dataline November 30, 2016 at 10:54

VMware Cloud Resource Remote Backup via Self-Service Portal

Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 was released on November 16th. After the release, new opportunities appeared not only for users, but also for service providers. The main news for us is a self-service portal for backing up virtual infrastructure based on VMware vCloud Director.

We have already deployed the portal, and it is available to everyone who rents resources in the CloudLine cloud , uses our backup and is licensed by Veeam Enterprise Plus. Now, to put a virtual machine on the backup, change the backup schedule or restore the necessary virtual machine, it is not necessary to contact the DataLine technical support service.
Below we’ll show you how to do it all yourself using the Self-Service Backup Portal.

Creating a backup job
Restoring a virtual machine
Restoring individual files of a virtual machine

On the main page of the Dashboard , statistics on objects, backup operations and available disk space for backups are graphically presented. Jobs tab creates and manages tasks, in VMs - restoration of virtual machines, in Files - restoration of individual files.

For authorization on the self-service portal, the same account is used as for logging into vCloud Director.

Creating a backup job

Go to the Jobs tab and click Create.
Set the name, description, and retention policy (number of recovery points). Click Next.
Add the virtual machines you want to back up. Click Add.
Select one or more virtual machines in your organization. We recommend adding no more than 10 VMs to the task with a total volume of not more than 1 TB. In this case, the task execution time will be optimal.

If you need to add a lot of virtual machines at the same time, you can choose vApp or the entire organization. If in the future some machine will need to be removed from the backup, just add it to the Exclusions. You can also set priority (Up, Down) for each backup object: objects at the top of the list will be processed first.
For Windows virtual machines, you can activate the consistent backup option for the application and system software installed on the virtual machine (Enable application-aware image-processing).

Activate the Enable guest file system indexing option if you want to get advanced file search capabilities in a virtual machine. If this option is disabled, then only the search in the selected backup will be available to you.

Enter the credentials (Guest OS credentials) to activate these features. Click Next.
Set up a schedule for automatic backups. Click Next.
Configure a backup status notification if necessary. Click Finish.
The new task appears in the list.
On the control panel, any task can be:
- start manually - Start;
- restart - Retry;
- edit - Edit;
- make a full backup for this task - Active Full;
- disable / enable - Disable / Enable;
- delete with all available backups or without them - Delete;
- export to Excel - Export.

Restore virtual machine from backup

Important: when recovering through the self-service portal, the virtual machine will be overwritten. To restore nearby, in vCloud change the name of the VM. In this case, do not forget to reflect the changes in the Veeam task, if you have configured tasks for this VM.

Go to the VMs section and select the desired virtual machine. Click Restore VM if you want to restore as a separate virtual machine. If you want to restore the vApp to which the selected VM belongs, select Restore vApp. Consider a recovery scenario for a separate virtual machine.
Select a recovery point.

If necessary, activate the option to automatically start the VM after restoring (Power on VM after restoring).

When Quick rollback (restore changed blocks only) is activated, all changes from the moment of the selected restore point will be rolled back. Click Restore.
Before starting recovery, a warning appears that the backup will be deployed over a running machine. A running machine will be turned off and removed.
Recovery status will be displayed on the same tab.

Recovery of individual files

Go to the Files section. Select the virtual machine where the file is located.
Select a recovery point.
Click on Mount backup.
Find the desired directory and file. The file can be restored to the original server or downloaded locally.
If you need to restore several files from different directories, then add the necessary files to the recovery list (Add to restore list). All files will be displayed in the Pending Restore tab, where they can also be restored or downloaded.