Integrating Veeam With vSphere

Spent some time on this weekend and tried integrating Veeam Backup and Replication with VMware vSphere infrastructure.

Veeam provides back up solution for vSphere and Hyper-v virtual environments and provides few listed features.

Backup

• Image-level VM backups: Create application-consistent backups with advanced application-aware processing.
• Backup from Storage Snapshots for EMCNEW, HP and NetApp: Generate ultra-fast backups with low RPOs.
• NEW Scale-out Backup Repository: Create a single virtual pool of backup storage to which backups can be assigned, offering the freedom to easily extend backup storage capacity.
• Veeam Cloud Connect: Get backups off site without the cost and complexity of building and maintaining an off-site infrastructure fast and secure cloud backup to a service provider.

Recovery

•  Instant VM Recovery: Recover a failed VM in less than 2 minutes 
•  Instant File-Level Recovery: Recover guest OS files and folders on the fly.
•  ENHANCED Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Active Directory: Instantly recover individual AD objects and entire containers, easily recover user accounts and passwords, enable restores of Group Policy Objects (GPOs), Active Directoryintegrated DNS records, and more.

Veeam DataSheet

Now when we have an overview about Veeam backup and recovery solution will understand what are system requirements related to VMware Infrastructure Platforms.

vSphere 6.0 • vSphere 5.x • vSphere 4.1 Hosts • ESXi 6.0 • ESXi 5.x • ESX(i) 4.1.

vCenter Server 6.0 • vCenter Server 5.x • vCenter Server 4.1 vCloud Director 5.1, 5.5, 5.6, 8.0 

vSphere Virtual Machines Virtual Hardware All types and versions of virtual hardware are supported, including 62TB VMDK.

Virtual machines with disks engaged in SCSI bus sharing are not supported, because VMware does not support snapshotting such VMs.

RDM virtual disks in physical mode, Independent disks, and disks connected via in-guest iSCSI initiator are not supported, and are skipped from processing automatically. 

File level restore is supported for the following file systems, including Microsoft Windows LDM (Logical Disk Manager) dynamic disks and Linux LVM (Logical Volume Manager).

OS Supported File Systems Windows FAT, FAT32 NTFS ReFS Linux ext, ext2, ext3, ext4 ReiserFS JFS XFS Btrfs BSD UFS, UFS2 Mac HFS, HFS+ Novell NSS Solaris UFS ZFS (except any pool versions of Oracle Solaris).

Veeam Release Notes

Let's Proceed further with installation and see how to add vSphere VM's in Veeam.

1) Downloaded the Veeam iso and proceed further with the installation.

 2) Welcome Screen

 3) Accepting the EULA license

4) Provide the license or install it in Free edition mode.

5) From the list of features select Veeam Backup & Replication.

6) Ensure the Microsoft services are installed before proceeding further.

 7) Install with default configuration or select the check box for customization.

 8) Checking the GUI of Veeam post installation. 

9) Adding the Virtual machine

10) Specifying the username and password

11) Virtual machine has been successfully added.

Veeam User Guide