“The purpose of this letter is to inform you of our vSphere backup product strategy, ongoing enhancements, and end of availability plans for VMware Consolidated Backup.

VMware Backup Product Strategy
VMware released vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) with the vSphere 4.0 release in May, 2009. VADP is the next generation of VMware’s backup framework. We have also been working with several backup partners to integrate VADP into their solutions to make backup of vSphere Virtual Machines fast, efficient and easy to deploy compared to VCB and other backup solutions. Several of our major backup partners have already released VADP integrated backup products and we expect most of the major backup partners to have VADP integrated backup software by the upcoming feature release of the vSphere platform in 2010.

Future Product Licensing
Given the strong interest and adoption of VADP by our backup eco-system and the benefits offered by VADP compared to VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), we are announcing the End of Availability for VCB starting with next vSphere feature release in 2010. Starting with the next vSphere platform feature release, VCB will be removed from vSphere platform. VADP integrated backup products (including VMware Data Recovery) will be the recommended option for efficient backup and restoration of vSphere Virtual Machines. This will allow us to focus new value added feature development on VADP instead of two backup frameworks (VCB and VADP).”

[omited]

I’ll go out on a limb and say that most of the VMware community will

help VCB “pack it’s bags” as quick as possible, but does that mean VMware’s vDR will be VCB’s replacement? If so VMware is going to have to expand the scalability of vDR’s current combination of virtual appliance and vSphere Client plugin, in my opinion.

The email doesn’t provide any hints about the future of vDR, but here are some thing to think about if you are considering vDR as VCB’s replacement:

(The following has been taken from http—www.vmware.com-pdf-vdr_11_admin.pdf)

• Virtual machines to be backed up and the backup appliance must both be running on ESX 4 or later or ESX 4i or later. Do not use Data Recovery with vCenter Servers running in linked mode.
• Recovery does not support:
• vCenter Server in Linked Mode.
• Pv6 addresses. IPv4 addresses are required for the Data Recovery appliance.
• NFS is only supported if the share is presented by an ESX Server and the VMDK is assigned to the Data Recovery appliance.
• Hot adding disks with versions of vSphere that are not licensed for hot add
• Restoring linked clones. Data Recover can backup linked clones, they are restored as unlinked clones.
• Backing up virtual machines that are protected by VMware Fault Tolerance.
• Backing up virtual machines that use VMware Workstation disk format.
• Backing up virtual machines with 3rd party multi-pathing enabled.
• Raw device mapped (RDM) disks in physical compatibility mode.
• Data Recovery has been tested for use with:
• One backup appliance for each vCenter instance.
• Each backup appliance protecting up to 100 virtual machines.
• VMDK or CIFS based deduplication stores of up to 1TB.
• Up to two deduplication stores per backup appliance.

In the immediate future it appears that third party VADP based products may be the best replacement for VCB, but I’ll be watching for future changes to VMware’s VDR as well.

This post provides some basic information on 2 free VCB tools – VCB Wrangler and vbcMC

VCB Wrangler

Robert Patton has started a new blog at virtualfoundry.blogspot.com, and one of his first posts is on his vbscript wrapper he created when his backup vendor did not integrate with VCB. Robert describes environments that could and could not use VCB Wrangler and gives an overview of it’s features in his post.

“Good environments for VCB Wrangler:

• VMs with smallish system partitions (60 GB or less)
• VMs on local SCSI, iSCSI or Fibre Channel SANs
• VMs with large data partitions are using virtual storage adapters (virtual NICS homed in the iSCSI network) or RDM to directly access SAN storage
• Backup software is handling incremental backups of large user data stores

[omitted]

Features:

+ Easy configuration using an XML file

+ Simple per-VM scheduling from one configuration file

+ Direct from SAN and over the network backup modes supported

+ Runs in scheduled task batch mode or interactive single backup mode from the same VBScript

+ Sends an email with details on each virtual machine backed up

+ Able to use passthrough authentication eliminating the need to store any passwords in files

+ Safely renames existing VCB images during backups and restores them if a backup operation fails, ensuring good images remain on disk

+ Written in VBScript and does not require anything be installed on the VCB proxy server

+ Freely customizable to meet the needs of any environment

If it sounds interesting, check out the VCB Wrangler SourceForge site, http://sourceforge.net/projects/vcb-wrangler/”

vcb Management Console 1.0.6 Beta

As a GUI front end installed on the VCB Proxy Server, the vcb Management Console (vcbMC) takes the scripting out of the VCB scripts.

As the tool’s creator, athlon_crazy, describes on his VMTN Communities blog:

“vcbMC is just a frontend for vmware consolidated backup tool and windows AT command. Meaning, I can backup all virtual machines with vcbMC manually, browse vm’s by name, register new vm’s and finally do weekly backup automatically. I don’t need to remember all the vcb commands such as vcbVmName.exe, vcbMounter.exe and all necessary parameters during the backup since vcbMC will do it for me.”

Athlon_crazy also provides some descriptions of the tools features:

A. BROWSE VIRTUAL MACHINE
This feature will let you to login into your ESX hosts, browse virtual machine and stored the list into
“vm.txt” for viewing purposes.

B. MANUAL BACKUP
This feature will let you to manually backup any virtual machine by using “source=name” only.

C. REGISTER VIRTUAL MACHINE
Before you can schedule any backup job, you need to register the virtual machine and generate the .bat files.

D. SCHEDULE VIRTUAL MACHINE
Once you registered the virtual machine, you can select the virtual machine .bat files and schedule it for
backup at any specific time given.

I personally have not tried either tool yet, but follow the links, download the tools, and try for yourself. I’m curious to know how well they work, so comments on this post to that effect will help us all.

If you did not know already, Bitpipe provides access to great virtualization industry articles and whitepapers on as well as many other technologies. I subscribe and get an email notification from Bitpipe full of great research links daily.

Here is more about the E-Guide from the download page:

ABSTRACT: Many organizations are reaping the benefits of virtual machine backup. However, in order to do so, it’s important to be aware of the key considerations and features available for virtual machine backup. This E-Guide illuminates critical aspects of virtual machine backup and explains how to avoid problems when backing up virtual machines.The three main topics discussed in this guide will be: Five things backup administrators should know about VMware Consolidated Backup Avoiding VMware virtual machine backup pitfalls Resources from esXpress(PHD Technologies Inc.) sponsored by PHD Virtual Technologies Inc.

vmware, vcb, techtarget, searchdatabackup, dr, backup

The following image is the ESX Server and VirtualCenter Compatibility table from the .pdf linked above. Note that VC 2.5 is backwards compatible with earlier ESX versions, but ESX 3.5 is only compatible with VC 2.5. Also note that VMware Server is still compatible only with VC 1.4. I believe I remember hearing something about future versions of VC will be able to manage both ESX and VMware Server hosts, but I could be wrong. Maybe with the new VMware Server 2.0?

Click on the image for a larger version.

The .pdf also reveals that there are several other new features of VCB that were previously restrictions of the older versions.

“Version 3.5 of VMware Infrastructure introduces new features that make VMware Consolidated Backup more flexible, robust, and user-friendly. Consolidated Backup now supports more types of storage, including iSCSI SAN and NAS. In addition, the new version of Consolidated Backup can back up virtual machines stored on VMFS-based local storage on the ESX Server host.”

In a virtual infrastructure where VMs are running on local ESX, iSCSI or NAS storage VCB can be configured on a virtual machine because these newly supported data stores are accessible to the VM. iSCSI initiators can be installed in the VM’s operating system, NAS is reachable over the network, and a VM can see the local storage of the host it is running on.

“You can use a proxy server running in a virtual machine to backup virtual machines stored on iSCSI SAN, NAS, or local storage, provided the virtual machine has access to the storage device. You cannot use a proxy server running in a virtual machine to protect virtual machines stored on a Fibre Channel SAN. When your proxy server is running in a virtual machine, you can store your backups on secondary NAS storage or on iSCSI storage. You can also store backups on the proxy server’s VMDK or RDM storage. It is not currently possible to connect a tape drive to the virtual machine.”

The .pdf also points out some other usability enhancements that are worth noting:

“VMware Infrastructure 3 version 3.5 brings many other improvements to Consolidated Back, providing better usability and broadening the range of supported configurations. Some of the changes are:

• Optional prompt for passwords if you want to perform interactive backup jobs.
• Support for custom scripts Consolidated Backup can run if a backup fails. This allows cleanup and better notifications in case of backup job failure.
• Graceful exit when a backup job is interrupted. Consolidated Backup now cleans up the snapshots and temporary files on the proxy when you interrupt the backup process.
• Support for installing the Consolidated Backup proxy and VirtualCenter Management Server on the same host.
• Support for storage array WWNs, so device mapping need not be exactly the same on ESX Server hosts and the backup proxy.”

Installing the VCB proxy and the VC Management server on the same host makes me a little uncomfortable. I need some strong convincing before I recommend doing that, but the fact that VMware will support it is interesting. It’s not clear to me if the supported config is for a single physical host, or if the intent is with both VCB and VC running as a VMs on an ESX host. Like installing VC in a VM by itself, there could be some performance issues if a design with both VCB and VC on the same host was not properly thought through.

I wonder what the vRanger and esXpress product teams think about the new LAN-based backup features of VCB?

It turns out that the VM’s virtual disks were Independent. The VM was originally created on a ESX 2.X host a couple of years ago. I had helped the customer migrate to VI3 last year. Apparently the migrated and upgraded virtual hardware maintained the older disk settings. Once we powered down the VM and unchecked the Independent feature VCB backed up the .vmdk files. Unfortunately there are more than 50 VMs this customer will have to schedule shutdowns for in order to uncheck the Independent disk setting.

Independent virtual disks do not allow snapshots. Snapshots are required in order to use VCB. VCB works by creating a snapshot, which freezes the VM temporarily and then sends future disk activity to a “disk buffer”. The original .vmdks are then static and can be copied to the “holding tank”. Once VCB has finished copying the .vmdks the “disk buffer” is committed to the original disk and then the VM is “thawed” backed to normal. VMs created on ESX 3.x hosts do not have the Independent disk option enabled by default.

In the latest version of VC, VC2.5, the vcbuser role and permissions are predefined and called “VMware Consolidated Backup User”. The steps in this post are intended only for VC2.02 and earlier.

To create the vcbuser do the following:

On the VC2 server create a local windows account named vcbuser.

You do NOT need to add it to the local admins group.

Create a VCBUser role in VC2

1. Log on to the VI Client as a user with Administrator privileges.
2. From the VI Client, click Administration in the navigation bar.
3. Click the Roles tab.
4. Click Add Role.
5. For th ename of th enew role type VCBUser.
6. Select the following privileges for the new role. Click the plus (+) signs to expand the lists, as needed.

• ? VirtualMachine > Configuration > Disk Lease
• ? VirtualMachine > State > Create Snapshot
• ? VirtualMachine > State > Remove Snapshot
• ? VirtualMachine > Provisioning > Allow Virtual Machine Download
• ? Virtual Machine > Provisioning > Allow Read?only Disk Access

Click OK to complete the process.

Associate the Windows local vcbuser user with this role

1. Using the VI client select the Datastore where you want to assign the vcbuser permissions
2. Click the Permissions tab
3. Add the local Windows vcbuser account and assign the new VCBuser role to it

Potential issue if permissions not assigned at the datacenter level http://communities.vmware.com/thread/104829

Straight from VMware’s VCB Best Practices .pdf, here’s some additional VCB recommendations:

You should also lock down the backup proxy server itself, following these guidelines:

• Create a new VCB user with minimal privileges. Assign the VMware Consolidated Backup role in VirtualCenter to this user. Consider disabling such services as remote control and terminal services profile for this account for added security. Specify this user’s credentials in config.js to initiate backups from your backup software.

• Use local authentication — The backup proxy server should not use any form of network authentication when using credentials to initiate the backup. This guideline protects against the possibility that other users might log in to the machine, a possibility that is greater if any network authentication is used.

• Restrict access to the proxy server —You should not use the backup proxy server as a general purpose server. The person who uses the vcbuser role on the VirtualCenter Server host should be the same person as the administrator of the backup proxy server. If these are separate people, the administrator on the backup proxy server can easily get access to the password for the vcbuser role.

• If you have multiple backup proxy server hosts, use different vcbuser accounts with different passwords for each host.

• Rotate the vcbuser account’s password regularly.