VMware vSphere 6.5 Topology and Upgrade Planning Tool

Recently was going through one of the blog by VMware which talks about the VMware vSphere 6.5 topology and upgrade planning tool, the tool has been designed keeping in mind the vSphere upgrade from 5.5 or 6.0 to 6.5 and focuses on new vSphere 6.5 deployments. If you have not yet heard about this tool you should find this blog useful, the tool is free of cost by answering a series of simple questions you can receive recommendations/KB articles and reference documents which can help with new deployments / the upgrade process.

New vSphere 6.5 Deployment option is straightforward wherein we must select the number of vCenter Servers we are planning to use in the deployment + approximate number 6.5 ESXi + whether the enhanced linked mode will be used or not and last but not the least whether you would like to make use of vCenter HA which is new feature that has been made available with vSphere 6.5 which provides us with Active / Passive and witness nodes for vCenter Server with Recovery Time Objective of 5 Minutes we can read more about vCenter Server High Availability in the blog 10 Things We Need to Know about vCenter Server 6.5. Once we answered all the questions the Topology and Upgrade Planning tool give us the recommended topology as shown below where I have selected vCenter HA and Enhanced Linked Mode.

If we have plans to Upgrade to vSphere 6.5 we can simply go to vSphere 6.5 Topology and Upgrade Planning Tool and select Upgrade to vSphere 6.5 by providing details including whether the current version, we are running is 5.5 or 6.0. Based on whether the current vCenter version is 5.5 or 6.0 we can provide further details for example we are using single vCenter with Embedded PSC or External PSC or maybe we are using multiple vCenter Servers with Embedded / External PSC. Based on the option we select the next questions may vary more like a flowchart wherein we specify yes or no and the next question depends on last response.

Note: If we are running with vCenter Server version older than 5.5 we must first upgrade them to vSphere 5.5 or vSphere 6.0 before we continue.

Enhanced Linked mode not selected, with embedded PSC and upgrading my vCenter Server Appliance from 5.5 to 6.5. 

After browsing through the tool, I must say that I am impressed with the information this tool can provide, using this tool we no longer need to hop in to multiple sites for deployment guides and reference architecture, rather we can answer questions here and let the tool give us all the pre-and post upgrades guides and upgrade resources that we need for the upgrade. 

Vembu BDR Suite - Free vs Paid Edition

It's been more than an year that I have been associated with Vembu which is a leading software product development that has been focusing on Backup and Disaster Recovery software for data centers over a decade. It’s flagship offering- the BDR Suite of products consists of VMBackup for VMware vSphere and Hyper-V, Disk Image backups for Physical machines, Workstations. Backing up individual files and folders to physical servers and cloud can be performed with Vembu Network Backup and Online Backup respectively. 

Moreover, it has multiple flexible deployment like on-site, off-site and to the cloud through single user interface. Another offering of the Vembu BDR Suite is to be able to configure item level backups like Microsoft Exchange Servers, Sharepoint, SQL, My SQL, Office 365, G Suite etc., This latest version of Vembu BDR Suite v3.8.0 has come out with the few notable features in two major offerings- one unlimited features for three virtual machines and the second thing being able to backup unlimited virtual machines with restricted features.

This latest Free edition of Vembu BDR Suite was designed understanding the setbacks by any common IT Administrator. Thence  making Vembu an important name in the market for backup vendor for its enterprise level product for SMBs. This free edition is free forever and IT administrators can continue managing their backups with the trial version without any feature restriction. Let's take a plunge into the detailed features of this Free edition.

Unlimited features for Limited environment (3 VMs)

Using the Vembu BDR Suite in its trial version does not require purchasing a license. This category of the Free edition offers unlimited features and few of them are listed below:

1. Agentless VMware backups for multiple VMs: Configuring backups for protecting multiple VMs without physically installing any agent.

2. Disk Image Backups from BDR Server: Disk Image Backups can now be configured and managed via Vembu BDR Server. Relying on proxy agents is no longer required, unless it’s a distributed deployment which require individual proxy agent installation.

3. Full VM Backup: Will backup the entire VM including OS, applications and the data.

4. Storage Pooling: Storage Pools are used to aggregate the space available from different volumes and utilise them as a storage for specific backups. The hybrid volume manager of Vembu BDR Server supports scalable and extendable backup storage for different storage media such as Local drives, NAS(NFS and CIFS) and SAN(iSCSI and FC). Vembu BDR provides storage pooling option for both backup level and group level.

5. LAN free data transfer using SAN and Hot- Add modes:Vembu VM backup support Direct SAN, Hot-Add and network transport mode to backup the VM data.

6. Auto Authorization: Enabling Auto authorization in Vembu BDR allows proxy agents to get registered to backup server using unique registration key generated by respective BDR server.

7. Automatic Backup Scheduling: Backups can be automatically scheduled as per the user's flexibility

8. Encryption Settings: Users can now provide additional security to their disk based backup jobs by assigning custom-password to backup server, such that all their backup data will be encrypted and can be restored/accessed only by providing the custom-password.

9. FLR from GUI (Backup & Replication): File Level Recovery(FLR) is now available for both backup and replication jobs where user can choose specific files and folders from VMware/Hyper-V/Disk Image backups and VMware replication, to be restored in a quick fashion.

 All the above major features are included in this free edition for 3 virtual machines. Let’s get to know those restricted features for unlimited virtual machines.

Restricted Features for unlimited virtual machines:

All the features mentioned above for limited business environment will be applicable for this categories with few restrictions in the features. They are:

1. Application aware processing: Configuring them for a Hyper-V environment is restricted but that does not hold good with VMware vSphere Esxi(s).

2. Changed Block Tracking: Only the incremental blocks which are changed since the previous backup will been tracked and  backed up in the successive backup schedule thereby reducing disk space and time

3. Retention Policies: User can retain any number of recovery points of his own choice. They come to great use when it comes to store the backup data.

4. Near CDP: Incremental backup can be scheduled every 15 mins to ensure the RPO < than 15 mins

5. Quick VM recovery to ESXi: Incremental backup can be scheduled every 15 mins to ensure the RPO < than 15 mins.

6. Automated Backup verification: Verify the recoverability of the backed up images and screenshot of the booted Image backup will be mailed

Backup and recovery holds good for both physical and virtual environments and makes granular recovery possible with great ease.You will able to scale out your storage, secure your individual backup jobs with in-built deduplication, encryption and compression that makes its own file system called, the VembuHIVE.

This latest Free edition thus becomes one of the most business-friendly and a complete backup solution. That being said,  It can be suitable for both testing and production environments! Their out-of-the box policy- backup for all was hailed even at the recent VMworld event, Las Vegas.

 
Well, there is nothing left to ponder now. It’s time to make the right decision. It could be done right away with getting started with their Free edition of Vembu BDR Suite on a 30 days free trial. Click here.