How to confine Mediaservers to backup certain VMs in Multi-POD DC

[alpha_it]

Hi there,

I have situation for backing-up complex Virtualization Infra. It would be appreciated if anyone could help me.

We have Multi-POD DC, Each POD has its own Virtualization infra such as vCenter, ESXi Servers, ... .
In each POD we have some Virtual Media Servers to backup from VMs. and backing up VMs  via media servers resides in other PODs is NOT an acceptable solution. So, how can we confine Media servers to backup from its own POD VMs only?
Is it possible to define set of Media Servers or MediaServerGroup to backup from certain virtual machine in VMware Policy type?
In VMware Policy type, through VMware tab we can select ONLY ONE Media server and this brings Single Point of Failure(SPoF), if that media server fails we have to change policy and run the policy again. So redundancy would not be achieved via this solution.
Here below we have an example that describes the problem more clear:

Example:

POD1:
-Media1, Media2
-vm1, vm2

POD2:
- Media3, Media4
-vm3, vm4

In above example,
Media1 & Media2 should be able to backup vm1 & vm2 BUT vm3 &vm4. And
Media3 & Media4 should be able to backup vm3 & vm4 BUT vm1 &vm2.
As a matter of fact Storage Unit for storing backup images of all VMs is shared between all Media Servers via ONE DATA DOMAIN system.

So, how it would be possible to get over it?

Thank you in advance for all helps.
Regards

[quebek]

Hey

Well I think this is not doable - more over even it was your single point of failure is that one DATA DOMAIN. So no matter you will do there will be SPOF in this configuration. 

[Nicolai]

Storage Unit Groups should be able to solve this.

Create storage unit's per each POD media server. Set each storage unit to "on demand".  A "on demand" storage unit will not be available for backup unless specified by a policy. Since the destination is a Data Domain, each media server VM needs to be a storage server as well. Not a problem.

Create a storage unit group(s) containing media server for each POD.

Create a VMware policy for each POD and specify the corresponding storage unit group.

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/doc/39129704-133515633-0/v38490072-133515633

[davidmoline]

Hi @alpha_it 

I agree with @Nicolai - this is the way to go. Leave the VMware backup host as the default "Backup Media Server" (the use of the STUG for the policy will restrict the backup host selection to one of the valid media servers in the group). 

Cheers
David

[quebek]

Hey

HMM STUG - I did not think about these as later on I am using AIR and you cant do AIR from source STUG... good point @Nicolai and @davidmoline 

[alpha_it]

Hi there,

Thank you all for helps.
@Nicolai , @davidmoline great solution, as matter of fact if there is no AIR replication this solution is perfect. But currently I have plans to do AIR Replication across DCs. And @quebek is right, I can't do AIR with STUG.... So, what do you think?
It seems there should be a solution for this case by Veritas, but it may be very complex...

Looking forward from such experts like you buddies....

Regards

[Nicolai]

Hi @alpha_it 

Sorry, can't help. I never used AIR extensively during my Netbackup days.

/Nicolai

[davidmoline]

Hi @alpha_it 

Since you are using AIR, then you are stuck unfortunately.

I think your best option will be to create a number of SLPs per pod specifying specific media server STU's in each and use these to manually balance within the POD. Not ideal, but no other way at present (that I can think of).

Cheers
David