VMware and netbackup: restoring to another vCenter ?

[henrynicolas]

Hello guys,

We are currently considering various DRI possibilities and one of them is related to backup / restore using Netbackup.

The scope is our VMware environment which is backuped at the hypervisor (ESXi 5.5U2) level.
These backup are replicated toward other NetBackup appliances in another country.

Considering we have a dedicated vCenter running in the DRI country, is it supported to restore entire VMs in the remote location using the NetBackup appliances in that location? My concern is that the second vCenter wouldn't know these VM to restore, so I don't know if it's possible or not.

VCENTER A (COUNTRY A)                                                  VCENTER B (COUNTRY B) / DOESN'T KNOW VM of A

ESXI COUNTRY A                                                                 ESXI COUNTRY B

NB infra country A -----------------REPLICATION --------------> NB infra country B

If this is a possible setup, could you please share any documentation that might exist :) ? Thanks a lot

NB: we are considering several alternatives for our DRI, given that the NB setup is in place, this is one of them. So please do not reply that we should better use another tool/technology, we want to asses if it's possible or not with NetBackup.w

[sdo · Accepted solution]

The second ESX infrastructure does not need to know about the backups of the VMs held in the second NetBackup environment.

Based upon what you have said, there should not be any problems.  You only need enough space to be able to restore to.  And obviously enough infrastructure resources to be able to run the restored VMs.

When you push restore from an Admin Console (or master, or master/media) in the second backup environment, i.e. a copy of the VM backup from the second backup environment to the second ESX environment, the restored VM gets created and registered in the second ESX environment.

[sdo]

When testing - be sure to strip off networking from the restored VM - and/or 'sand box' the restored VM in a VLAN at site 'B' which is not visible/routable to/from site 'A'.

And, if the Active Directory domain is stretched, then for testing you may want to also consider replacing (using the option during restore) the UUID of the VM being restored - so that AD does not see two servers with the same UUID.