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Client(vm) to configure its own backup

manan1
Level 2

Hi

I am fairly new to NetackUp. We are working on SDDC with VMWare 6.0 and netbackup 7.7  One of the possibility I would like to explore is how much of back up can be configured on client side?

Can Client (a VM) manages its own back up?

Can client regiester for back and choose what to back up and when?

Are there any API exposed by netbackup utility?

Thanks in advance.

Manan

5 REPLIES 5

sclind
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

We use VMWare Intelligent Policies and I thinjk the what/when logic could be placed in a policy.

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

@manan1

I'm battling to understand the reason for your questions.

Can Client (a VM) manages its own back up?

Not really. 
Unless you want to install NBU client software and configure User-directed backups.
Read up in NBU Admin Guide about User type schedules.

Can client regiester for back and choose what to back up and when?

Same answer as Q1. 
User-backup is a manual operation. 
The schedule in the backup policy determines the window during which user backups will be allowed.
To automate this backup, you will need a scheduler on the client to initiate the user backup, e.g. Task scheduler on Windows client or cron on Linux client.

Are there any API exposed by netbackup utility?

For VMware type backups, NBU uses VMware vStorage APIs.
Extract from NBU for VMware Admin Guide:

NetBackup for VMware provides backup and restore of the VMware virtual machines
that run on VMware ESX servers. NetBackup for VMware takes advantage of
VMware vStorage APIs for data protection. The backup process is off-loaded from
the ESX server to a VMware backup host.
NetBackup for VMware does the following:
■ Performs off-host backup of virtual machines (NetBackup client software is not
required on the virtual machine). Off-host backup reduces the backup processing
load on the VMware host.
Increases the backup speed as compared to standard file-order backup methods,
if the virtual machine is heavily populated with small files.
■ Automatically creates quiesced snapshots using VSS (Windows only). Creates
the quiesced snapshots on Linux if the SYMCquiesce utility is installed.
■ Uses snapshot technology to keep virtual machines 100% available to users.
■ Supports VMware vSphere and vCloud Director.
■ Performs full backups and incremental backups, including block-level
incrementals.
■ Backs up the full virtual machine.
■ Backs up the virtual machines even when they are turned off.
■ Can restore selected files from the backup.

Link to NBU 7.7 manuals (NBU 7.6 ran out of support more than 6 months ago):

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000094423

 

Thanks @sclind I will explore Intelligent Policies.

Thanks @Marianne for explanation.

I think I may have presented my question in slightly incorrect way. Let me give you bigger picture.

We are planning to build a new SDDC using VmWare 6.0. We will be using NetBackup 7.7.3 (upgrade to 8.x at some point).

The main goal is automate as many things as possible that includes use of NetBackup. And we use puppet to build the platform  but there are no module vailable in puppet to managed netbackup. We have both Linux and Windows servers. We will have 1000+ servers.

The question is if we spin up a new VM how we can start using NetBackup programatically?

We may have different requirements to backup as application varies. That's why I thought If we can control that from client, gives us more control to automate.

What should be the best practise in this case?

Shall I defined backup policy on the master server in advance and then at the time of VM creation just add that vm in to that policy?

Is user-directed backups resource heavy?

Thanks

Manan

Mike_Gavrilov
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Manan, you can create VMWare policies that backup VM using query (VMware Intelligent Policy (VIP) ) and select tags (i.e. different policies use different tags). Then you create a VM you can add tag and the VM will be backued up atomatically based on the tag

Thanks @Mike_Gavrilov @sclind @Marianne

I think (VMware Intelligent Policy (VIP) is the only way for us to go forward with our requirement.

It would have be nice if there is any integration in NetbackUP and config managment (like puppet, chef) is available.

Thanks again all.