAG to manually suspend replication to passive databases or storage groups before a restore:
suspend-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity database\I

where database is the name of the database and server is the name of the DAG server with the passive
copy.

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Monitoring Client Activity

You can monitor tasks and events for all the client activity by collecting and analyzing the client logs. The client
logs are Microsoft application (MSApp)-related logs. The aggregated client log includes any replication,
backup, restore, or automatic backup verification (ABV) job that passed with exceptions or failed. For more
information, refer to Collecting VDP Logs or Diagnostic Information on page 38.

Uninstalling the Exchange Server Plug-in

To uninstall the Exchange Server plug-in, use Programs and Features.
The Exchange Server GLR plug-in uninstalls automatically when you uninstall the Exchange Server plug-in.
You must restart the computer after you uninstall the Exchange Server plug-in.

Granular Level Recovery on Microsoft Exchange Servers

The VDP Plug-in for Exchange Granular Level Recovery (GLR) mounts a temporary virtual drive on the target
server and restores an Exchange Server database or storage group from a backup to a Recovery Database
(RDB) or Recovery Storage Group (RSG) on the virtual drive.
Note the following:

GLR in VDP supports recovery at the mailbox level only. GLR is not supported at the individual item
level.

The backup must be a full backup with the VMware VDP Exchange Server plug-in.

You can perform GLR operations on backups that contain public folder databases, but you cannot use
GLR to browse or restore from the public folder database itself.

GLR System Requirements

The GLR process with the VDP Plug-in for Exchange Server GLR places additional demands on computer
hardware and resources beyond the base requirements for backup and restore. Table 17-27 describes the
system requirements for the VDP Plug-in for Exchange Server GLR.
Table 17-27. GLR System Requirements
Requirement

Minimum

Memory (RAM)

The VDP Plug-in for Exchange Server GLR requires additional memory (RAM). Start with 1 GB of
RAM. The required amount of additional or total memory depends on current system performance
with existing memory:

Hard drive space

If resources are already strained and performance is slow with regular operations of the VDP
Plug-in for Exchange Server VSS, add significantly more memory to support VDP Plug-in for
Exchange Server GLR operations.

If performance is currently adequate with regular operations of the VDP Plug-in for Exchange
Server VSS, additional memory may not be required to support VDP Plug-in for Exchange
Server GLR operations.

Additional disk space is required to provide a disk staging area to hold writes to the Exchange
Server database and log files.

NOTE You also must download the latest MAPI client libraries and CDO 1.2.1 from the Microsoft website, and
install the libraries and CDO on each Exchange Server with the Exchange Server GLR plug-in. Some features
might not work unless you have the latest versions.

Multi-Streaming Requirements
Multi-streaming places additional demands on computer hardware and resources beyond the base
requirements for the VDP Plug-in for Exchange Server VSS. In addition, there are several configuration
recommendations for multi-streaming.
Table 17-28 lists hardware and software recommendations for multi-streaming.

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Table 17-28. Multi-Streaming Requirements

Hardware and Software

Recommendations

CPU

At least one processor core per stream

Memory (RAM)

48 GB or more

Hard disk

1 disk drive for operating system/Exchange Server installation

1 to 2 disk drives or RAID drive group for each Exchange Server database
7200 RPM or faster disk drives

Network adapter

1 GB

Operating system

Windows Server 2008 SP2 or later

Multi-Streaming Exchange Server Configuration Requirements

VDP consumes significantly more CPU during backups with multi-streaming. This additional CPU
consumption on an active Exchange Server can impact performance and affect end users.
Ensure that the Exchange Server environment meets the following requirements for multi-streaming:

Locate each database on a separate physical disk. If possible, locate the database file on one disk and the
transaction logs on a separate disk for each database.

Best results occur when each database or storage group is approximately the same size.

When you specify multi-streaming options for a backup, specify a maximum of one backup stream for each
disk in the backup set. For example:

If you are backing up two databases, with each database on its own disk, specify a maximum of two
streams.

If you are backing up two databases, with each database and its logs on two disks (for a total of four disks),
specify a maximum of four streams.

VSS Requirements
The VDP Plug-in for Exchange Server VSS uses Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) technology to
perform backups. VSS is a framework that enables performance of volume backups while applications on a
system continue to write to the volumes.
Supported VSS Providers and Writers
The Exchange Server VSS plug-in uses the Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider and the following VSS
writers:

Microsoft Exchange Server Store VSS Writer

Microsoft Exchange Server Replication VSS Writer

The Exchange Server VSS plug-in does not support hardware providers.
VSS Snapshot Volume Requirements
The Microsoft VSS framework supports as many as 64 volumes in a VSS snapshot. When you create a dataset
or perform an on-demand backup, do not include more than 64 volumes. If you include more than 64 volumes
in a snapshot, backup fails and the event log lists the following error:
VSS_E_MAXIMUM_NUMBER_OF_VOLUMES_REACHED.
The VSS framework also limits the number of shadow copies to 64 per volume. If the number of shadow copies
in a volume exceeds 64, backup fails and the event log lists the following error:
VSS_E_MAXIMUM_NUMBER_OF_SNAPSHOTS_REACHED.

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Enabling GLR Log Files before you Perform GLR

GLR log files enable you to trace and debug granular level restore. Perform the following steps to enable the
GLR log files:
1

Use a text editor to create the command file in the C:\Program Files\avp\var folder, where
C:\Program Files\avp is the installation folder.

Save and close the command file.

Table 17-29 lists the VDP log files that you can enable to trace and debug GLR.
Table 17-29. VDP Log Files
Flag to Enable
Debugging

Command File for Flags

Trace and debugging information for

AvFS file system calls.

--debug

axionfs.cmd

avmapi.log

Trace and debugging information for

MAPI calls.

--debug

avmapi.cmd

avexglr_plugin.log

Trace and debugging information for

RDB and RSG creation, mount,
browse, and restore.

--debug

avexchglr.cmd

Aveexchglrsvc.log

Trace and debugging information for

RDB and RSG creation, mount,
browse, and restore.

--debug

aveexchglrsvc.cmd

ps_exec.log

Trace and debugging information for

execution of PowerShell commands
on the Exchange Server client.

--debug

ps_exec.cmd

Log File

Contents

Axionfs.log

x19=327680

Backing Up Exchange Server Databases

For instructions on how to back up Exchange Server databases, refer to Backing up Applications on
page 166.

Restoring Individual Mailboxes

NOTE You must manually delete all RDBs on the target Exchange Server (2010 or 2013) before performing
granular level recovery. The GLR process automatically deletes RSGs on target Exchange Server 2007 servers.
After you have backed up individual mailboxes, you can browse and extract individual mailboxes from the
database to restore. The selected items restore from the VDP appliance to a Recovered Items folder in the
original mailbox. You can then browse and select the items to keep. For instructions on how to restore a backup
at the granular level, refer to Restoring Backups of Microsoft Exchange Servers on page 177.
The virtual drive automatically dismounts and the RDB or RSG is deleted from the target server for GLR after
the restore completes. Exchange Server 2007 is automatically deleted. For Exchange Servers 2010 and 2013, you
must automatically delete before you perform GLR.

Procedure
1

On the vSphere web client, select the Restore tab.

Select the backup to restore and click the Restore icon to start the Restore backup wizard.
The Select backup page appears.

Click the client whose backup you want to restore.

Click the backup that you want to restore.

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Select to restore at any level in the hierarchy. The restore is considered GLR if the restore targets are at the
mailbox level.

For Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers, the backup hierarchy is as follows:

Exchange server name - > Backup date - > Exchange Information Store - > Storage groups - >
Databases - > Mailboxes.

For Microsoft Exchange 2010 or 2013 servers, the backup hierarchy is as follows:
Exchange server name - > Backup date - > Exchange Information Store - > Databases - > Mailboxes.

Once all the targets have been selected, click the Restore button.

NOTE If the client is running as a local system account, the user must provide Exchange Administrator
credentials. If the client is not running as a local system account, credentials are not required.
7

On the Ready to complete page, review the restore requests, and then click Finish.

Click OK when you see the message telling you that your restore was successfully initiated.

Monitor the restores progress in the Recent Tasks pane.

Backing Up and Restoring Microsoft SharePoint Servers

VDP supports the backup and restore of Microsoft SharePoint Servers. Only one SharePoint Server system per
farm is currently supported.
NOTE Restoring only the SharePoint Server Configuration or Administrators database can corrupt the
SharePoint Server application. Therefore, if you are not restoring only content databases, you must restore the
entire backup.

Hardware Requirements
Table 17-30 lists the hardware requirements for the Microsoft SharePoint Server.
Table 17-30. Hardware Requirements for Microsoft SharePoint Server
Requirement

Minimum

Memory (RAM)

2 GB

File systems

NTFS

Supported Microsoft SharePoint Servers

VDP supports the following versions of Microsoft SharePoint Server:

SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 or later:

Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2008

SharePoint Server 2010, 2010 SP1:

Windows Server 2008 SP2

Windows Server 2008 R2

SharePoint Server 2013:

Windows Server 2012

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later

SharePoint Server 2013 SP1:

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Installing VDP for SharePoint Server Client

Install the VDP client plug-in on each SharePoint Server in the farm. A SharePoint farm is a collection of
SharePoint Servers that work together to provide a set of basic SharePoint Server services that support a single
site.
The following figure illustrates SharePoint topologies for small, medium, and large farms:

Figure 17-10. SharePoint topologies

Limitations
The SharePoint Server VSS Writer must run with the SharePoint Server Farm Administrator account.

Prerequisites

The VDP appliance must be installed and configured as described in VDP Installation and
Configuration on page 21.

You must have local administrator privileges to each SharePoint Server.

Procedure
1

On each SharePoint Server client, access the vSphere web client:

https://<IP_address_vCenter_Server>:9443/vsphere-client/

On the Credentials page, enter an administrative vCenter username and password and click Login.

On the vSphere web client, select VDP.

On the Welcome to VDP page, select the VDP appliance and click Connect.

Click the Configuration tab.

Under Client Downloads, click Microsoft SharePoint Server 64 bit. Depending on your browser, you can
save the .msi file or run it.
The VMware VDP for SharePoint Server Setup wizard starts.

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Click Next.

On the End-User License Agreement page, read the license and if acceptable, click I accept the terms in
the License Agreement and click Next.

On the appliance Registration Information page, type in the IP address or the name of the VDP appliance
that will back up the SharePoint Server. Click Next.

10

On the Ready to install VMware VDP for SharePoint Server page, click Install.

11

During installation, select whether the server on which you are installing will be the primary back up
server (front end) or another member server of the SharePoint Server farm (back end).

NOTE The front-end server can only be installed on one farm server, and it must be a Web front end or an
application server.
12

On the Completed the VMware VDP for SharePoint Server Setup Wizard page, click Finish.

Creating Backup Jobs for Microsoft SharePoint Servers

After you have installed the VDP for SharePoint Server client, SharePoint VM clients are available for backup.
1

On the vSphere web client, click the Backup tab.

In the Backup tab, click Backup Job Actions, and then select New to start the Create a new backup job
wizard.

On the Job Type page of the wizard, select Applications. This option backs up the SharePoint Server
application running on the virtual machine.

Click Next and follow the instructions below.

Backing Up Applications
You can only back up the entire SharePoint Server application server. Backing up individual databases is not
supported in the current release.
1

On the Data Type page, select Full Server and click Next.

On the Backup Sources page:

Click the arrow beside Microsoft SharePoint Servers(s) to expand the list.

Select the checkbox next to the SharePoint Server that you want to back up.

Click Next.

On the Backup Options page, scroll down, if necessary, to locate the SharePoint Server you have installed
as the front end:
a

In the Farm Administrator Credentials section, type the administrator Login ID and Login
password.

Select the Enable multi-stream backup option to allow multiple threads of execution during the
backup. Use the slider bar to select the number of streams to use, and then select Database or Volume
in the Group by menu.

Click Next.

On the Schedule page, select the backup schedule and start time for the backup job, and then click Next.

On the Retention Policy page, select an options for how long to retain the backup, and then click Next.

On the Name page, type a name for the backup job, and then click Next.

On the Ready to Complete page, verify your selections.

If the settings are correct, click Finish. If the settings are not correct, click Back to go to the appropriate
page in the wizard.

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Restoring Backups of Microsoft SharePoint Servers

After you run backups on SharePoint servers, you can restore these backups to their original location or to an
alternate location.
1

On the vSphere web client, click the Restore tab.

Select the backup to restore and click the Restore icon.

On the Select backup page, select the backup job that you want to restore. While you can select multiple
SharePoint Servers, you can only select one restore point for each server. Make (or confirm) the backup
jobs for restoration and click Next.

On the Select Restore Options page:

a

Perform one of the following steps:

Leave the Restore to Original Location option selected (the default setting) to restore the backup
to its original location.

Clear the Restore to Original Location option to restore the backup to an alternate location.
Click Choose to select a destination and type the full Windows path to the location on the
destination where the backup will be restored.

To specify advanced options, click the arrow beside Advanced options to expand the list.

Login ID: Type the SharePoint Server Administrators login ID. The format is DOMAIN\user.

Login Password: Type the Farm Administrators password used to log in to the destination
client.

Application Pool (optional): For SharePoint Server 2013, type the name of an existing
application pool to which the Search Service Application will be restored.

Encryption method: Select an encryption method from the list.

Advanced options (Support Only): Do not type anything in this box. It is for EMC Support use
only.

Click Next.

On the Ready to complete page, verify your selections. If they are correct, click Finish. If the settings are
not correct, click Back to create the correct configuration.

In the message box that states that the restore has been successfully initiated, click OK.

Monitor the restores progress in the Recent Tasks panel.

Monitoring Client Activity

You can monitor tasks and events for all the client activity by collecting and analyzing the client logs. The client
logs are Microsoft application (MSApp)-related logs. The aggregated client log includes any replication,
backup, restore, or automatic backup verification (ABV) job that passed with exceptions or failed. For more
information, refer to Collecting VDP Logs or Diagnostic Information on page 38.

Uninstalling the VDP Plug-in for SharePoint Server

To uninstall the VDP Plug-in for SharePoint Server on a Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2012
installation, use Programs and Features.

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VDP Disaster Recovery

18

This chapter includes the following topic:

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Basic Disaster Recovery on page 188

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Basic Disaster Recovery

In case of a disaster, you can recover the data or VDP appliance by using different methods.

Using the VDP Checkpoints

VDP is robust in its ability to store and manage backups. In the event of failure, the first course of action
is to roll back to a known validated checkpoint (seeRolling Back an Appliance on page 41).

Using Data Domain Checkpoint Copy

If you use Data domain integration in the environment, you can use the checkpoint copy feature to restore
the failed VDP appliance. The checkpoint copy takes a backup of the VDP checkpoints on Data Domain.
You can use these checkpoints to restore the VDP appliance in case of failure. Restoring Avamar
Checkpoint backups from Data Domain systems on page 90 provides information.

Detaching and Reattaching VDP Storage

In case of only appliance OS disk failure or corruption, you can deploy a new VDP and reattach data disks
of the failed VDP. Detaching and Reattaching Storage on page 73 provides information.

Using Replication
You can use the Replication feature of VDP to recover the data in case of a disaster. You can replicate the
backups to a remote VDP appliance. This enables you to recover the data from the secondary VDP
appliance in case of a disaster on the primary VDP appliance. Replication on page 137 provides
information.

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VDP Port Usage

Table A-31 lists the ports that VDP uses.

Table A-31. VDP port usage
Product

Port

Protocol

Source

Destination

Purpose

VDP

TCP

VDP

Data Domain
system

ECHO service
Required to register a Data
Domain system

VDP

21

TCP

VDP

FTP server

FTP

VDP

22

TCP

User

VDP

Secure Shell (SSH) access for

debugging

VDP

23

TCP

VDP

Internal

Internal

VDP

25

TCP

VDP

EMC Customer
Support

SFTP

VDP

53

TCP/UDP

VDP

DNS server

Required for name resolution

VDP

67

UDP

DHCP server

VDP

DHCP

VDP

68

UDP

VDP

DHCP server

DHCP

VDP

69

TCP

Internal switch

VDP

TFTP

VDP

80

TCP

VDP

vCenter

http for licensing

VDP

88

TCP/UDP

VDP

Key Distribution
Center (KDC)

SMTP

VDP

111

TCP/UDP

VDP

vSphere Host

Access to RPC port mapper

functionality
Required when backups are
stored on a Data Domain
system

VDP

123

TCP/UDP

NTP time servers

VDP

NTP

VDP

161

TCP

Data Domain
system

VDP

Getter/setter port for SNMP

objects from a Data Domain
system
Required to store Avamar
client backups on a Data
Domain system

VDP

162

TCP/UDP

VDP

SNMP Agent

SNMP traps

VDP

163

TCP

VDP

SNMP service on
Data Domain

MC SNMP Manager

VDP

389

TCP/UDP

VDP

LDAP

LDAP

VDP

443

TCP

VDP

vCenter or SSO

https

VDP

464

TCP/UDP

VDP

vCenter

Kerberos

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Table A-31. VDP port usage

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Product

Port

Protocol

Source

Destination

Purpose

VDP

514

UDP

Utility node or
single-node server

VDP

syslog

VDP

703

TCP

Avamar server
nodes

VDP

AKM service

VDP

902

TCP

VDP

VMware ESX server

proxy

VMware ESX server proxy

service

VDP

2049

TCP/UDP

VDP

NFS daemon on
Data Domain
system

NFS daemon on Data Domain

system

VDP

2052

TCP/UDP

VDP

NFS mount process

on Data Domain
system

NFS mount process on Data

Domain system

VDP

2888

TCP

Avamar Extended
Retention Media
Access Node

VDP

AVDTO
Required to support Avamar
Extended Retention

VDP

3008

TCP

VDP

Active archive
service on Data
Domain system

Active archive service on Data

Domain system

VDP

5480

TCP

VDP

External proxy

External proxy

VDP

5489

TCP

VDP

Avamar Proxy

Proxy service

VDP

5555

TCP

Utility node
running
Avamar Client
Manager

VDP

PostgreSQL administrator
server

PostgreSQL
administrator
client
computers

VDP

5568

TCP

Avamar Extended
Retention Media
Access Node

VDP

PostgreSQL

VDP

5671

TCP

Localhost

VDP

RabbitMQ

Other Avamar
utility nodes

Avamar
Extended
Retention
computers

EMC Backup
and Recovery
Manager
computers

VDP

6667

TCP

Avamar Extended
Retention Media
Access Node

VDP

Archive Service Event

VDP

7000

TCP

Avamar Extended
Retention Media
Access Node

VDP

Apche Tomcat

VDP

7443

TCP

Avamar Extended
Retention Media
Access Node

VDP

Apche Tomcat

VDP

7780

TCP

Avamar
Administrator
Management
console

VDP

RMI

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Chapter A VDP Port Usage

Table A-31. VDP port usage

Product

Port

Protocol

Source

Destination

Purpose

VDP

7781

TCP

Avamar
Administrator
Management
console

VDP

RMI

VDP

7937 - 9936

TCP/UDP

VDP

NetWorker server

NetWorker service

VDP

8080

TCP

VDP

NetWorker server

Communication port for

NetWorker server

VDP

8105

TCP

Client computers

VDP

Apache Tomcat

VDP

8109

TCP

Client computers

VDP

Apache Tomcat

VDP

8181

TCP

Client computers

VDP

HTTP

VDP

8444

TCP

Web browser
clients

VDP

HTTPS

VDP

8505

TCP

Utility node or
single-node server

VDP

Apache Tomcat

VDP

8509

TCP

Utility node or
single-node server

VDP

Apache Tomcat AJP Connector

VDP

8543

TCP

vSphere web
client

VDP

Redirect for Tomcat

VDP

8580

TCP

vCenter

VDP

VDP Downloader

VDP

9443

TCP

vCenter

VDP

VDP Web Services

VDP

19000

TCP/UDP

Avamar server
nodes

VDP

GSAN

VDP

19500

TCP/UDP

Avamar server
nodes

VDP

GSAN

VDP

20000

TCP/UDP

Avamar server
nodes

VDP

GSAN

VDP

20500

TCP/UDP

Avamar server
nodes

VDP

GSAN

VDP

25000

TCP/UDP

Avamar server
nodes

VDP

GSAN

VDP

25500

TCP/UDP

Avamar server
nodes

VDP

GSAN

VDP

26000

TCP/UDP

Avamar server
nodes

VDP

GSAN

VDP

26500

TCP/UDP

Avamar server
nodes

VDP

GSAN

VDP

27000

TCP

VDP

vCenter

Licensing communication

Note: VDP requires that port 27000 be open for licensing purposes. Port 27000 is not required for vCenter communication.
VDP

27500

TCP

Avamar server
nodes or
Replicator source
node

VDP

Avamar server

VDP

28001

TCP

Client computers,
VMWare proxy

VDP

Avamar server CLI, MCS

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Table A-31. VDP port usage

Product

Port

Protocol

Source

Destination

Purpose

VDP

28001

TCP

Replication Source
(VDP)

Replication
Destination (VDP or
Avamar)

Bidirectional communication
between avagent and MCS
services on the replication
source server and the
replication destination server
to permit authentication key
exchange.

VDP

28002 28011

TCP

Avamar Extended
Retention Media
Access Node

VDP

Support for Avamar Extended

Retention

VDP

28009

TCP

VMware proxy

VDP

avagent

VDP

29000

TCP

Client computers

VDP

Avamar server SSL

VDP

30001

TCP

Client computers

VDP

MCS

VMware proxy

192

VDP

30002

TCP

VDP

Client computers

Required for client or avagent

connections

VDP

30003

TCP

Client computers

VDP

MCS

VDP

30102 30109

TCP

VMware proxy

VDP

avagent

VDP

61617

TCP

Avamar Extended
Retention Media
Access Node

VDP

Apache ActiveMQ SSL

VDP

61619

TCP

VDP

Client that is
running EMC
Backup and
Recovery Manager

Required to permit
communication with EMC
Backup and Recovery Manager

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Minimum Required vCenter User

Account Permissions

See User Account Configuration on page 24 to configure the VDP user or SSO admin user by using the
vSphere web client. In high-security environments, you can restrict the vCenter user account permissions
required to configure and administer the VDP appliance to all of the following categories:
Alarms

Create

Modify

Datastore

Allocate space

Browse datastore

Configure datastore (for VSAN support)

Low level file operations

Move datastore

Remove datastore

Remove file

Rename datastore

Extension

Register extension

Update extensions

Folder

Create folder

Global

Cancel task

Disable methods

Enable methods

Licenses

Log event

Manage custom attributes

Settings

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Network

Assign network

Configure

Resource

Assign virtual machine to resource pool

Sessions

Validate session

Tasks

Create task

Update task

Virtual machine > Configuration

Add existing disk

Add new disk

Add or remove device

Advanced

Change cpu count

Change resource

Disk change tracking

Disk lease

Extend virtual disk

Host usb device

Memory

Modify device setting

Raw device

Reload from path

Remove disk

Rename

Reset guest information

Set annotation

Settings

Swapfile placement

Upgrade virtual machine compatibility

Virtual machine > Guest operations

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Guest Operation Program execution

Guest Operation Queries

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Virtual machine > Interaction

Console interaction

Device connection

Guest operating system management by VIX API

Power off

Power on

Reset

VMware tools install

Virtual machine > Inventory

Create new

Register

Remove

Unregister

Virtual machine > Provisioning

Allow disk access

Allow read-only disk access

Allow virtual machine download

Mark as template

Virtual machine > Snapshot management

Create snapshot

Remove snapshot

Revert to snapshot

vApp

Export

Import

vApp application configuration

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VDP Troubleshooting

This chapter includes the following troubleshooting topics:

Troubleshooting the VDP Appliance Installation Issues on page 198

Troubleshooting the VDP Management Issues on page 198

Troubleshooting the VDP Licensing Issues on page 206

Troubleshooting the VDP Backup Issues on page 199

Troubleshooting the VDP Restore Issues on page 201

Troubleshooting the VDP Replication Issues on page 203

Troubleshooting the VDP Integrity Check Issues on page 203

Troubleshooting the Automatic Backup Verification Issues on page 204

Troubleshooting the Restore Client (File Level Recovery) Issues on page 204

Troubleshooting the VDP Appliance Issues on page 206

Troubleshooting the VDP Microsoft Exchange Server Issues on page 207

Troubleshooting the VDP Microsoft SQL Server Issues on page 208

Troubleshooting the VDP Microsoft SharePoint Server Issues on page 209

Troubleshooting the Storage Capacity Issues on page 209

Accessing the VDP Knowledge Base Articles on page 211

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Troubleshooting the VDP Appliance Installation Issues

If you have problems with the vSphere Data Protection (VDP) appliance installation:

Confirm that all of the software meets the minimum software requirements. See Software Requirements
on page 22 for more information.

Confirm that the hardware meets the minimum hardware requirements. See System Requirements on
page 23 for more information.

Confirm that DNS is properly configured for the VDP appliance. See Preinstallation Configuration on
page 23 for more information.

Troubleshooting the Installer Package Issues

To find upgrade-related logs that you can use to troubleshoot, refer to the avinstaller.log.0 file in the
Log Bundler.

Troubleshooting the VDP Management Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with
managing VDP.

The VDP appliance is not responding, please try your request again
If you were previously able to connect to VDP and this message appears, check the following:

Confirm that the username or password that is used to validate VDP to the vCenter server has not
changed. Only one user account and password are used for VDP validation. This is configured through
the VDP Configure utility. See vCenter Server Registration on page 40 for additional information.

Confirm that the network settings for IP and DNS configuration have not changed since the initial VDP
installation. See DNS Configuration on page 23 for additional information.

VDP plug-in is not responding

If the VDP plug-in in the vCenter UI displays the VDP Plugin is not responding message, it is mostly because
either one or more services of the VDP appliance or the entire VDP appliance is down.
Perform the following steps to resolve this issue:
1

Ping the VDP appliance from a remote machine by running following command:
ping <VDP_appliance_IP_address>
If the output displays 100% message loss, the VDP appliance is either down or not reachable. Start the
VDP appliance by either logging in to the vCenter server that manages this VDP appliance or resolve the
network issues.

Open the VDP configuration utility by using the following URL:

https://<VDP_appliance_IP_address>:8543/vdp-configure/
If this page is not correctly displayed, the tomcat application server has stopped. Log in to the VDP
appliance by using ssh client (putty) and restart the tomcat service by running the following command:
emwebapp.sh -restart

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Chapter C VDP Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting the VDP Backup Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with backups.

Loading backup job data

This message can appear for a long time (up to five minutes) when a large number of VMs (~100 VMs) are
selected for a single backup job. This message can also apply to lock/unlock, refresh, or delete actions for large
jobs. This is expected behavior when very large jobs are selected. This message will resolve itself when the
action is completed, which can take up to five minutes.

Unable to add client {client name} to the VDP appliance while creating backup job
{backupjob name}
This error can occur if there is a duplicate client name on the vApp container or the vSphere host. In this case
only one backup job is added. Resolve any duplicate client names.

The following items could not be located and were not selected {client name}
This error can occur when the backed up VMs cannot be located during Edit of a backup job. This is a known
issue.

VMDK Backup Job silently fails when single vmdk is migrated to a different datastore
During a migration of an individual VMDK from one datastore to another, VDP attempts to update all backup
jobs that contain the disk that was migrated. In some instances, VDP cannot accurately determine where the
disk referenced by the backup job was migrated to. In this case, the backup job is not updated. One instance
of this issue is when the disk folder name on the new datastore is different than the folder on its original
datastore. If VDP cannot determine where the VMDK is migrated to, VDP sends a vCenter alert that the
backup job may no longer be accurate.
If the VDP appliance is shut down or the emwebapp.sh service is stopped at the time of the VMDK migration,
VDP cannot detect the migration. The backup jobs are not updated. If backup jobs are out of sync, no alert is
sent to vCenter. If a backup job is out of sync with the location of the VMDK, the backup job continues to
complete successfully, but no longer backs up the disk that was migrated.
To resolve this issue, update the backup job. Then re-add the migrated VMDK to the backup job by using the
VDP vCenter plug-in.

Backup fails if VDP does not have sufficient datastore capacity

Scheduled backups will fail at 92% complete if there is not sufficient datastore capacity. If the VDP datastore
is configured with thin provisioning and maximum capacity has not been reached, add additional storage
resources.

Backup fails if VM is enabled with VMware Fault Tolerance

If a VM has fault tolerance enabled, the backup will fail. This is expected behavior. VDP does not support
backing up VMs that have Fault Tolerance enabled.

When VMs are moved in or out of different cluster groups, associated backup sources may
be lost
When hosts are moved into clusters with the option to retain the resource pools and vApps, the containers are
recreated, not copied. As a result, it is no longer the same container even though the name is the same. Validate
or re-create any backup jobs that protect containers after moving hosts in or out of a cluster.

After an unexpected shutdown, recent backup jobs and backups are lost
Any time an unexpected shutdown occurs, the VDP appliance uses rollback to the last validated checkpoint.
This is expected behavior. See Rolling Back an Appliance on page 41 for additional information.

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Storage vMotion operations are not allowed during active backup operations
vSphere vMotion is a feature that enables live migration of the running virtual machines from one physical
server to another. vMotion operations are not allowed to run on the VDP appliance during active backup
operations. This is expected behavior. Wait until all backup operations have completed before you perform a
vMotion operation.
If either an automated vMotion or a storage vMotion starts while backups are performed, sometimes some of
the backups fail or snapshot deletion fails. In this case, perform the following steps:
1

Wait till the migration completes.

Perform backups of the failed VMs by using Backup > Backup Job Name > Backup Now.

NOTE Do not perform the backups by using Reports > Task Failures > Rerun task.

Backups fail if certain characters are used in the virtual machine, datastore, folder, or
datacenter names
When special characters are used in the virtual machine name, datastore, folder, or datacenter names, the .vmx
file is not included in the backup. The following is a list of the special characters (in the format of
character/escape sequence format) that prevent the .vmx file from being backed up:

& %26

+ %2B

/ %2F

= %3D

? %3F

% %25

\ %5C

~ %7E

] %5D

Rerun option from the Actions icon, runs backups for all clients, not just for the failed client
backups
If one client backup fails in a backup job, and then you use the Rerun Job option from the Actions icon on the
Reports tab to rerun the failed backup, the system runs a backup of all of the clients in the backup job.
To run a backup only for the failed client, select Backup only out of date source under Backup Now on the
Backup tab.

Backup now job starting error

If you perform a Backup now job to either a VDP appliance storage or a Data Domain storage that is filled
above 95%, an error message, which states that the backup is not possible, appears in the vSphere web client.

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Chapter C VDP Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting the VDP Backup Performance Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with backup
performance.

Check the performance of the disk subsystem where the backup data set is stored
Run the performance analysis tool which exists on the https://VDP appliance
IP/hostname:8543/vdp-configure page to check whether the datastores on which VDP backups are stored
satisfy minimum read/write value that is recommended for VDP. The following table lists the minimum
required read/write values for VDP:
Table C-32. Minimum read/write values for VDP
VDP Appliance Size

Disk Size

Minimum Read Value

Minimum Write Value

0.5 TB

256 GB

60 MB/s

30 MB/s

1.0 TB

512 GB

60 MB/s

30 MB/s

2.0 TB

1024 GB

60 MB/s

30 MB/s

4.0 TB

1024 GB

80 MB/s

40 MB/s

6.0 TB

1024 GB

80 MB/s

40 MB/s

8.0 TB

1024 GB

150 MB/s

120 MB/s

Check whether the backups use Hotadd transport mode, but not NBD transport mode
The HotAdd transport mechanism enables faster backups and restores, and exposes less to the network
routing, firewall, and SSL certificate issues. If you use the Network Block Device (NBD) transport mechanism
instead of the HotAdd transport mechanism, backups will be slow.

Check for the network bottlenecks if you use the NBD transport mode
If you cannot use the Hotadd transport mechanism, ensure that there are no network issues in the environment
and any other issues on ESXi server network configuration that result in slower backups.

Troubleshooting the VDP Restore Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with restores.

Restore tab shows a Loading backups message and is slow to load

It typically takes two seconds per VM backup to load each of the backups on the Restore tab. This is expected
behavior.

Restore tab is slow to load or refresh

If there is a large number of VMs, the Restore tab can be slow to load or refresh. In tests with 100 VMs, this
can take up to four and a half minutes.

Powering On of VM fails when backed-up virtual machine was connected to DVS and
restored to other ESX
When powering on a virtual machine after you restore it, the vCenter returns a PowerOnFailure error similar
to the following:
DRS cannot find a host to power on or migrate the virtual machine. Network
interface 'Network adapter 1' uses network '77 d3 02 50 5f 76 ca d7-db f9 42 6c
0f 6f 87 1f', which is not accessible.

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This error message occurs when the environment where you restore the virtual machine does not have the
network connection that was present when you backed up the virtual machine. For instance, a user backs up
a virtual machine that is connected to a distributed vSwitch. Then the user restores the virtual machine to an
ESX host that is part of a Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) cluster. The vSwitch does not exist in the DRS
cluster. Powering on the virtual machine, therefore, fails.
To work around this issue, edit the virtual machine settings and set the network connection to the network
adaptor. Then power on the virtual machine.

Disk-level restore does not provide an option to specify target datastores

Disk-level restore to a new location does not provide an option to specify the target datastores for each disk of
the virtual machine. Currently, VDP restores all the disks of the virtual machine, including the disks that were
skipped during backup, into the specified target datastore.
To work around this issue, specify a target datastore that has enough free space to accommodate all the disks
of the virtual machine, including the disks that were skipped during backup.

Deleted disks are skipped when restoring to original location

If the target VM no longer has the same disk footprint as the original VM that was backed up (if the disks have
been removed or deleted from the VM), performing a Restore to original location operation, after selecting
a restore point timestamp in the Restore pane, will silently fail to restore the missing disk of the VM.
The workaround is to restore the disk to its original location after manually adding the missing disk to the VM.
Ensure the disk is the same size as it was when the VM was backed up.
If this workaround fails, restore the disk to a new location to create a new VM. When the restore task
completes, detach the restored disks from the new VM and attach them to the required VM.

Name conflict when restoring a disk to an existing virtual machine

Restoring a disk to an existing VM might fail because of a name conflict. The conflict occurs when an existing
.vmdk disk is present in the same datastore where the new disk is being restored.
To work around this issue, rename or remove existing disks that are causing the name conflict.

No time stamp detail displays for Emergency Restore restore points

When navigating through the restore points in the VDP Configure utilitys Emergency Restore tab, the user
may see no timestamp detail for the restore points. This issue occurs when the time zone is defined as UTC.
Perform the following steps to change the UTC time zone:

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Open the VDP configuration utility.

From the Configuration tab, select Change time zone.

Select a time zone other than the UTC time zone, and click Save.

Click Apply Changes.

After the web services restart, log in to the VDP configuration utility and verify the timestamp.

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Chapter C VDP Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting the VDP Replication Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with
replication.

Last successful and last failed replication information not part of email report
The scheduled and ad hoc email reports that are generated after a replication job completes do not contain
information about the last successful replication and the last failed replication in the Replication Jobs
Summary.
You cannot obtain information about successful and failed replication jobs from VDP.

Replication job failure errors

If the destination server is in either a Normal state or a Full Access state, the VDP appliance correctly reports
the state of the destination server. If the destination server is in the Admin, Read-Only, or Synchronous state,
the VDP appliance reports a miscellaneous error when a replication job fails.
If the destination server is filled above 95%, and you cannot start a Replicate now job, a warning message
regarding the capacity issue appears. Similarly, you cannot recover replicated backups to either a VDP
appliance or a Data Domain storage if the storage is filled above 95% of its capacity. A warning message
regarding the capacity issue appears.
With inaccurate reporting of execution errors, the user cannot determine the state of the destination server.

Replication job progress seems stuck in an incomplete status indefinitely

The VDP task panel delivers a miscellaneous error for the replication job and fails to initiate the session with
servers for replication. One possible cause of this error is the core management service has stopped running
for the target server.
Check the management services and restart the core service if it is not running, and then retry the replication
job.

Multiple replication jobs for different VMs created inside a single job run in series and not in
parallel
The replication activity for multiple virtual machines should process in parallel. The sequential behavior
occurs only when another replication job with the same clients is already running. In this case, the client
replication task waits for the already-running replication job to complete.
To work around this issue, you must add the com.vmware.vdp.option.replicate.maxtreams
property to the /usr/local/vdr/etc/vdp-options.properties file. The default value is 1. After you
change the default setting when you add or edit the property, the appliance sets the new value as the
maximum concurrent number of processes for a replication job.

Troubleshooting the VDP Integrity Check Issues

After starting an integrity check there can be a delay of a few seconds before the VDP: Integrity Check task
shows up in the Running tasks tab under Recent Tasks. Similarly, when canceling an integrity check, there can
be a delay of several seconds before the task is actually canceled.
In some cases (for example, if the integrity check progress is above 90%), the integrity check may actually
complete before being canceled. Even though the integrity check may have completed successfully, the Task
Console may still show an error indicating the integrity check was canceled.
If you knew that the Integrity Check Status of the appliance (shown on the Reports tab) was Out of Date
before you started the integrity check, then you can look at the status immediately after canceling the job to
see if the cancel operation succeeded. If the Integrity Check Status is Normal, the check was successful. If
the status is Out of Date, the check was canceled.

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Troubleshooting the Automatic Backup Verification Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with
Automatic Backup Verification.

Automatic Backup Verification job fails after renaming the datastore

This error can occur if you rename or move the destination datastore outside of VDP.
Edit the job and select the renamed or moved destination datastore as the new destination. For instructions,
refer to Editing a Backup Verification Job on page 127.

One or more ABV jobs fail with a Failed to create VM error and leave behind an orphaned
VM in the vCenter inventory
ABV has triggered the validation of a restored VM on a host that has an earlier version that is incompatible
with the version that was used to create the VM. The fact that this leaves behind an orphaned VM is by design
because this is necessary for administrators to properly troubleshoot an issue with restores in this type of
situation.
Manually delete or unregister the temporary virtual machines that remain in the vCenter or the datastore
inventory.

When an ABV job is canceled, a VDP_VERIFICATION_XXXX VM is left behind on the

destination host
You can work around this issue by looking for and manually removing VDP_VERIFICATION_* virtual
machines left over on the destination host after an ABV job cancellation.

Insufficient space available on datastores for the requested actions

ABV jobs or scheduled jobs fail, sometimes with actual data loss, with error messages in the logs to the effect
that datastore actions could not be completed because of insufficient space.
Free up space on datastores and retry the ABV job that failed. Perform ongoing routine space management on
datastores to prevent running out of space, especially before scheduled jobs affecting datastore space usage.

Troubleshooting the Restore Client (File Level Recovery) Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with the
restore client.

Login failed, cannot locate vm at 10.100.1.10 in vCenter

This error can occur if you are trying to connect to the Restore Client from a host that has not been backed up
by VDP.
Log in to a virtual machine that has been backed up by VDP, and then connect to the Restore Client.

Login failed, cannot locate vm in vCenter

When you log in to the source virtual machine after you perform a file level restore, the login fails with the
following error:
Login failed. Cannot locate vm in vCenter
This error can occur when you restore a VM image to a new virtual machine without a NIC attached. In this
case, the FLR is unable to log in to the source virtual machine for a short period of time after the restore
completes. To work around this issue, wait a few minutes after the restore completes before you log in to the
source virtual machine.

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Restore operation fails with error code 10007

If a restore operation fails with error code 10007, Activity Failed - client error(s) it may be because you
selected a read-only destination (for example, a CD drive) or a removable media device that has no media
loaded (for example, a diskette drive).
Try the restore again using a new destination or ensure your destination device is writable.

During a file level recovery mount, only the last partition is displayed if the VMDK file
contains multiple partitions
The restore client does not support extended volumes. This is expected behavior. Perform an image level
recovery and manually copy the files needed.

During an file level recovery mount, unsupported partitions fail to mount

The following disk formats are not supported by the restore client, and it is expected behavior that the restore
client mount will fail.

Unformatted disk

Extended partitions (Types: 05h, 0Fh, 85h, C5h, D5h)

Dynamic disks (Windows) / multi-drive partitions (any partition that consists of 2 or more virtual disks)

Deduplicated NTFS

Resilient File System (ReFS)

EFI bootloader

Encrypted partitions

Compressed partitions

Perform an image level restore and manually copy the files needed.

Symbolic links are not displayed in the restore client

The restore client does not support browsing symbolic links.

After importing VMs, FLR login fails for VMs backed up before the import
To perform an FLR from the restore points that have been imported from the previously-used VDP disks, take
at least one backup of the VM by using the new VDP.

Nested container limitations

When restoring a VMware container that contains other containers (that is, a nested container structure; for
example vApp-1 contains several virtual machines, and nested inside vApp-1 is a container called vApp-2,
which also contains several virtual machines), the VDP appliance only restores the top-level of the hierarchy.
Two interim solutions exist for this limitation:

Flatten the container structure.

Add both v-Apps (vApp-1 and vApp-2) as separate container entities so that they can be backed up
separately. When restoring, restore vApp-1 first, and then restore vApp-2 into vApp-1.

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Troubleshooting the VDP Licensing Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with
licensing.

License violation events are generated even though Host is licensed

When licensing hosts in a cluster, all hosts in the cluster must be licensed. Otherwise, all hosts will be
considered in violation of the license agreement. Due to the nature of clusters, there is no way to tell which
host a VM belongs to at any given time. Therefore the entire cluster must be covered by valid licenses. It is the
administrators responsibility to assign license keys appropriately.

Evaluation license expires and system is degraded (unusable)

By design, the VDP appliance shuts down integral services whenever license requirements are not met. This
can happen when an evaluation license expires.
Do not use an evaluation appliance for any mission critical data. It is intended only as an opportunity to
experiment with the VDP Advanced appliance, and the appliance should be considered throw-away.
If, however, you have since purchased a permanent (non-evaluation) vSphere Data Protection license key,
there is a mechanism for recovering the appliance. You must perform the following steps between the one hour
intervals at which the system forcibly disables key services.
1

Manually restart all services by using the VDP Configuration Utility.

Access the VDP appliance from the vSphere web client.

a

Navigate to the License Assignment portlet on the Configuration tab.

Add the new permanent license key to the system.

This process upgrades the status of the appliance to permanent and the services should remain operational.
NOTE If you have multiple evaluation appliances that need to be recovered in this manner, you must repeat
the process above on each appliance. You can simply remove and then re-add the permanent license key to
force the update.
Alternatively, you can install the license key once and wait 24 hours for the license audit to run. The license
audit process detects the presence of the permanent license key and upgrades the appliance from its
evaluation license key. You must manually restart the services by using the VDP Configuration Utility.

Troubleshooting the VDP Appliance Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with the VDP
appliance.

The VMware VDP for Exchange Server Clients or the VMware VDP for SQL Server Clients are
no longer registered with the VDP appliance
This problem can occur if the VDP appliance has been renamed, or if the clients were installed and a new
checkpoint was not created, and a rollback occurred. To work around this problem, reinstall all of the VDP SQL
Server and Exchange Server Clients.

If a Backup Job contains more than one SQL Server or Exchange Server and the servers
have identical database paths, if you select a database in one server instance, and not the
other instance with the same path, the second instance with the same path will also be
backed up
To resolve this issue, either include only one Exchange Server or SQL Server per backup job or ensure that all
of your database paths are unique.

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One or more clients cannot be restored; the client is inactive and there are no comparable
clients to which a restore can be made
This problem can occur if a user attempts to invoke the restore wizard without selecting a restore point, or a
restore point exists for an unregistered client. In either case, the restore cannot occur when there is an inactive
client and no comparable target client exists in the environment.

VDP appliance Guest OS (Linux) becomes read only

The Linux guest operating system becomes read-only if all of the following symptoms appear:
1

Fails to contact or check the status of services, as shown in the following message:
root@ldummyxxx:/usr/local/#: dpnctl status
/bin/chown: changing ownership of `/usr/local/avamar/var/log': Read-only file system
dpnctl: ERROR: running as user "root" - problem opening log file "/usr/local/avamar/var/log/dpnctl.log" (-rw-rw-r--) dpnctl: ERROR: traceback on exit:
dpnctl_util: pen_log_file (/usr/local/avamar/bin/dpnctl line YYY)

Unable to log in to the VDP-Configure UI.

Unable to connect to the VDP plug-in from within the vCenter server web client.

The following VMware Knowledgebase article provides more information about file systems that may become
read-only: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/51306
Before you contact Technical Support, restart the appliance. This might fix the problem.

Troubleshooting the VDP Microsoft Exchange Server Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with the
Exchange Server.

Unmounted or offline databases are skipped

If a database is unmounted or offline when a backup is performed, the backup skips that database. Generally,
this is not an issue because databases that are not mounted are not in production.

Backups may fail when drive letters and volumes are mixed
If you configure the Exchange Server to point to the same database files through different paths, such as
volume G:\ and C:\MOUNTPOINT, then backups may fail.
To avoid this backup failure, configure the Exchange Server databases to point to the database files by using
the same path. For example, if you have three databases, DB1, DB2, and DB3, that are at the same location as
either drive G:\ or on C:\mountpoint, then use one, but not both, of the following example paths:

G:\DB1, G:\DB2, G:\DB3

C:\mountpoint\DB1, C:\mountpoint\DB2, C:\mountpoint\DB3

Restore to RDB fails or results in an unusable RDB

VDP uses wait times that Microsoft recommends for RDB stabilization in Exchange Server 2013 before the
restore starts. The restore either fails or results in an unusable RDB if the stabilization exceeds the wait time.
You can increase the wait time to allow more time for the RDB to stabilize.
To increase the RDB stabilization wait time:
1

Use a text editor to create an avexchglr.cmd file in the C:\Program Files\avp\var folder, where
C:\Program Files\avp is the installation folder.

Type the following text in the command file:

--rdb_stabilize_wait=n

where n is the wait time in seconds. The default value is 60 seconds.

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Save and close the file.

Restore requirements are not met

When you restore an Exchange Server database, the destination Exchange Server must have the same
Exchange Server version and service pack as the Exchange Server where the backup was performed.
If the Exchange Server version on the destination and source servers do not match, then the restore fails.

Log files are moved if gaps are detected

During a normal restore, if a transaction log gap is detected, any existing log files are moved to a folder named
logs_TIME_DATE, where TIME and DATE are the time and date of the restore. The folder is created as a
subfolder in the transaction log file path of the Exchange Server 2007 storage group or Exchange Server 2010
database. You can use these logs to analyze the restore operation, if necessary, or apply those logs up to when
the failure occurred.

Exchange Server 2007 databases are mounted after restore

Before starting a restore, VDP dismounts all databases in a storage group, even if the databases are not being
selected for restore. When the restore completes, VDP attempts to mount all existing databases in the storage
group, even if they were not previously mounted. VDP does not attempt to mount databases that do not exist
on disk, even if they exist in Active Directory.

Selective restore of databases from an older backup may fail

If you attempt to restore selected databases from an older backup when newer backups exist, then the restore
may fail. If this occurs, delete the restore.env file created in the log folder path, along with all the log files
in that path, and rerun the restore. Also, check the event logs through the Event Viewer if mounting one or
more databases.

Troubleshooting the VDP Microsoft SQL Server Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with the SQL
Server.

Not all databases are visible on SQL Server 2012

This problem can be fixed by adding the Windows system service account to SQL Server administrator group:
1

In SQL Server Management Studio, expand the Security node and then the login node for the instance.

Right-click the NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM account and select Properties.

The Login Properties dialog box appears.

Select the Server Roles page from the list and select the checkbox next to the sysadmin user.

Click OK.

A database backup will fail if it is currently being restored

Microsoft SQL Server does not support backups if the database is in a restore state.

A SQL Server restore with the tail-log backup option selected fails
This problem can be caused if the last restore was performed after the last full backup. Perform a full backup
on the database before restore.
The restore can also fail if the Tail-log backup restore option is enabled and the database does not exist or is
offline. In this case disable the Tail-log backup option.

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Troubleshooting the VDP Microsoft SharePoint Server Issues

The following troubleshooting topics describe how to identify and resolve some common issues with the
SharePoint Server.

SharePoint redirected restore job status shows success even when some databases fail to
restore
When an IP address is used instead of a server name, backing up part of a SharePoint farm fails when running
a redirected restore, even though the UI indicates success.
Use the server name, not an IP address, when creating an alias for a redirected restore of all or part of a
SharePoint farm.

Troubleshooting the Storage Capacity Issues

Carefully assess your backup storage needs when you evaluate the amount of data to store on the VDP
appliance and the Data Domain system. Include estimates from the data that other servers sent to the VDP
appliance and the Data Domain system. For example, by replication jobs from other VDP appliances, by
sharing the same Data Domain system with other VDP appliances, and so on.
When you deploy a new VDP appliance, the storage quickly fills for the first few weeks because every client
that you back up contains unique data. VDP deduplication is more effective when other similar clients have
been backed up, or the same clients have been backed up at least once.
After the initial backup, the VDP appliance backs up less unique data during subsequent backups. When the
initial backupsthe local backups and the backups from other servers exceed the retention periods, you can
measure the ability of the system to store about as much new data as it frees each day. This process is referred
to as achieving a steady state capacity utilization. The ideal steady state capacity is 80%.

Monitoring the VDP Local Storage Capacity

You must proactively monitor the VDP storage capacity by using the following methods:

Use the vSphere web client.

Viewing Backup Appliance Configuration on page 53 provides information.
You can view the capacity also by performing the steps that Viewing Information from the Reports Tab
on page 106 describes.

Use the VDP Configuration utility.

Viewing the Storage Configuration on page 74 provides information.

Configure and monitor the email notifications and reports.

Configuring the Email Notifications and Reports on page 55 provides information.

Monitoring the Data Domain Storage Capacity

You can monitor the storage capacity of the Data Domain system by using the following methods:

Use the vSphere web client.

Monitoring by Using the vSphere Web Client on page 92 provides information.

Use the VDP configuration utility.

Monitoring by Using the VDP Configuration Utility on page 92 provides information.

Configure and monitor the email notifications and reports.

Configuring the Email Notifications and Reports on page 55 provides information.

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Monitoring the Capacity Issues

Capacity issues start when the storage of either the VDP appliance or the Data Domain system, or both is
nearly full. You can monitor the capacity issues by using the following methods:

The alarms of the capacity issues are triggered on vCenter. You can view the alarms on either the vSphere
client or the vSphere web client.

You can enable the VDP alarm email notifications to receive emails when a VDP alarm is triggered.
Configuring the Email Notifications and Reports on page 55 provides information. A VDP alarm
includes the alarms of the capacity issues too.

Impact of the capacity issues

If the storage capacity of either the VDP appliance or the Data Domain system, or both exceed 80%:

The VDP/Data Domain storage is nearly full. yellow alarm is triggered.

The warning message appears on the alert bar, and in the Storage Summary sections on the vSphere web
client and in the VDP configuration utility.

If the storage capacity of either the VDP appliance or the Data Domain system, or both exceed 95%:

The VDP/Data Domain storage is nearly full. red alarm is triggered.

The error message appears on the alert bar, and in the Storage Summary sections on the vSphere web
client and in the VDP configuration utility.

You cannot perform Backup now jobs and Recover replicated backups on the VDP appliance and the Data
Domain system.

If the storage capacity of either the VDP appliance or the Data Domain system, or both reach 100%:

The VDP/Data Domain storage is full. red alarm is triggered.

The error message appears on the alert bar, and in the Storage Summary sections on the vSphere web
client and in the VDP configuration utility.

The current backups on the VDP appliance and the Data Domain system fail.

You cannot perform new backups on the VDP appliance and the Data Domain system.

Replication of data to the VDP appliance and the Data Domain system fails.

Operations that change information on the Data Domain system fail. The operations include the deletion
of checkpoints, active backups, and expired backups during garbage collection. These operations can fail
because they involve directory renames, which are not allowed on a full Data Domain system.

The VDP appliance is in the Admin state.

General Steps to Free Storage Space

You must perform the following steps to free storage space in advance to avoid reaching the maximum
capacity. If the storage capacity exceeds 80%, perform the following steps:

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Do not add virtual machines as backup clients.

Remove unnecessary restore points.

Delete unwanted jobs.

Reassess retention policies to decrease retention period.

Add VDP appliances and balance the backup jobs among multiple appliances.

If you have not added a Data Domain system to the VDP appliance, add it and balance the backup jobs
between the VDP appliance and the Data Domain system.

Expand the local VDP storage disk. VDP Disk Expansion on page 97 provides information.

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If the Data Domain system reaches its capacity limit, perform the steps that Reclaiming Storage on a Full
Data Domain System on page 93 describes to reclaim space.

Accessing the VDP Knowledge Base Articles

Additional troubleshooting information is available through VDP Knowledge Base Articles, which are located
at.
http://www.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/microsite.do
Select Products > VMware vSphere Data Protection Category > Troubleshooting

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Index

A
Adobe Flash Player 22
alarms, viewing 59
appliance
rolling back 41
automatic backup verification
best practices 124
described 124
troubleshooting 204
automatic backup verification. See also backup
verification jobs

B
backup and recovery
using changed block tracking 14
using datastore 14
using file level recovery 14, 152
using Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) 14
using VMware vStorage APIs for Data
Protection (VADP) 14
backup job
full image 114
individual disks 114
migrating from VDP to Avamar 119
on individual disks 115
backup schedule 141
backup verification job
cloning 127
deleting 128
disabling 128
editing 127
monitoring 128
running 127
backup verification jobs
creating 125, 128
limitations 124
backup window, editing 55
backups
filtering 155
increasing number that run 63
mounting 155
reducing number of concurrent backups 63
verifying 128
best practices
automatic backup verification 124
backups 63

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Data Domain 79
deploying proxies 62
emergency restore 42
general 26
HotAdd 27, 62, 64
proxies 64
replication 140, 145
storage capacity for initial VDP deployment 27
supported disk types 22, 116
VDP Appliance deployment 26

C
capacity
insufficient for backups 199
monitoring 28
requirements 22
steady state 27
utilization 74
VDP, initial deployment 27
Certificate Authority (CA) 49
Changed Block Tracking (CBT) 14, 16, 26
collecting logs 38
compatibility matrix
replication recovery 147
replication source 138
concurrent backups 63
configuring Data Domain storage 78
CPU load 67
customer experience improvement program 17, 52

D
Data Domain
adding a system to VDP configuration 83
architecture overview 78
backups with VDP 87
best practices 79
capacity monitoring 91
changing the max streams value 82
client support with VDP integration 78
common problems and solutions 94
configuration 78
deleting from VDP appliance 85
limitations in VDP environment 79
monitoring from the VDP Appliance 91
port usage requirements for VDP
communication 81

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Index

pre-integration requirements 80
preparing the system for VDP integration 82
reclaiming storage on a full system 93
selecting a target for backups 88
server maintenance activity monitoring 89
data protection
using changed block tracking (CBT) 14
using datastore 14
using File Level Recovery (FLR) 14, 152
using Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) 14
using VMware vStorage APIs for Data
Protection (VADP) 14
deduplication, benefits of 15
direct to host restore 42
disk expansion
growing and adding disks 99
limitation 100
requirements 98
with Essentials Plus 101
disk usage 67
disks, types supported by VDP 22, 116
Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) 66
distributed vSwitch (dvSwitch) troubleshooting 201
DNS configuration
setting up 23
verifying 23

email reports 53, 55

emergency restore
automatic host detection 44
best practices 42
limitations 42
performing 42
troubleshooting restore points 202
unsupported features 42
Essential Plus license 98
ESXi compatibility with vSphere Flash Read
Cache 22
event console, viewing 60

job details tab 108

F
File Level Recovery (FLR)
benefits 17
limitations 65, 152
overview 14, 152
requirement 62
support 64
unsupported VMDK configurations 153
filtering backups 155
fixed-length data segment 15

granular level restore (GLR)

log files 181
Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers 182
Microsoft Exchange 2010 or 2013 servers 182
troubleshooting 181

H
hardware versions
migrating 22
upgrading 22
HotAdd 22, 27, 62, 64, 66, 152

I
image-level backups 16
individual disk backups
procedure 116
supported disk types 116
individual disks
creating a backup job 16, 115
impact when migrating 117
installation requirements 22
installing vSphere Data Protection (VDP)
software requirements 22
integrity checks, running 57
internal proxy, disabling 66

K
knowledge base, accessing articles 211

L
license audit 206
license key
permanent 206
requirement 15
licensing
Essential Plus 98
troubleshooting evaluation license
expiration 206
log bundle, file name of 38, 198
log collection 38
Logical Volume Manager (LVM) 62, 152
logs
bundle 38, 198
collection 38
proxy 67
viewing 57

M
man-in-the-middle attacks 49

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Index

master boot record 152

memory usage 67
Microsoft Exchange
backing up applications 176
creating backup jobs 175
increasing RDB wait time 207
installing clients when UAC is enabled 160
installing the client 171
manually configuring the backup service 175
restoring backups 177
server options 170
using the configuration tool 174
Microsoft SharePoint
backing up and restoring servers 182
creating backup jobs 184
restoring backups 185
Microsoft SQL
backing up and restoring 161
backing up applications 166
creating backup jobs 166
installing the client 162
restoring backups 168
server options 161
server support 161
monitoring
backup verification jobs 128
capacity 28
Data Domain capacity 91
Data Domain from VDP Appliance 91
Data Domain maintenance activity 89
VDP activity 58
mount limitations 155
mounting backups 155
multi-tenancy, support for 149

N
network address translation (NAT) 152
network block device (NBD) 22, 27, 64
network settings, configuring 40
node structure, replication 146
NTFS 153, 182, 205

O
OVF template file 30
OVF template file, deploying 29

P
performance analysis
running 101
test results 101
platform product support 16
port 29000 148
provision type 70

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proxies
adding 65
best practices 64
deploying 62
external support 64
health status 67
internal, disabling 66
managing 63
proxy logs 67

R
replication
back to source 146
best practices 140, 145
cloning a job 145
creating a job 141
Data Domain as backup target 140
deleting a job 146
destinations 147
editing a job 145
enabling or disabling a job 146
limitations 141
managing destinations 145
node structure 146
recovery 148
running existing jobs immediately 146
scheduling and managing jobs 17, 138
selecting backups to replicate 142
viewing job status and details 146
Replication Target Identity (RTI) 138, 147
reports tab
viewing Data Domain status 84
viewing information 106
restore
to read-only media 205
to removable media 205
restore points, refreshing 44
Restores to New
disabling the vMotion feature before
running 134
restoring backups
direct to host 42
manually 131, 133, 134
to new location 132, 133, 135
to original location 132, 133, 135
to SCSI disk ID 132, 133, 135
when snapshots are present 131
retention policy 115, 141
rolling back an appliance 41

S
security
Certificate Authority (CA) 49

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login attempts 52
man-in-the-middle attacks 49
SSL certificates 49
services
backup scheduler 36
core services 36
file level restore services 36
file system services 36
maintenance services 36
management services 36
starting and stopping 37
status of 37
show completed activities 157
shutting down VDP Appliance 60
software requirements 22
SSL certificates 49
SSO admin user 25
starting VDP Appliance 60
steady state capacity 27
storage
attaching existing VDP disks 72
creating 70
detaching 73
import existing 70
summary 54
viewing summary 74
storage summary, viewing 100
supported disk types 22, 116
SVMotion
used for live migration of vmdk files 117

T
task failure tab 107
tasks, viewing 58
technical support resources 12
time synchronization errors 24
troubleshooting
after an unexpected shutdown, recent backups
are lost 199
associated backup sources may be lost 199
automatic backup verification (ABV) 204
backup fails if VM is enabled with VMware fault
tolerance 199
backup fails if vSphere Data Protection does not
have sufficient datastore capacity 199
backups are slow to load 201
backups fail if certain characters are used 200
file level recovery 204, 205
granular level restores 181
guest OS (Linux) becomes read-only 207
items could not be located 199
license violation events 206
loading backup job data 199

216

Microsoft Exchange RDB wait time 207

name conflicts when restoring a disk to an
existing VM 202
powering on virtual machine fails when
connected to distributed vSwitch 201
replication job failure errors 203
replication jobs 203
restore operation fails 205
unable to add client 199
VDP Appliance is not responding 198
VDP Exchange backups 207
VDP SQL backups 208
VDP SQL restores 208
VMDK backup job silently fails when single
vmdk is migrated to a different
datastore 199
vSphere Data Protection Exchange
restores 208
vSphere Data Protection integrity check 203

U
upgrading
hardware versions 22

V
variable-length data segment 15
vCenter
user account permissions 193
vCenter Server
changing hostname, password, and so forth 40
supported versions 29
switching VDP Appliances 106
version requirements 22
vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 16
VDP Configure Utility 36
VDP disks
attaching 72
VDP licensing, troubleshooting 206
VDP, types of disks not supported 22, 116
viewing
alarms 59
event console 60
storage summary 74, 100
tasks 58
Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) 14
Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) 23
VMFS heap size 98
vMotion
disabling the feature before running Restores to
New 134
VMware Tools 24, 125
VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection
(VADP) 14
vSphere Data Protection (VDP)
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Index

accessing from command line 104

accessing knowledge base articles 211
accessing with vSphere Web Client 104
changing a configuration 40
collecting logs 38
installation 30
monitoring activity 58
sizing 22
software requirements 22
starting and stopping services 37
storage capacity 27
supported configurations 23
user interface 106
viewing status of services 36
vSphere Data Protection (VDP) Appliance
best practices when deploying 26
corruption 73
description of 14
rolling back an appliance 41
shutdown 60
startup 60
switching from vCenter Server 106
vSphere Flash Read Cache and ESXi
compatibility 22
vSphere HA 70
vSphere host, supported versions 22
vSphere Web Client 105
Adobe Flash Player requirement 22
supported web browser 22

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