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This post explains functionality of Veeam Backup and Replication (BaR) that you are not going to see in the User Guide. I was browsing the Veeam Forums and came across this thread – Backing up Veeam / vCentre Physical Machine which inspired me to write this post. The thread is actually about having an with an issue using with the scheduled backup of a physical vCenter server, which also happens to be running Veeam Backup and Replication, using another product.

I’ll get right to it. You can make a backup copy of physical SQL databases with Veeam BaR. Both vCenter and Veeam BaR have a SQL backend. You can’t schedule this as a job, but there are several scenarios where you could take advantage of a quick and easy, one time, manual backup  – before an upgrade or patch, for example.

Although I work for Veeam, this is not necessarily an intended or fully supported usage of the product. This is an easy alternative for the VMware admin to CYA , however.

I’ll start with a brief introduction on how the SQL U-AIR wizard is supposed to work, and then I will explain how you can use an admin switch to make a backup copy of SQL database whether on a VM or a physical server. VMware vCenter and Veeam BaR/Monitor/Reporter all have SQL back ends. 

The U-AIR Up There

To do this you can use the SQL U-AIR wizard. U-AIR stands for Universal Application Item Recovery, and there are 4 stand alone .exes for the various U-AIR wizards of Veeam BaR – AD, Exchange, SQL, and Universal. All of these wizards can be installed on the Veeam BaR server or on any Windows system that can communicate with Veeam. They could be installed on an admins desktop or the SQL, Exchange, or Domain Controller servers too.

Normally, the purpose of the U-AIR wizard is to request and kick off a workflow for a Veeam vPower Virtual Lab. Once the request is approved and managed by the VMware/Veeam administrator and the “Lab Manager–like” virtual lab is ready with the fenced off, running backup copy of the VM(s), the U-AIR wizards allow for the restore from the backup copy VM to the original production VM. For SQL VMs in particular, the restore options are shown in the following screen shot:

Watch this 4 minute video to see the normal SQL restore functionality of the wizard. This video skips the workflow request, skips the wait for approval and virtual lab start up, and just shows what is possible from a backup copy of a SQL VM. I also want to mention that this is an agentless solution. You do not need to install and manage agents anywhere with Veeam BaR.

Trick The System for Physical SQL backups

You can skip the workflow process of starting and using the vPower Virtual Lab if you use an undocumented (as far as I know) Admin Switch for the U-AIR wizards. I’ll focus on the SQL U-AIR wizard for the rest of this post, but it is the same for the Exchange and AD wizards as well.

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I’ve had the luxury of staying away from the math of the new vSphere 5 licensing. Honestly, I haven’t read the new guide, and I’ve only skimmed through posts that explore the pros and cons of different upgrade costs and future growth impact scenarios from virtualization admins, consultants, and architects of  various size VMware virtual infrastructures. My opinion to date – VMware’s goal is to be a total Cloud solution, and this change in licensing reflects and fosters that plan. If you are able to correctly size you infrastructure, or if you can oversubscribe it so that you can offset the costs, then the hypervisor with the most features, the best performance, and the best partner ecosystem (in terms of available third party products leveraging vSphere APIs) is still a no-brainer. That would be vSphere 5.

Storm Clouds

I’ve also read the virtualization pundits’ predictions year after year. They usually go something like “this year is the year of VDI”, “sixty something percent of all servers can still be virtualized”, and “VMware’s market share will shrink to the advances of Microsoft and Citrix”. Is the record skipping? (does anyone know what a skipping record is anymore?). Personally, I’ve always felt a balanced market of hypervisor vendors would be the most likely prophecy for the datacenter, but VMware has always managed to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. Feature-wise, they continue to do so. But, the recent announcement of licensing changes may have changed things.

Whether right, wrong, misunderstood, reluctant to change, or just emotional, many VMware shops initially viewed the new licensing announcement like dark, thunder clouds approaching. Some reactions were as hot as a flash of lightning. Virtual warning sirens sounded across the community, but after a few days and some damage control from VMware, eventually calmer heads prevailed. But, like in the aftermath of any large storm, people began to build for the future. More so than ever before, public discussion of future plans seem to include a new possibility of alternative vendor virtual datacenters.

An Opening In The Clouds

My hunch is that current VMware shops will  Read the rest of this entry »

Like everyone else, I have been reviewing the Release Notes for the latest Update 1 release of vSphere 4.1, but I decided to point out specific fixes that will make full image VM backups better for everyone. Note that I work for Veeam Software, but the fixes I am referring to are all VMware resolved issues that surface from time to no matter what backup solution you use. There are numerous other fixes and impovements in the U1 release, but, since most of my world is backup these days, these particular items “popped out” at me.

For a great overview of the entire U1 release check out Rick Vanover’s post vSphere 4.1 update 1 released from his Rickatron Blog and via his Servers and Storage Column/Blog at TechRepublic.

The rest of this post contains cut and pastes from the Release Notes and some commentary about them from me. I want to stress again that these are issues that have now been fixed!

Finally, I’ll point out the one huge VM backup issue (that I can think of right now) that still does not appear to be resolved.

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http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010718 explains the normal way for disabling and removing a VMware ESX/ESXi vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS or DVS or VDS – LOL), but when I recently tried to do so I received the following error:

“The resource ’1′ is in use. DVS [vDS Name] port 1 is reserved by to entity <not-found.> vnic 4000, type:vmVnic”

The screen shot shows the actual error I received.

After thinking about that message, I decided to check to see if any ports were in fact being used on the vDS. Although PortID 1 dvPortGroups did not show it being used as expected, other PortIDs were, in fact, in use. See image below.

I tried messing around with disabling the ports (blocking was the terminology in the vSphere Client, I believe) but I still could not delete the vDS. It was Saturday and I had family stuff to do so I reluctantly gave up at the time. However, 3 days later I was able to easily remove it via the Remove link on vDS Configuration screen just like I was supposed to be able to do all along. Needless to say I was a bit perplexed.

After researching I discovered that

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If you are looking at various options to automate virtual machine (VM) ip address reconfiguration when failing over virtual machines to a disaster recovery (DR) site, this post explains an option so simple it is beautiful. To give full credit, the Vizioncore vReplicator 2.5 Best Practices document enlightened me to the strategy of using a local only VMware vSwitch and an extra virtual NIC (vNIC) in each VM. It’s been a long time since I had a “ton of bricks” moment, but this concept crashed down on me with the realization of a configuration that works in any version of ESX, doesn’t require extra software or hardware, and better yet, doesn’t have to be scripted! Just configure some extra virtual networking and forget about it!

Here is a general outline for automating the DR ip addressing with this method:

At the Primary Site

• For these instructions assume the production vSwitch at the primary site has a Portgroup named VM Network
• Build a new vSwitch and do not attach any physical NICs (local only isolated switch). Create a Portgroup named DR Network
• For each VM you need to fail over to a DR site, add an extra vNIC and attach it to the DR Network Portgroup

At the DR Site

• Create your DR site production vSwitch, attach physical NICs and add a Portgroup named DR Network.
• Create another vSwitch and do not attach any physical NICs (local only isolated switch). Create a Portgroup named VM Network

All you have to do for this to work is

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How to increase the number of simultaneous VMotions of guests allowed between VMware ESX hosts has been covered many times already. In fact, check out the following blog posts on this topic for extra information and insight not provided here.

• Increase Simultaneous VMotions as well as Increase Performance
• Guest blog entry: VMotion performance » broche.net – VMware …
• VMware Communities: ESX Tips: Increase number of VMotions per host
• Increase number of VMotions per host

One possible scenario for changing this setting would be to temporarily increase VMotions allowed in order to evacuate ESX hosts within a short maintenance window. I prefer to leave the setting at the default, so for this scenario be sure to change it back after the maintenance is complete. if you read the links provided above, others suggest they have changed the settings permanently.

This rest of this post contains a cut and paste of the steps necessary to make the configuration change with a brief explanation about setting the appropriate value. I am pasting from a VMware Partner PDF communication assembled by Michael White, VMware engineer.

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vCenter Client Shortcuts by Bouke Groenescheij is post worth book marking by VMware admins who want to speed up their administration and management of vSphere. Check out the entire post for many, many more shortcuts than those listed here, but I am high-lighting some of the key navigational shortcuts for my own reference later (and making sure I have a backup link to Groenescheij’s post!).

The following screen shots show the Ctrl+Shift keystroke combinations to move between the most common VI Client management views:

Other Ctrl+Shift Navigational shortcuts Read the rest of this entry »