protection Archivi — Gabriele Pelizzari

7 December 20217 December 2021

Veeam CDP – Manual Upgrade

In my lab, the Disaster Recovery site consists of a single ESX 7.01 host.

It is managed by a virtual vCenter (called vCenter-DR ), which relates exclusively to the hardware resources made available by the ESX 7.01 host itself.

Last month Veeam Software released the Veeam Backup & Replication 11A update.

Among the various improvements introduced, my attention was focused on the new drivers (called I / O filters ) of the CDP component.

If in the main cluster, the upgrade was simple, immediate, and painless (given the presence of more hosts under an additional vCenter), a complication related to the hardware architecture was generated for the Disaster Recovery site.

The update failed, as it was impossible to put the ESX 7.01 host in maintenance mode without actually turning off the vCenter-DR that managed it (see image 1).

Picture 1

How was it possible to overcome this obstacle without changing the cluster configuration? (I.e. without adding an additional ESX 7.01 Host)

The procedure I followed was simple and uses the Vmware kb 2008939 ( https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2008939).

It is composed of two main stages:

Copy the Veeam CDP package to the ESX 7.01 host (veecdp-offline-bundle.7.0.0.zip)
Installation of the package through the command “esxcli software vib update -d /yourpath/veecdp-offline-bundle.7.0.0.zip” (see Image 2)

Image 2

At the end of this first phase, it was now sufficient to repeat the standard update procedure (see images 3,4, and 5).

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

The check that guarantees that the procedure followed is correct is to create a CDP Replication Job, wait for it to finish without errors and for the failover procedure to be started.

Note 1: The I / O filters update procedure is available in the manual on the following page: (https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/cdp_io_filter_remove.html?ver=110).

Note 2: Before proceeding it is mandatory to open a support ticket to Veeam( my.veeam.com)

See you soon

3 April 2021

VDrO v.4 – Run a DR plan

This is the last article about how to integrate the Continuous Data Protection (CDP) technology (available from VBR v.11) and VDrO v.4 (former VAO).

In this part, we are going to see what happens when an orchestration plan is launched.

Yes, I wrote the word “see” because I created a short video showing the tasks that are automatically completed when a Disaster Recovery is occurring.

If you need more details about how to set up the environment, please read the previous articles.

Let me know if videos and youtube platform are a good way to expose technological valuable topics.

Thx for reading and watching and take care

1 April 202112 January 2023

VDrO v.4 – Create a DR plan

C. Create an Orchestration Plan

The DR plan is a sum of more Orchestration plans. This article is going to explain how to create them.

Just a small and important note before continuing: it’s mandatory to have already completed the steps described in the last article.

Let’s start!

From the main menu of the VAO server select the Manage button.

Now click on New as shown in picture 1.

Picture 1

The easy wizard is going to ask to choose a scope.

In our example, we use Linux-CDP as shown in picture 2.

Picture 2

Now fill up the plan info with the Plan Name, the description, the contact name of the plan (picture 3),

Picture 3

Select the type of Plans. In this article choose the CDP replica (picture 4)

Picture 4

In the next step please check if the correct “VM Group” appears.
If it doesn’t, it’s necessary to go back to the setup phase (please read the previous article) and fix the issue.

In our example, it appears correctly (Ubuntu-CDP) as shown in the next two pictures (5 and 6).

Picture 5

Picture 6

The next step shows the VM Recovery options (picture 7).

It gives the operator control of the plan. For example, stopping the plan if something goes wrong.

Picture 7

In “New VM Template” menu the VAO user can add additional steps to the orchestration process; for example, starting the CDP replica job first and shut down the source VM after (Picture 8)

Picture 8

Tips I: I created a customized script to change the IP Address of the VM.

Tips II: it’s possible to set up the access credential directly from this page by clicking the button on the bottom of the page. It is available for Windows VM only.

The next step defines the RTO & RPO.

The most important thing to remember here is that the RPO has to be equal or major than the RPO set in the CDP replica job (picture 9).

Picture 9

The last steps define when the plan report shall be automatically generated (picture 10) and if the readiness check has to run at the end of every single wizard (recommended option) (picture 11).

Picture 10

Picture 11

The result is shown in picture 12

Picture 12

The next article is going to be a video to see VDrO in action.

Take care and see you soon