VMware backup Queries

[vedara]

Hello All

We are running our backup environment with the below details-

NBU master server : 7.1.0.4(Winodws 2008 R2 Standard)

Media Server: 7.1.0.4(Winodws 2008 R2 Standard)

VM backup host : 7.1.0.4(Winodws 2008 R2 Standard)

VM clients : 7.1

vCenter : 5.0

ESX : 5.0

We are taking VMware backups using VADP technology and the backups are running fine. 

As per Wintel team, VDDK is not installed in our VM servers. We are not sure whether the backups which are happening successful are the appropriate ones or not.

We have tested the restore and it was successful.

Could you please let us know, can we take the VMware backups without VDDK installed in either vCenter or in ESX server ?.Or it is required to have VDDK installed on the VMware servers to have the backups in place.

Please let us know the way to findout the VDDK version.

Thanks in Advance.

[Mark_Solutions]

I am not aware of the need for VDDK anywhere

NetBackup leverages the vSphere API to perform the backups

If backups and restores are working OK then you should be fine

The only mentions of VDDK in the VMWare admin guide relate to older versions of ESX needing it to help the disks during hotadd transfer - as you are not using the hotadd method (as far as i can tel from what you have said) you should not need it.

There is a mention that the vSphere API is linked with the VDDK but this is not completely clear - I would suggest that if you backup type is FlashBackup-Windows and you have added the vCenter Server under credentials and can browse machine in the policy then the required compinents all seem to be there

Your actual backup job details tab will show what is happening - I am assuming you are backing up over the SAN so the job will confirm if that is actually happening

Hope this helps

[vedara]

Thanks Mark for the explanation.

My confusion started after Vmware announcing some bugs in VDDK 5.1 for vSphere 5.1 w.r.t backup and restores of VM's if configured and running with vSphere 5.1 and VDDK 5.1.

I have read in some blogs, Symantec has started supporting vSphere 5.1 with VDDK 5.0 update 1 in NBU 7.5.0.5 only.

If there is no use of VDDK this time, why VMware has released VDDK 5.1. Any idea on this ?

How to check whether VM environment is running or not and how to check the version of VDDK if any.

And also, could you please let us know whether any kind of VDDK will be installed in third party backup vendors like Symantec or it is purely an inbound componenet kit with VMware only.

[Mark_Solutions]

Not sure I can answer those questions i am afraid - needs a more enginering based knowledge to get that deep

There are plenty of VMWare files within NetBackup - libfi-VMWare.dll, nbuVmwaretools.dll, vddkWrapper.dll etc

Some of these (especially the last) indicate that they relate to VMWare VDDK components.

The last one calls a lot of functions within VMWare so quite possibly relates a lot to the VDDK parts of VMWare - always interesting to open up this type of file in notepad as it gives a good idea of what it does!

I think you would need to open a case with Support to see if you could get the back ground engineering views of how it all works and what it needs

Sorry i couldn't help much further !

[Jaykullar · Accepted solution]

 With each release of vSphere, VMware publishes a set of APIs known as VMware APIs for Data Protection or VADP. One of the key components of VADP is Virtual Disk Development kit aka VDDK. This is the component through which third party code receives authenticated access to vSphere Datastores and virtual machine disk files. VMware makes this component available to its technology partners. Partners (backup product vendors in this case) ship this along with their product that has calls to vStorage APIs.

With each version of vSphere, an equivalent version of VDDK is released. The VDDK is generally backward compatible to one or more earlier versions of vSphere. For example, VDDK 5.1 supports² vSphere 5.1, 5.0 and 4.1. VDDK 5.0 supports³ vSphere 5.0, 4.1, 4.0 and VI 3.5. Since the updated VDDK is required to understand the modified data structures in a new version of vSphere, lower versions of VDDK are in general not supported for accessing a higher version of vSphere. For example, VMware historically and currently (as of today) does not support the use of VDDK 5.0 to access datastores in vSphere 5.1.  VMware documents supported versions of vSphere for each of its VDDK versions in release notes.