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HPE Reference Architecture for HPEHyper Converged platform backup and recovery with HPE VM Explorer Deploying, protecting and managing a virtual infrastructure with HPE VM Explorer Technical white paper Technical white paper Contents Executive summary ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Overview ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................4 Solution components............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................4 HPE Hyper Converged 250 .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 HPE StoreOnce....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................6 HPE VM Explorer support for HPE StoreOnce ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................8 Introducing HPE VM Explorer ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 8 HPE VM Explorer HPE Hyper Converged 250 – setup for backup and recovery ......................................................................................................................................................................8 Connecting the HPE StoreOnce to the HPE Hyper Converged 250....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9 HPE StoreOnce configuration................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................9 HPE VM Explorer setup and configuration.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Installation process ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11 First time configuration of HPE VM Explorer ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11 At a glance ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................20 Various storage targets ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 28 Remote Office/Branch Office backup and recovery ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 36 Scheduled backup task ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 36 Restore .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 45 HPE VM Explorer advanced features ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 52 Summary ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 53 Appendix A: Bill of materials ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 54 Resources and additional links ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 55 Technical white paper Page 3 Executive summary Today, most small and medium-sized organizations are looking toward IT suppliers that offer appealing value propositions with a balanced mixture of three IT delivery models: traditional infrastructure built on-site from hardware and software components, hosted solutions and/or applications most often purchased on a ‘pay-as-you-go” basis, and cloud infrastructure delivered on-demand. The business transformation starts with simplifying and automating as much of the server, storage and networking infrastructure as possible, creating a software-defined environment that frees up resources for new innovative projects. From there, it can seamlessly transition to a hybrid cloud delivery model which provides cloud economics and agility for a new type of on-premises or cloud-driven IT, enabling you to become a builder and broker of services. Finally, the business can move away from IT silos to a new level of convergence, with blocks of scalable infrastructure that you view as pools of resources; these are optimized for application and workload requirements and can be quickly adjusted to meet the business needs. This new approach to the data center delivers your Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) vision with workload-optimized systems designed to give you the agility that Hewlett Packard Enterprise customers need to succeed. The HPE Hyper Converged system is a purpose-built, converged system designed for rapid deployment of virtualized workloads based on VMware® platform integration. Cutting-edge compute resources, integrated highly-available storage, hypervisor platform, and preconfigured management software combine by design into the HPE Hyper Converged platform for a simple, scalable, highly available, turnkey solution that deploys in minutes. HPE Hyper Converged platform enables you to not only deploy resources quickly, but also to simplify IT operations and reduce overall costs in today’s idea-driven economy. Modern times call for simpler and faster virtualization solutions. HPE Hyper Converged platform is an affordable, intuitive solution and includes the new HPE OneView User Experience (UX) built into VMware vCenter to make managing and monitoring easier than ever before. No manual is necessary and the system can be operated by just a few IT generalists instead of numerous IT specialists. Adding to the manageability, the familiar centralized VMware vCenter console places tools and analytics at your fingertips. While HPE Hyper Converged platform is optimized for deploying virtualized workloads by integrating servers, hypervisor platform, storage, networking and management software, even in the most efficiently managed data centers, instant recovery of data will be called for when disaster strikes. Many IT organizations find that the amount of storage needed to store and retain backups can get out-of-control very quickly. HPE VM Explorer is an easy-to-use and reliable VM backup solution. Within minutes you can start centrally managing your backups to disk, tape and cloud through an intuitive and easy-to-navigate web interface. Advanced backup capabilities include incremental backups and replication, snapshot integration, and native cloud support for leading Cloud platforms. With instant VM recovery, direct file level restore from the cloud, encryption, and verification, VM Explorer delivers resiliency, efficiency, and agility in your virtual environments. In short, HPE VM Explorer is the ideal match for the HPE Hyper Converged platform. This paper will showcase a backup option for the HPE Hyper Converged systems using HPE VM Explorer and necessary steps to deploy and manage the entire solution. Target audience: This guide is intended for those involved in the design, acquisition and implementation of data protection solutions for the HPE Hyper Converged systems. It was written for IT generalists and specialists alike, whether they need to back up a dozen virtual machines (VMs) or hundreds of them. The audience includes, but is not limited to, systems administrators responsible for servers, hypervisors, storage and backup, sales engineers, systems engineers, solution architects, professional services engineers, and consultants. The technical information contained here is intended as a starting point for the design and implementation of HPE VM Explorer data protection solutions. HPE has tested this backup and replication solution on HPE Hyper Converged platform. Though no prior knowledge of HPE VM Explorer is necessary, some basic familiarity with VMware vCenter, HPE StoreVirtual, and HPE StoreOnce is required. Document purpose: The purpose of this document is to highlight HPE VM Explorer, an intuitive web-based virtual environment backup and recovery solution. Along with HPE StoreVirtual VSA technology, found in the HPE Hyper Converged platform, and an HPE StoreOnce disk-based backup system, HPE provides the advantages of using a non-disruptive backup and recovery solution for the HPE Hyper Converged platforms. This document includes specific instructions on how best to configure HPE VM Explorer and other components for the HPE Hyper Converged 250 and is also applicable for the HPE Hyper Converged 380. Technical white paper Page 4 Overview The family of HPE Hyper Converged appliances are pre-configured with servers, storage, networking and VMware vSphere to enable complete deployment of a virtualized environment in less than 15 minutes and at nearly half the cost of other hyperconverged approaches. Designed to reduce data center complexity, HPE products are preconfigured to meet a variety of business needs, supporting virtualized workloads under VMware integration with HPE StoreVirtual storage. Management is simple and easy from HPE OneView for VMware vCenter, including multiple clusters, across multiple sites. With proven 99.999% high availability, transparent failover in the event of failure, and inherent disaster recovery capabilities mean worry-free business protection; integrated servers, storage, networking, and integrated management software with bundled support is all delivered as a single, proven solution. From the smallest remote sites to the largest enterprises, HPE StoreOnce helps to control unpredictable data growth and reduces cost by decreasing the amount of storage resources required for backup data retention through the use of integrated HPE Labs-developed deduplication technology. Combined with HPE VM Explorer, a powerful comprehensive solution for VM backup, replication, and recovery in VMware vSphere environments, you can now back up to disk, replicate from one host to another, and archive to low-cost disk/tape and/or cloud storage. HPE VM Explorer’s patented Instant Virtual Machine Recovery (IVMR) technology allows VMs within the HPE Hyper Converged system to be recovered in a matter of seconds, reducing downtime and risk to data loss. Protecting HPE Hyper Converged systems with HPE VM Explorer backup and recovery software is a natural design fit. As shown in Figure 1, the solution presented in this white paper integrates the HPE Hyper Converged platform, HPE StoreOnce Backup and HPE VM Explorer backup and recovery solution into a purpose-built system for host virtualized workloads enhanced with fast and efficient backup capabilities. Two main scenarios will be considered: HPE Hyper Converged backup and recovery when deployed in the corporate data center in Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO) and when used as the compute resources for a small to medium business (SMB). Management VM with HPE OneView Instant On and HPE HPE VM Explorer StoreVirtual CMC Backup VM VM VM VM VM VMs Data center LAN HPE StoreOnce Backup iSCSI LAN HPE Hyper Converged 250/380 VMware nodes with HPE StoreVirtual VSA Figure 1. Logical solution diagram HPE Hyper Converged 250, HPE VM Explorer, and HPE StoreOnce backup appliance Solution components HPE Hyper Converged 250 For this evaluation, an HPE Hyper Converged 250 with HPE StoreVirtual 7.2TB Storage Kit was used. The 10GbE networking is the primary connectivity on the HPE Hyper Converged 250 platform. The HPE StoreVirtual 512 GB Memory kit and HPE OneView InstantOn were used to create a highly-redundant cluster of shared storage utilizing the local disks. Technical white paper Page 5 Storage clustering allows a customer to consolidate multiple storage nodes into pools of storage. All available capacity and performance is aggregated and is made available to every volume within the cluster. As storage needs increase, the HPE Hyper Converged 250 can scale performance and capacity online. Each time new nodes or systems are added to an HPE Hyper Converged 250 environment, the capacity, performance, and redundancy of the entire storage solution increases. Figures 2 and 3 show the front and rear of HPE Hyper Converged 250 chassis with 24 drives and four nodes, respectively. The HPE Hyper Converged 250 is also VMware-certified for multi-site disaster recovery (DR), delivering business continuity with failover that is transparent to users and applications. The multi-site configuration maintains data availability beyond a single physical or logical site and validates full compatibility with VMware high availability (HA) and fault tolerant (FT) features. Administrators can add capacity, increase performance, and grow or migrate volumes between HPE Hyper Converged 250 clusters on the fly with no application downtime. Any HPE StoreVirtual product can be added to the HPE Hyper Converged 250. This option allows for more flexibility when additional storage capacity, or storage with different performance characteristics is needed. You can easily add another storage pool with the HPE StoreVirtual Centralized Management Console (CMC) and HPE OneView for vCenter Storage portal. When there is a requirement for additional storage in HPE Hyper Converged environments, HPE StoreVirtual VSA software or HPE StoreVirtual appliances can be used to extend the storage capacity. Figure 2. Front view of HPE Hyper Converged 250 chassis Figure 3. Rear view of HPE Hyper Converged 250 chassis with four nodes Technical white paper Page 6 Hardware components for HPE Hyper Converged 250 • Base chassis – (1) HPE Hyper Converged 250 system with (2) 1400W power supplies, power cables, redundant fans, rack rail kit and backup battery for storage controllers and four identically configured compute/storage nodes – Each node includes an HPE Smart Array P440 controller with 4GB cache and advanced pack, management ports with HPE Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) 4 with HPE Advanced Management pack, and 2x 1GbE ports • Processor option per node – (2) Intel® Xeon® E5-2640 v3 CPUs • Memory option per node – 512 GB dual-rank x4 DDR4-2133 (16 x 32 GB) • Networking per node – (1) 10GbE 2P SFP+ network adapter, must be IPv6 capable • Storage options per node – (6) 1.2 TB 10K SAS RPM drives – Total of 24 disks in a four-node configuration See QuickSpecs for more details on hardware configurations available for HPE Hyper Converged 250 at, http://h20195.www2.hpe.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c04622598. Note HPE Hyper Converged 250 for VMware vSphere requires valid VMware vSphere Enterprise or later, and vCenter Standard licenses. VMware licenses can only be removed from the order if it is confirmed that the end customer has a valid license in place (Enterprise License Agreement (ELA), vCloud Air Partner or unused Enterprise Purchasing Program tokens). Hewlett Packard Enterprise supports vSphere Enterprise, vSphere Enterprise Plus or Horizon on the HPE Hyper Converged 250. HPE StoreOnce The HPE StoreOnce Backup family with HPE StoreOnce deduplication provides consolidated, automated backup and DR operations that span the enterprise data centers, regional, and ROBOs. With HPE StoreOnce Backup, you can: • Meet shrinking backup windows and optimize dedupe performance with HPE StoreOnce Catalyst to enable federated deduplication across the HPE StoreOnce backup range • Simplify data protection for even the most complex environments (With a single HPE StoreOnce deduplication technology, you can easily manage the movement of data between ROBOs and enterprise data centers.) • Enhance the manageability of DR and remote office backup operations • Automate backup and DR processes in ROBOs and enterprise data centers using your current backup application For more information on HPE StoreOnce Backup systems, see hpe.com/storage/storeonce. HPE StoreOnce, with its scale-out architecture helps meet enterprise requirements as the need for storage increases. You can choose capacity points available through virtual backup solutions or dedicated appliances that start small and allow you to add in virtual capacity, shelves, or nodes. HPE StoreOnce is available in a range of capacity points to suit all requirements from small remote offices to enterprise data centers with centralized monitoring through HPE StoreOnce Enterprise Manager or HPE StoreOnce Reporting Central. For this Reference Architecture, we used HPE StoreOnce 4700. Refer to the datasheet to learn more on HPE StoreOnce capacity points and their suitability for small, medium, and large enterprise data centers at http://h20195.www2.hpe.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA4-3329ENW. Technical white paper Page 7 HPE StoreOnce VSA HPE StoreOnce VSA is a software-only version of the HPE StoreOnce Backup system. Packaged as a virtual appliance, it can be deployed and run on a vSphere 5.x hypervisor (ESXi) or later version installed by the customer. After deploying the HPE StoreOnce VSA, the user has access to this virtual appliance for both web management via the HPE StoreOnce GUI and command line management via the HPE StoreOnce CLI. Additionally, the virtual appliance can be monitored by HPE StoreOnce Enterprise Management or Reporting Central. For more details, see http://www8.hp.com/in/en/products/disk-backup/product-detail.html?oid=6608666. HPE StoreOnce VSA supports up to 50 TB of storage capacity. The deployment through HPE StoreOnce Enterprise Manager configures 1 TB for user data storage; the SEM GUI may be used to increase capacity. Storage licenses are available to scale up the capacity to 4TB, 10TB, 20TB or 50TB. The deployment through vSphere Client does not configure any user data storage initially. It is recommended that you refer to and follow the instructions in the HPE StoreVirtual Storage VSA user guide to add user data storage before initially powering on the HPE StoreOnce VSA. After deployment, you can create the following HPE StoreOnce backup target devices on the HPE StoreOnce VSA: • HPE StoreOnce Catalyst stores • iSCSI virtual tape libraries • CIFS or NFS NAS shares To ease monitoring and deployment, this virtual appliance is fully compatible with HPE StoreOnce hardware products for replication and is fully integrated within HPE StoreOnce Enterprise Manager or HPE StoreOnce Reporting Central. You can use HPE StoreOnce deduplication to replicate backups to other HPE StoreOnce appliances in a bandwidth-efficient manner. This enables you to replicate backups to another physical location often using a WAN connection with no human intervention. In the event of a total site loss, the data is still safe at the disaster recovery site, and systems can be quickly restored. Please see HPE Data Deduplication Technologies at http://www8.hp.com/in/en/products/data-storage/deduplication.html, to learn more about HPE StoreOnce deduplication. Figure 4 shows HPE StoreOnce capacity configurations available for small, medium and enterprise business solutions. HPE StoreOnce 6600 Data protection for Enterprise data centers HPE StoreOnce 3520, and regional offices 3540, 4700,5100 & 5500 HPE StoreOnce 3100 Data protection for HPE StoreOnce midsize data centers and Data Protection regional offices VSA for small branch Backup for virtualized offices environments and remote offices Enterprise Small/midsize SMB/Larger ROBO ROBO Figure 4. HPE StoreOnce Backup Technical white paper Page 8 HPE VM Explorer support for HPE StoreOnce HPE VM Explorer currently supports HPE StoreOnce virtual tape libraries (VTL) connected by FC and iSCSI as well as HPE StoreOnce network attached storage (NAS) CIFS shares. HPE StoreOnce Catalyst stores are not currently supported within HPE VM Explorer. Refer to the “Data Agile BURA Compatibility Matrix” for the latest support information at: hpe.com/storage/buramatrix. Introducing HPE VM Explorer HPE VM Explorer is a tool for the facilitation of management, backup and disaster recovery tasks in your VMware ESX/ESXi or Microsoft® Hyper- V environment. HPE VM Explorer supports VMware vCenter. Backups can be stored on ESX/vSphere, Windows®, Linux® or FreeBSD-based storage platforms, or directly to a SAN. HPE VM Explorer is licensed by physical CPU sockets within hypervisor hosts that contain VMs to be backed up. Each instance must be licensed with a Starter Pack, and additional CPU sockets can be purchased to meet your environment. With an intuitive and easy-to-use web interface, HPE VM Explorer provides fast access to backup, replication, restore, instant virtual machine (VM) recovery, and file-level restore. Table 1 lists the HPE VM Explorer system requirements. Table 1. HPE VM Explorer system requirements Specification Requirements Pentium 2GHz or higher Memory: 8 GB RAM (recommended) Hardware 1 GB free disk space + storage for backup data Network with 100 Mbit/s or higher 64 bit version: Microsoft Windows Server® 2016 OS Microsoft Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2 Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012, 2012 R2, 2016 Hyper-V Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (SP1) Supported hypervisor VMware vSphere 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5, 6.0 VMware vCenter 4.0, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5, 6.0 VMware ESXi (free) 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5, 6.0 Microsoft .NET Framework 4. Other software Microsoft SQL lite is installed with HPE VM Explorer (no end-user agreement required) For more information, see http://h20195.www2.hpe.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c05050438. HPE VM Explorer HPE Hyper Converged 250 – setup for backup and recovery For the purpose of testing and documenting the steps provided in this paper, a test environment was built consisting of the solution components. VMs were deployed running Windows Server 2012 R2. A typical Windows domain was created including instances of Microsoft SQL Server 2014, Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 and distributed across the VMware cluster. Multiple VMs running Red Hat® Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 and CentOS 7 with the goal of simulating a standard small to medium business environment. The small VM instances contained application data of approximately 10 GB and the large instances contained database of approximately 150 GB. HammerDB was used to load data into the databases. HammerDB is an open source database load testing and benchmarking software. The large VM instances were configured with 8 vCPUs and 16 GB of RAM. The small VM instances had 4 vCPUs and 8 GB of RAM. Virtual storage was created with separate new volumes for each VM. Each VM was given an OS volume and a data volume. The OS volumes configured for large instances were sized as 800 GB virtual disks for Windows Server 2012 R2, RHEL 7 OS and CentOS 7; and, the OS volumes configured for small instances were sized as 150 GB virtual disks for Windows Server 2012 R2 OS. The data volumes were 400 GB for the large instances and 50 GB for the small instances. In our test environment, backups were done using a single instance of HPE VM Explorer, which was sufficient for a few small, simultaneous backup jobs. In a real production environment, the number to configure will be site and workload-specific and would require some experimentation. The hardware test environment used consisted of an HPE Hyper Converged 250 with four nodes. Technical white paper Page 9 Connecting the HPE StoreOnce to the HPE Hyper Converged 250 The first step needed is to connect and configure the HPE StoreOnce to the HPE Hyper Converged 250 environment. The connection choice is highly dependent upon the data center environment in terms of speed of the network interfaces, number of interfaces used and redundancy of connection points to the network. For maximum backup performance, it is recommended that HPE StoreOnce be connected to the network using 10GbE links. In the HPE Hyper Converged 250 solution, primary networks having 10GbE ports are used for connectivity. Performing backups during peak time could potentially impact workload performance. Recommendation HPE recommends 10GbE connectivity for the HPE Hyper Converged 250 models and IPv6 capable network switching infrastructure. Secondary network ports can be used as additional virtual machine networks in an advanced configuration; however, these ports are not intended in a standard installation configuration. HPE advises against changing the configuration of the virtual switches of HPE Hyper Converged 250. HPE StoreOnce configuration Setting up network address In the example configuration shown in Figure 5, one NIC is set up with an IP address. The HPE StoreOnce is connected to the production network. The IP address we have chosen and configured here are unused in our LAN and the HPE StoreOnce name is registered in DNS so as to be resolvable by name within the LAN. Figure 5. HPE StoreOnce configured with NIC port enabled Technical white paper Page 10 HPE VM Explorer setup and configuration Once the HPE Hyper Converged 250 is deployed and HPE StoreOnce has been connected, install the backup and recovery software. HPE VM Explorer is easily installed and ready to use within minutes. Figure 6 shows the HPE VM Explorer download site. The download size of the software is less than 40 MB and just a few clicks complete the installation. HPE VM Explorer thin backup solution downloads in minutes: http://hpsw.co/HPEVMX. No additional software or dedicated VM on your ESX, ESXi or Hyper-V servers are required. This document does not contain the step-by-step instructions but, rather, walks the user through the basic steps in the following section. For further information, see the official HPE VM Explorer User Guide. The user manual is installed with HPE VM Explorer to your program file folder. You can also find a shortcut from your Windows Start-menu  HPE VM Explorer  VM Explorer to the documentation folder.  Figure 6. HPE VM Explorer download site and confirmation email Technical white paper Page 11 Installation process In this Reference Architecture, HPE VM Explorer was installed on a Windows Server 2012 R2 virtual machine with a standard Windows msi installer. Following the standard Windows installer process, double-click on the HPE VM Explorer Windows Installer icon to start the install process. HPE VM Explorer setup only requires a few moments and launches upon finish. Figure 7. Desktop shortcut icon and HPE VM Explorer launch page First time configuration of HPE VM Explorer First time configuration of HPE VM Explorer is equally as intuitive. HPE VM Explorer deploys with a built-in web server for the web-based interface and is secured by generating a self-signed certificate. HPE VM Explorer can automatically open the firewall settings to complete the task. Figure 8. HPE VM Explorer web interface configuration Technical white paper Page 12 In non-Windows domain environments, an administrator password can be set. For Active Directory Windows Domain deployments, HPE VM Explorer Enterprise edition utilizes Active Directory for multiuser access. For more information, see the HPE VM Explorer advanced features section of this document. Login Upon first login to HPE VM Explorer, the language selection dropdown menu appears. As shown in Figure 9, HPE VM Explorer supports English, German, Italian, French, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese. Figure 9. HPE VM Explorer language selection and login Language setting can be changed at a later date in the Settings -> Language section. Technical white paper Page 13 Install license Upon first download, the free version is deployed. The user can choose between continuing with the free version or requesting a free Pro or Enterprise Trial key or purchase a Pro or Enterprise Edition license. After the one-time license installation, HPE VM Explorer will open upon launch to the Datacenter tab. Clicking on the Datacenter tab displays the HPE VM Explorer dashboard, as shown in Figure 10. Figure 10. HPE VM Explorer – Datacenter dashboard Attaching HPE Hyper Converged 250 by adding vCenter HPE VM Explorer’s innovative design and ease-of-use simplifies virtual environment backup and recovery. The web-based interface with Active Directory integration for enterprise level protection enables virtual administrators and backup administrators to protect their data and data center in minutes. Once HPE VM Explorer is installed, protection for an additional server or the whole HPE Hyper Converged 250 infrastructure with HPE OneView integration is only a few clicks away. The center pane provides a preview of the simplicity of HPE VM Explorer. Many of the features of HPE VM Explorer will be discussed in the following sections of this document. For a complete overview of HPE VM Explorer, refer to the official HPE VM Explorer User Manual which will be installed along with HPE VM Explorer in the programs folder. At the time of the creation of this document, the current version was 6.1 and validated with 6.2 later Technical white paper Page 14 As shown in Figure 11, from the Dashboard center pane, a single-click can be used to perform the following tasks: • Add a new Server • Backup a Virtual Machine • Replicate a Virtual Machine • Restore a Virtual Machine • View Statistics: – Success / Failed – Warnings and Aborted Tasks • Datacenter Overview • 10 days Scheduled Task Results Figure 11. HPE VM Explorer – Dashboard center panel Technical white paper Page 15 For example, by clicking on the Add a new Server button the Add Server selection box displays (as shown in Figure 12). Figure 12. Add Server panel HPE VM Explorer supports ESX and ESXi standalone servers as well as vCenter virtual datacenter. It supports Microsoft Hyper-V Server as well as a Hyper-V Cluster. UNIX® (Linux server and FreeBSD server) are for NAS NFS storage targets. HPE VM Explorer supports native backup to Cloud Storage for quick off-site (off-premises) backup and copied to the cloud. Amazon, OpenStack, HPE Helion and Rackspace are currently supported. Cloud Storage as a backup target will be covered later in this document. This Reference Architecture was designed with VMware vCenter pre-installed. Note All types of servers are supported including native cloud backup targets. Technical white paper Page 16 The lack of complex menus and tabs along with the easy-to-use intuitive web interface console of HPE VM Explorer requires no training. Designed for the SMB IT administrator and Hypervisor administrators in mind, HPE VM Explorer downloads, installs, and configures in minutes. HPE VM Explorer is a perfect data protection complement for the HPE Hyper Converged 250 system for SMB all-in-one needs. The web-based wizard driven configuration and operation enable a first-time user to protect their data as they build their new hyperconverged system. In the case of an HPE Hyper Converged 250 vCenter deployment, adding a VMware vCenter to HPE VM Explorer is achieved in a few moments, initiated by launching the New Server wizard, by clicking on the vCenter button, and running through a few screens. Again, where DNS, Active Directory or up-to-date host files are present, the vCenter server name can be used. With the addition of any new server or target, HPE VM Explorer has a built-in connectivity test to prevent confusion or misconfiguration. If the connection test fails, the likely culprit is hostname, port number or firewall settings. If the test is successful, proceed to the summary page, click Save and the vCenter hierarchy is added to HPE VM Explorer and ready for protection. From the Dashboard, the new vCenter server appears in the left hierarchical pane. As this is the first server added to the HPE VM Explorer deployment, it stands alone. Figure 13. Add Server Wizard Technical white paper Page 17 As shown in Figure 14, click the vCenter server icon in the left pane to reveal the Overview in the center. The ESXi nodes are displayed in a hierarchical view. Figure 14. Dashboard with vCenter viewed and HPE VM Explorer – Dashboard Close-up of HPE Hyper Converged 250 Edit ESXi server A similar process is followed to configure each of the ESXi nodes, as shown in Figure 15. Please see the official HPE VM Explorer User Guide for detailed instructions. Figure 15. Right-click on Server/Edit Server Wizard – SSH / HPE VM Explorer Agent page HPE VM Explorer utilizes SSH (SCP) to transfer snapshots from the ESXi host directly to the backup storage target; saving time in the data transfer by eliminating the need for a backup or proxy server in small environments. Utilizing the HPE Hyper Converged 250 as a single compute resource in an SMB data center or Remote office deployment, HPE VM Explorer is a perfect match for backup and replication solution onsite while providing offsite disaster recovery with replication to a centralized data center, tape or to the cloud. Technical white paper Page 18 The HPE VM Explorer agent on the ESXi host creates a faster more stable backup process than the ESXi API alone. With an optional setting, HPE VM Explorer can open the dynamic firewall ports for Linux, FreeBSD servers. However this document covers the deployment of HPE Hyper Converged 250 which ships with ESXi 5.5 or later. VD Service HPE recommends the use of vmkfs tools to increase the transfer rates. Virtual Disk (VD) Service uses CBT (change block tracking) technology of VMware for incremental backups. This enables the backup of only the changed blocks for faster backups and much quicker transfer rates especially critical for incremental data transfer across low bandwidth lines such as in the case of backing up to the Cloud. The only time when this feature would not be preferred is in the incident in the backups of ESXi free versions. Though HPE VM Explorer is capable of the backup and recovery of ESXi free versions, it is not relevant to the HPE Hyper Converged 250. For more information on ESXi free versions and their limitations, see the VMware website for information on ESXi free limitations. Though this document is not intended to cover the complete setup and configuration of HPE VM Explorer, Virtual Disk (VD) Service optimizes the transfer rate by utilizing the ESXi infrastructure and is therefore included in this Reference Architecture. Initializing VD Service is a one-time process at the configuration of the first ESXi node during the HPE VM Explorer’s Edit Server wizard. A link to download, install and initialize VMware’s VDDK is provided within the Edit Server wizard. At the time of the writing of this document, the current downloadable version of VMware’s VDDK was VMware-vix-disklib-6.0.2-3566099.x86_64.zip, available at: vmware.com/download/download.do?downloadGroup=VDDK60U2 provided you should have VMware login credentials for downloading. If the initialization is successful – “VDDK successfully initialized” will be displayed in the status message, in green – “VM Explorer status: VDDK successfully initialized. You can now use VD Service to backup licensed ESXi/ESX server” as shown in Figure 16. From this point VD Service (CBT) can be used in backup and replication tasks within HPE VM Explorer. Figure 16. VDDK initialization successful As with the addition of servers and storage targets, HPE VM Explorer performs a connectivity test. If unsuccessful, the likely culprit is in the Connection Setting tab, where either an incorrect username or password has been entered. Another possibility is if SSH has not been enabled on the ESXi nodes. For instructions on enabling SSH on an ESXi server, see VMware documentation for further information on Enabling SSH in vSphere Client. HPE VM Explorer has a unique feature of utilizing the compute resources of the ESXi servers as backup targets. This may be considered an ill practice of virtualized compute resources in an Enterprise deployment of virtualization, but in an SMB deployment, where only a few servers may be present, the capability to strategically utilize otherwise idle resources gives the potential for a scalable lightweight SMB backup and restore solution. In the event that the ESXi server is used as a backup storage device, a Default Directory can be selected for both the backup target and the starting directory when browsing the ESXi node datastore for file level recovery. This feature is designed for small environments where the ESXi host datastore also serves as the backup storage space. In essence, the ESXi servers can be utilized as a backup media server and target. Technical white paper Page 19 The newly configured ESXi node in the left pane – displays the virtual machines (VMs) that reside on them. Green signifies that the VM is up and running; Orange signifies that the VM is currently shut down. The center pane provides a synopsis of information of the host, for example, IP address and ESXi version is displayed along with the Storage. Clicking on the Instant Recovery Status tab allows a Check Status, Test Service and the unmount Recovery DS of the Instant recovered Jobs when necessary (shown in Figure 17). Figure 17. HPE VM Explorer Dashboard – ESXi Node Specifics and ESXi Node – Instant Recovery Status HPE VM Explorer’s familiar interface, as shown in Figure 18, and functionality enables ESXi Admins, Backup Admins, as well as novice server enthusiasts alike to backup and restore their virtual environment with little to no training necessary. The easy to deploy in minutes, plus right- click intuitive web-based interface is a perfect match for the HPE all-in-one data center in a box HPE Hyper Converged 250 system. Familiar interface Figure 18. HPE VM Explorer vCenter Hierarchy and VMware vSphere vCenter Hierarchy Technical white paper Page 20 At a glance HPE VM Explorer incorporates much of the vCenter virtual machine informational and right-click functionality to simplify the backup and recovery of the ESXi virtual environment. Clicking on a VM in the vCenter hierarchy provides a quick synopsis including CPU, RAM, Storage and network ports allocated, hostname, IP Address and the real time active memory and CPU usage. The Screen tab displays a real time screenshot of the VM for a quick visible view of the health of the VM. Clicking on the screen tab provides a larger zoom view as shown in Figure 19. Figure 19. HPE VM Explorer – Virtual Machine details and Real-time Screen view Technical white paper Page 21 The VM right-click options are as follows and are shown in Figure 20: • Power On / Off • Shutdown Guest and Power off • Unregister VM / and move to Recycle Bin • Backup (manual) • Create a Backup Schedule • Browse Backups (for quick restore) • Replicate (manual) • Create a Replication Schedule • Browse Replications, and • Launch Snapshots Manager Figure 20. Right-click VM HPE VM Explorer has no complex menus. The user-friendly interface allows for the simple use of an SMB solution at Enterprise level value. Technical white paper Page 22 The web-based interactive interface allows for a quick view with color-coded successful or failed backups, and filter by date or result status in the Task History see Figure 21. Figure 21. HPE VM Explorer – Task History Page The Datacenter main dashboard provides the initial status at a glance of the scheduled task Statistics of Success, Failed, Warning and Aborted backups. Figure 22. HPE VM Explorer Dashboard Monitoring Technical white paper Page 23 Clicking on the Tasks icon at the top right menu bar reveals the recently completed and currently running tasks and their status. (Figure 23) Figure 23: task row Details can be viewed (Figure 24), or the task can be removed from the task list. Figure 24. Detail popup Technical white paper Page 24 Quick manual backup A quick manual backup of a critical virtual machine can be performed immediately. Of course, an appropriate backup strategy considers backup windows, server resources, storage capacity, onsite/offsite retention, which will be covered later in this document. In the case of an urgent need for data protection, for example during the deployment of a new HPE Hyper Converged 250 system, there are two methods to launch the Virtual Machine Backup wizard: right-clicking on a VM and selecting Backup, or by clicking on the Backup a Virtual Machine button from the center dashboard. OR Figure 25. HPE VM Explorer – VM Right-click Options Dashboard Backup VM Launcher Technical white paper Page 25 The VM Backup Wizard opens to the General tab, which allows selection of the Source (the VM to back up), the Target (location to store the backup), and retention of the backup. Figure 26. VM Backup Wizard – General Tab The Target Host dropdown menu allows for the selection of the host computer on which to store the backup. We have yet to add Backup Servers or Storage, so our options are limited to the local computer (backup server), and the ESXi nodes configured in HPE VM Explorer. For this first example, we’ll store the backup to local storage on the backup server. Storage tiering will be discussed in detail in the following sections of this document. Figure 27. Target Host Selection Technical white paper Page 26 Full or incremental backup settings are set here as well. Incremental backup options will be discussed in detail in the upcoming “Incremental backup” section of this document. There are a number of options determining the retention, archiving and the storage of the backup directory. For further information, refer to the HPE VM Explorer User Guide. HPE VM Explorer uses simple user-friendly terminology, empowering novice backup administrators, ESX admins and IT generalists to configure and maintain their virtual environment backup and recovery without previous backup knowledge or training. For instance, the backup iterations or retention policy is set by selecting the dropdown menu Nbr. of backups to keep. The Files & Disk Tab allows the user to determine which vmdk disks to backup. A single VM can have multiple vDisks allocated. The retention policy of critical application data, such as a transactional database, may require more frequent backups than the VM’s operating system. HPE VM Explorer can convert the backup disk to a thin disk after the backup to maintain only used storage and not the entire allocated LUN space. For more information on the advanced backup features of HPE VM Explorer, see the official HPE VM Explorer User Guide. HPE VM Explorer has two unique backup verification tests. These are set on the Verify Backup tab of the VM Backup wizard. The first is a File System Consistency test. This allows the user to specify a particular file path to be checked and verified after the completion of the backup. By selecting a particular disk, file path and file, HPE VM Explorer will verify that the file path and directories not only exist but that the files have been modified since an allocated period of time, such as the last backup. Note A temporary VM snapshot is performed to access the VM disk and select the file path for the File System Consistency test. Instant Backup Test – when selected, after the completion of a backup, HPE VM Explorer powers on the VM backup from the backup target and takes screenshots of the VM as it powers on at customizable intervals (for example, shown in Figure 28, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 300 seconds). This provides attached screenshot images to the backup report. Examples of the Instant Backup Test can be seen in the Reporting section of this document. Figure 28. Virtual Machine Backup wizard – Verify Backup tab Technical white paper Page 27 Upon completion of a manual backup wizard, HPE VM Explorer launches the backup process and returns to the Datacenter dashboard. The task can be seen in the Tasks icon on the top menu bar. Clicking on the Tasks icon reveals a list of recent tasks on the right column of the dashboard interface. Figure 29. Backup Processing in Task bar and Backup Processing – Details popup More information can be viewed by clicking on the Details link. The Minimize button returns to the dashboard. Abort can be selected to stop the backup task. Once the backup is completed a backup report can be viewed. Figure 30. Schedule Task – Detailed Report with Backup Verification Test Screenshots at 30 and 120 seconds By scrolling down the Task Details, the Verify Backup Screenshots at 30 seconds and 120 seconds are displayed. This verifies the backup was successful by powering on the VM from the backup target and taking screenshots at previously selected periods of the power-on cycle. The quick manual VM backup process enables administrators of all levels to quickly backup critical VMs with a couple clicks of the mouse. Technical white paper Page 28 Various storage targets There are a number of storage target options. Choice of backup targets: • Local storage (direct attached) • NFS / CIFS • NAS • SAN • Tape • Cloud Backing up to local storage or direct attached SAS drive was demonstrated in the previous section titled “Quick manual backup”. Other than backing up to direct attached storage, a Network Drive share is probably the quickest and easiest way to add storage to your backup environment. NAS/CIFS/NFS For this Reference Architecture, a NAS CIFS or NFS share was created for backing up to the HPE StoreOnce device and attaching as a standard Network Drive of a File Server in HPE VM Explorer (as shown in Figure 31). Target side deduplication enables minimizing the backup storage capacity needs. For more information on HPE StoreOnce deduplication see the section titled HPE StoreOnce, towards the beginning of this document. Figure 31. HPE StoreOnce web interface NAS share details Technical white paper Page 29 For more information on the creation of HPE StoreOnce NAS shares, see the HPE StoreOnce User Manual. After the creation of the HPE StoreOnce NAS CIFS share, connecting the share to HPE VM Explorer is simply performed from the Settings menu from the menu bar by clicking on Network Drives and then Add on the green menu on the top, which launches the Add a network drive wizard (shown in Figures below). Note This document does not cover the complete feature and settings guide of HPE VM Explorer. Refer to the HPE VM Explorer User Manual for a robust description of the various features and available settings. Figure 32. HPE VM Explorer Settings – Network Drives The Add a network drive wizard completes with a few clicks of the mouse.  Figure 33. HPE VM Explorer – Add a Network Drive wizard pages and HPE StoreOnce NAS share as a Backup Choice Technical white paper Page 30 The network drive is now connected to HPE VM Explorer backup server and is ready as a backup target. It can be selected as a drive choice when Local Computer is selected as shown in Figure 33 above. Note A user-friendly interface is important for ease-of-use. However it is important to maintain good practices such as a clear naming convention of the drives: • N: NetDrive (is a network attached drive) • O: StoreOnce_NAS • S: DA_SAS (direct attached SAS drive) A good naming convention reduces confusion, provides simplicity and minimizes mistakes. Tape backup Many believe tape is a dying industry. However there are many industries, such as law, medical, and government, that require long term retention in terms of months and even years. Some medical records must be kept long after the life of the patient. Tape is far less expensive and stores much simpler and safer than running disk. Tape will not be going away any time soon. For the HPE Hyper Converged 250 Reference Architecture, no physical tape drive was present. However, the VTL (Virtual Tape Drive) of the HPE StoreOnce 4700 simulates a physical tape drive while utilizing the deduplication capabilities of HPE StoreOnce. In this exercise an iSCSI HPE StoreOnce VTL was attached to the HPE VM Explorer server. For information on the creation of an FC or iSCSI HPE StoreOnce VTL, see the HPE StoreOnce User Manual. Figure 34. HPE StoreOnce VTL – Interface Information and Cartridge page Technical white paper Page 31 Once the HPE StoreOnce VTL (virtual tape library) is created, back on the HPE VM Explorer server open the Administrator Tools iSCSI Initiator Applet, which can be used to connect the HPE StoreOnce VTL to the Windows server. From the Windows iSCSI Initiator Applet, on the Target tab, enter the IP address of the HPE StoreOnce device and click the Quick Connect button, you can see the tape drive is mounted on the Windows Server from the device manager   Figure 35. Windows Server iSCSI Initiator – Target Tab and - Quick Connect – Windows Device Manager Verification of the attached HPE virtual tape library and tape drive can be seen in Windows Device Manager (as shown in Figure 35 above). Note HPE VM Explorer recommends using HPE D2DBS virtual library and HPE LTO Ultrium Generic tape drive for HPE StoreOnce VTL with HPE VM Explorer. Technical white paper Page 32 Once the HPE StoreOnce VTL has been attached to the Windows Server hosting HPE VM Explorer, HPE VM Explorer can automatically discover the HPE StoreOnce virtual library, drive s and slots and cartridges by pressing on the Rescan Infrastructure button on the Tape Infrastructure page as shown in Figure 36.  Figure 36. HPE VM Explorer – Tape Infrastructure – Hierarchy and – Tape Library details A media pool of selected discovered slots and tapes needs to be created before backup to tape media can be performed. Similar to the other described target additions in the previous sections, right-clicking on Media Pools initiates the Media Pool wizard. For further instruction on the Tape Media inventory operations, see the HPE VM Explorer User Manual. After creation, the custom Media Pool appears in the HPE VM Explorer tape infrastructure list.  Figure 37. HPE VM Explorer Media Pool Details The upcoming “Automated Tiered Storage” section demonstrates backing up to tape. Technical white paper Page 33 Cloud storage backup There is a growing trend to backup to the Cloud for both the SMB and Enterprise. Particularly appealing to small business without a centralized data center or secondary site, for disaster recovery purpose, maintaining business critical data offsite is essential. HPE VM Explorer supports Native backup to the Cloud. Currently Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, HPE Helion and Rackspace are supported. Follow-on sections of this document demonstrate HPE VM Explorer’s simple method to backup to cloud. To add Cloud storage is even easier than adding a local server. From the HPE VM Explorer Datacenter dashboard center console, clicking on Add a new Server from the center pane launches the Add Server Wizard as shown below. Figure 38. Add Server Options - Cloud Storage Options The Cloud Storage choices appear in the bottom left corner. For this experiment, Amazon S3 Cloud storage was used to demonstrate backing up to the cloud. This requires an Amazon Web Services account and preferably Amazon storage buckets previously created. For details on acquiring an Amazon Web Service S3 account and the creation of Amazon S3 buckets, refer to the Amazon S3 guide at http://aws.amazon.com. Technical white paper Page 34 Clicking on the Amazon S3 Cloud icon, launches the Add Server (Amazon S3 cloud) wizard. As with the other Add target wizards, only a few steps are required including name, credentials (Access Key ID and Security Key and optionally selecting a Region). HPE VM Explorer runs verification checks throughout the process to verify validity and it’s done. Immediate browsing to select the desired default Amazon Bucket for Backup can be performed directly from the wizard.  Figure 39. Add Server (Amazon S3 cloud) Wizard and Default Bucket/Directory Selection Likewise a Directory can be selected as the default starting point for file level recovery from the cloud. In most cases the same directory would be chosen for both functions, although multiple connections and buckets can be created in the strategic planning of backup and recovery of the domain. Technical white paper Page 35 Once created, the new Amazon target appears in the Datacenter dashboard left pane hierarchy. Clicking on the Amazon S3 icon displays the buckets / directories and their status in the middle pane of the HPE VM Explorer dashboard. The Upload Manager tab enables viewing the latest uploads to Amazon S3. Figure 40. HPE VM Explorer Dashboard – Amazon Info, Overview tab and Upload manager tab Technical white paper Page 36 In summary, HPE VM Explorer supports multiple backup targets including direct attached, NAS, CIFS, Tape and Cloud. HPE VM Explorer supports HPE StoreOnce NAS and VTL for target-side deduplication, and native Cloud backup support for Amazon, HPE, OpenStack and Rackspace. OpenStack enables end users to build an OpenStack Object Storage infrastructure and backup their VMs to a private cloud storage on their own private cloud. Remote Office/Branch Office backup and recovery For many businesses, backup and recovery in remote offices and branch offices (ROBOs) is a series of tradeoffs; and having to choose between the expense of hiring IT staff for small, remote offices and the risk of untrained staff performing backup and restore of critical data. HPE Hyper Converged 250 and HPE VM Explorer solutions offer uncompromising, comprehensive and cost efficient remote office data protection. First, the web interface of HPE VM Explorer to monitor backup and recovery operations from a central location eliminates the need for specialized IT staff in remote locations. This achieves not only reliable backups but also reduced OPEX. Second, HPE StoreOnce next-generation deduplication technology allows more backup data reducing storage footprint. With the option to backup data locally at a remote office, regionally, to the cloud or at an enterprise data center— according to whatever works best for each business environment. The VMs used in this ROBO deployment are similar to the ones deployed in the HPE Hyper Converged 250 Data Center backup and recovery scenario. Please note an HPE Hyper Converged 250 basic configuration was deployed in the ROBO scenario. Therefore, fewer VMs will be run in this configuration. Use cases The following scenario simulates a best practice to utilize the Automated Tiered Storage of HPE VM Explorer for onsite fast recovery, offsite disaster recovery for both a Remote office as well as an SMB that may be limited to a single location. In this instance, HPE VM Explorer along with a physical HPE StoreOnce appliance is used. However in smaller ROBO environments or SMBs where a physical HPE StoreOnce appliance may be overkill, an HPE StoreOnce VSA may be utilized with similar functionality. Scheduled backup task The integrated task scheduler enables the execution and strategic planning of unattended, periodic backups of the virtual infrastructure. The following example will run through a series of backup tasks combined to increase the coverage of protection. From the Datacenter dashboard, a new backup Schedule can be created with a right-click on the left pane vCenter hierarchy and selecting Create New Backup Schedule. Figure 41. Add Scheduled Task wizard Technical white paper Page 37 The easy to understand and use scheduler provides a start time; hourly, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, as well as monthly, bi-monthly and one time backup (as shown in picture 41 above). In the example schedule above, this backup will be ran once per day at 12:00. The completion of the scheduled task launches the Virtual Machine Backup wizard. Here the user selects backup host and target; full or incremental and number of backups to retain. For more detail on the Virtual Machine Backup wizard see the earlier section, “Manual backup”. Incremental backup To demonstrate Automated Tiered Storage, the initial backup target was the local machine. The backup was set to Incremental. Incremental backups use CBT (change block tracking) to backup only the changed blocks from the last backup. Though this is set to Incremental, the first backup will always be a Full backup. HPE VM Explorer maintains the integrity of the backup and the consolidation of a full and all of its consequential incremental. In the event of a missed or a full backup failure, HPE VM Explorer will perform a full backup. This backup specification is set to run one full after every six incremental. In this way, a full will be run every Sunday and an incremental on Monday through Saturday, as shown below in Figure 42. Figure 42. Virtual Machine Backup wizard Technical white paper Page 38 The rest of the tab settings will remain as default with the exception of the Instant Backup Test. This is set to boot the VM and take a screenshot at 15 and 120 seconds. Figure 43. Instant Backup Test selection HPE VM Explorer opens to the Scheduled Tasks page where the newly created scheduled task is in the left pane and selected. The Scheduled Tasks page can also be accessed by clicking on the Tasks Menu on the top menu bar. Figure 44. HPE VM Explorer Scheduled Task page Technical white paper Page 39 Directly in the center are Task Elements. The backup spec that was just created is shown in the Task Elements list and its details are displayed. Figure 45. Scheduled Task Elements pane From the Task Elements pane (above), the backup can be Edited, Copied, Moved and Removed and new task elements can be Added. For a detailed description of the Task Elements that lead to Automated Tiered Storage, see the next section “Automated Tiered Storage”. Automated Tiered Storage To understand the concept, first a Scheduled Task was created. That schedule will be executed once per day at 12:00 noon. That is a schedule for the execution of a process or a series of processes that can be prioritized by the Up or Down buttons seen in the figure above. Then the first backup or Task Element was created to be executed by that Scheduled Task. The backup created in the last section specified 1 full backup and 6 incremental backups of Exchange001 to be stored on the local storage. Automated Tiered Storage is the ability to strategically plan the backup of critical data for RTO/RPO SLA requirements. For instance, to first backup critical application data on local storage for instant or quick recovery; replicate the VM to a secondary site; copy to tape or cloud for offsite disaster protection and provide email notification of success, failure and warnings all configured in a single scheduled task. From the Task Elements – Automated Tiered Storage can be achieved. Technical white paper Page 40 In the center of the Scheduled Tasks page in the Task Elements pane, Click on Add. There are a number of Tasks Elements that can be performed. • Perform another backup • Execute multiple backups • Replicate a single VM • Replicate multiple VMs • Copy the Backup to Tape (cloud) • Copy the Backup to Cloud • Email the Backup Report • Or Execute a Customized Script Figure 46. Add Task Element Options The initial backup in this Scheduled Task was for Exchange001 server. But in the Reference Architecture there was a cluster of two Exchange servers in the domain. Scheduled Tasks enables adding Exchange002 server to the Scheduled Task quickly and simply by selecting Add Task Element and clicking on the Single VM button (as shown in Figure 46 above). This launches Virtual Machine Backup wizard once again. Matching the criteria set in the original backup will provide simultaneous protection of the entire Exchange cluster. For more information on Virtual Machine Backup wizard configuration, see the previous section titled “Manual backups” and the official HPE VM Explorer User Guide. Technical white paper Page 41 Both Exchange servers were protected and kept onsite for 14 days in case of a loss of data or corruption. The data stored was minimized by utilizing incremental backup strategy powered by CBT (change block tracking); performing a full backup on Sunday and incremental backups of only the changed blocks throughout the week. Also by storing the data on the HPE StoreOnce NAS share, target-side deduplication increases the storage savings with estimated deduplication ratios up to 20:1 (your mileage may vary). Figure 47. Tasks ordered in Task Elements So in a few short steps the Exchange cluster has been protected, but what about disaster protection. In the event of a site loss from fire or water damage, tape may be a practical option especially when long term retention is required. This can be achieved quickly by adding that as an element to our Scheduled Task. By clicking Add on the Task Elements Box the Copy Backup box appears in the bottom left corner. Selecting the To Tape Media button launches the Add Copy Backup Task wizard. Figure 48. Add Copy Backup Task Within the wizard, any or all of the pre-configured Scheduled Tasks can be selected as well as any or all of the individual VM backups within the Scheduled Tasks. In this exercise, both Exchange001 and Exchange002 were selected to be copied off to tape. For more details on Copy to Tape instructions, refer to the HPE VM Explorer User Guide. Technical white paper Page 42 Now the Exchange Cluster is protected onsite for 2 weeks at the minimal required storage, then copied off to tape for offsite in the case of long- term needs or the event of disaster recovery. This is a good strategy for an SMB. Figure 49. Task Elements – with backups and copy Another and growing option, rather than tape is cloud storage for offsite disaster recovery or as a consolidation point for remote offices of a larger organization. Replication To add a backup to the Cloud option to the Scheduled Tasks, there are two similar options: 1. Copy the backup to the Cloud just as to Tape as seen in the above section. 2. Copy both servers to the Cloud – which has some interesting benefits. To be thorough, in the Reference Architecture Copy to the Cloud was selected by selecting Multi VM under the Replication box on the Add Task Element popup.   Figure 50. Add Replicate Multi VM  Replication wizard page  Select multiple VMs page The VM Replication wizard provides the ability to select from one to all of the VMs in the HPE Hyper Converged 250 vCenter Console for Replication (as shown in the picture on the right above). Under Target (Destination) Host, Amazon S3 was selected along with the desired S3 bucket/directory. A customized name can be chosen to be registered with vCenter for the new VM. The default setting of {VM}-(replicated) will register the new virtual machines as Exchange001-(replicated) and Exchange002-(replicated). Technical white paper Page 43 HPE VM Explorer provides Incremental Replication. Like with backups, incremental replication utilizes CBT to only backup the unique or changed blocks from the last replication job. This is especially critical for backing up or copying to the Cloud – where a low bandwidth Internet connection is available. Now only the changed blocks need to be sent over the Internet. The VM Replication wizard appears similar to the VM backup wizard, however if Never is selected in the Make one full replication every field, HPE VM Explorer will automatically make a Full replication on the first, but every subsequent replication after that will be an incremental. By merging each incremental and the original full, HPE VM Explorer consolidates the full and incremental into a synthetic full. HPE VM Explorer continuously maintains the integrity of the synthetic full backups. In the event that an incremental is corrupt or mistakenly deleted or missing, HPE VM Explorer automatically takes a full replication at the next Scheduled Task. Much of the rest of the wizard is similar to the VM Backup wizard and for this example will be kept as default. However on the Replication tab, there are two important settings. The user may elect to shut down the original VM to avoid conflict, by selecting If the replicated VM is turned on, shutdown the VM and replace it. The Number of Restore Points to be kept setting determines the recovery points in time in the event of loss. Deciding on the number of recovery points to maintain depends on storage capacity and corporate or legal policy of the data stored. However in this case, this is a third tier of offsite storage to the cloud and not intended for long-term retention. The tape backup will cover any long-term retention needs, so here it is set to 4 restore points. Figure 51. Virtual Machine Replication wizard – Replication tab. Figure 52. Task Elements – with backups, copy and replication Technical white paper Page 44 Now the Exchange cluster is secured both onsite and offsite, but what’s missing? Reporting Critical applications and critical processes, such as the above Scheduled Task, need to be monitored closely. HPE VM Explorer provides email reporting about the status of the backups, which is essential. HPE VM Explorer supports a detailed email report containing all relevant information about the backup jobs. These reports can also be viewed at any time through Backup History. Adding an Email Report to the Scheduled Task is three clicks away: Add Task Element  Click E-Mail Report  Fill and OK. Now the Exchange Cluster is backed up daily, copied to Tape, and copied to the Cloud and results are emailed daily in a single Scheduled Task (as shown below). Figure 53. Add Task Element – E-Mail Report (above) and Task Elements – backup, copy, replicate, report (above) Once the HPE Hyper Converged 250 has been deployed, HPE VM Explorer has been downloaded, installed and configured. An initial backup of a critical application was performed. NAS, Tape and Cloud backup targets were attached. And our first critical cluster was strategically and simply protected with a three tier backup and recovery plan. Technical white paper Page 45 The flexibility and simplicity of HPE VM Explorer’s Automated Tiered Storage through the power of its Scheduled Tasks, makes backup, replication, and protection simple and easy for the beginner to the expert. Figure 54. E-Mail Report of the Successful Exchange Cluster Backup including Power-on Screenshot Verification Restore HPE VM Explorer provides three levels or types of recovery: VM Restore, Instant Recovery and Single File Recovery. Now that the HPE Hyper Converged 250 Reference Architecture is built as a standard small to medium business domain. and multiple backups and replications have been performed, let’s discover the simple mechanism in which HPE VM Explorer enables backup administrators to rapidly recover their data in a crisis. Technical white paper Page 46 VM Restore In the event of a corrupted or downed virtual machine, a restore is as easy as right-clicking on the VM from the Datacenter dashboard. The Administrator can browse the backups or replications of that VM by selecting the Backup Explorer from the Management menu of the top menu bar (as shown in Figure 55 below).  Figure 55. Launch Backup Explorer Options – right-click and Menu bar Alternately, from the Management dropdown of the top menu bar, Backup Explorer, Replication Explorer, Instant Recovery Service and the File Explorer windows can be accessed (as shown in Figure 55 above). Each will be covered in detail over the next few sections. Technical white paper Page 47 Backup Explorer allows the search of the history of backups. From the left column: • Search by Date Range, Last Day, Week, Month, Year or Customize • Group by VM, Task or Host • Show All, Incremental, Full, Manual or Active Backups • In a hurry . . . search by VM Name Figure 56. Backup Explorer window Technical white paper Page 48 The center pane contains the list of all the backed up virtual machines. Expanding the VM displays all of the retained backups. Clicking a particular backup, HPE VM Explorer takes a moment to verify the health of the backup. Notice that the selected backup in Figure 57 declares both (incremental) and (full). That is because this was the first of a series of incremental backups. The next six scheduled backups will be (incremental) according to the 6:1 preference set in the scheduled backup task.  Figure 57. Backup Explorer – VM Backups right-click options In this case, there was only one backup to choose, however that is seldom the case. The number of maintained recovery points is an important criteria in a strategic backup plan (as discussed in the Replication section above). It is equally important to know the point in time when the VM was last healthy. Figure 58. Virtual Machine Restore wizard – General tab Technical white paper Page 49 The bottom section allows for naming the restored VM and registering it in vCenter. And the last checkbox enables whether to power-on the VM automatically. Note HPE VM Explorer can convert a disk to a thin provisioned disk after a restore as well as enabling compression during transfer.  Figure 59. Restore Task Progress Detail popup window and Restored VM in Dashboard – powered off The Exchange001 server has been successfully recovered and registered with vCenter. Had Power on VM after registration been selected, it would be up and running. Technical white paper Page 50 Instant VM Recovery The difference between a standard VM Restore and an Instant Virtual Machine Recovery (IVMR) is that in a standard VM restore, the VM is consolidated from the full and its subsequent incremental backups, and restored on a selected target ESXi server, which can take some time. With an IVMR, HPE VM Explorer powers on the VM directly from the backup storage, providing near instant recovery. Recovery occurs in the time required for the VM to boot. IVMR is a three click process: from the Backup Explorer window  right-click on a backup and select Instant VM Recovery (as shown in Figure 60). Note An Instant Recovery can be performed on an incremental backup Figure 60. Right-click backup to Instant VM Recovery (IVMR) If the original VM is currently up and running, it is recommended to check the box to Detach VM’s network adapters (as shown in Figure 61 below) to avoid any network conflicts. If the original VM is down, which is often the case when an Instant VM Recovery is needed, uncheck the Detach VM’s network adapters. The server will be up and running as quickly as the server powers on. Figure 61. Instant VM Recovery wizard When an issue happens, servers go down or disks fail, business continuity requires quick recovery and restore of its most critical data. IVMR enables restores as quickly as a VM powers on. Technical white paper Page 51 Single file recovery HPE VM Explorer provides an integrated file level restore function. Directly restore a single file from any backup (FAT, NTFS, EXT, LVM and LDM) without restoring the full backup. • From the Backup Explorer page • Expand the VM • Right-click on the desired version • Select Recover Single File. • And the selected disk Figure 62. Right-click Single File Recovery HPE VM Explorer can recover a single file from an incremental backup as well as a full backup. By selecting the backed up Disk, opens File Explorer window (as shown in Figure 63 below)   Figure 63. File Explorer Window Right-click File options File Explorer – View as Text window Technical white paper Page 52 HPE VM Explorer has a unique feature called View as Text. This enables the user to view an appropriate file from the backup target in a text viewer (as shown above on the right side of Figure 63). And for a final look at single file recovery, HPE VM Explorer with native Cloud integration provides file level recovery straight from the cloud. The pictures below demonstrate browse, download and view files directly from Amazon. HPE Cloud, Rackspace and OpenStack are also supported. OpenStack enables end users to build an OpenStack Object Storage infrastructure and backup their VMs to a private cloud storage on their own private cloud.  Figure 64. Backup Explorer – Single File Recovery option and Browse and Recover from Amazon Cloud HPE VM Explorer advanced features This document only begins to reveal the backup and recovery power of HPE VM Explorer. Some of the more advanced features are listed below: • Multi-hypervisor support HPE VM Explorer integrates VMware ESX/ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. • Automated backup test HPE VM Explorer offers the option to automatically test a backup. The automated test runs the backup in order to test the correct start of the VM. The email report contains a health status and screenshots of the test process. Currently, this feature is only available for ESX/ESXi. • Job scheduling made easy The integrated job scheduler allows you to perform unattended, periodic backups of your virtual infrastructure. Jobs may also be started using the web interface. • Flexible backup target configuration Backups can be dynamically compressed to improve data transfer through slow network links (e.g., for wide-area replication) or to save space on the target system. • Full and incremental backups In addition to full backups, HPE VM Explorer supports Changed Block Tracking (CBT) for the creation of incremental backups – enabling you to restore your backups to any version in their history. Technical white paper Page 53 • Replication for disaster recovery With point-in-time replication, you can replicate any VM on another host, which can then be used for disaster recovery. The VM is automatically registered to your backup server and ready to run. If change tracking is enabled, HPE VM Explorer will replicate any changes on the new target host. • File level restoration HPE VM Explorer provides an integrated file-level restore function. Directly restore a single file from any backup (FAT, NTFS, EXT, LVM and LDM) without restoring the full backup. • Server-to-server fast copying HPE VM Explorer allows you to copy files and backups at full speed directly between ESX, ESXi, Hyper-V, Linux and FreeBSD servers. Throughput is limited only by the available network/storage system bandwidth. • Complete overview HPE VM Explorer maintains a simple overview of all backups, which can be filtered and sorted according to your requirements. Restoration of your backups from the overview requires just a few clicks. • Detailed reporting Email reporting about the status of your backups is essential. HPE VM Explorer supports a detailed email report containing all relevant information about the backup jobs. These reports can also be viewed at any time through your backup history. • More highlights – No special hardware requirements – can be installed even on a VM – Email reporting and notification – Application-consistent backups using VSS and/or memory snapshots – Supports all OSs supported by VMware ESX/ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V Server • Cost-effective with simple to understand licensing – Affordable with multiple editions – choose the one that’s right for your environment and easily upgrade as you grow your environment. Summary Both large and small organizations utilize server virtualization to meet the speed, agility and growth needs of today’s business. Backing up to the cloud provides an alternate to backing up to tape for off-site storage. By leveraging cloud storage, infrastructure and scale is simplified to align with varying business needs by lowering costs related to storing, protecting and recovering data. Most traditional agent-based backup software provide solutions that encompass these requirements, but focus primarily on enterprise features. These features are great when needed but often too complex and costly for every remote branch office or SMB environment. The HPE Hyper Converged platform is simple; and, easy deployment empowers SMBs and remote and branch offices to deploy their virtual environments in minutes. HPE VM Explorer enables small and medium size businesses to overcome these challenges by providing a backup solution at a just right fit. HPE VM Explorer makes backup and recovery of VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments simple and cost-effective. HPE VM Explorer is part of the HPE Information Management portfolio that includes Data Protector, Backup Navigator, Connected MX, Storage Optimizer and Structured Data Manager. Technical white paper Page 54 Appendix A: Bill of materials The HPE Hyper Converged 250 is a pre-defined solution with the ability to vary key components to meet a customer’s needs. This list notes the key customizations used for testing this solution. Note Part numbers are at time of testing and subject to change. The bill of materials does not include complete support options or other rack and power requirements. If you have questions regarding ordering, please consult with your HPE Reseller or HPE Sales Representative for more details. hpe.com/us/en/services/consulting.html Table 1a. Bill of materials Qty Part Number Description Rack and Network Infrastructure 1 BW908A HPE 42U 600x1200mm Enterprise Shock Rack 1 BW908A 001 HPE Factory Express Base Racking Service 2 H5M58A HPE 4.9kVA 208V 20out NA/JP bPDU Virtualization hosts 1 M0T03A HPE CS 250-HC StoreVirtual System 4 M0T04A HPE CS 250-HC StoreVirtual Node 4 M0T06A HPE CS 250-HC SV E5-2640v3 CPU Kit 4 M0T09A HPE CS 250-HC SV 512 GB Memory Kit 4 M0T10A HPE CS 250-HC SV 2P 10GbE SFP+ Kit Storage 4 M0T11A HPE CS 250-HC SV 7.2TB Storage Kit Software 4 M0T20A HPE CS 250-HC SV vSphere 5.5 FIO Kit 4 D4U77A HPE CS 250-HC StoreVirtual SW LTU Network 1 JG510A HPE 5900AF-48G-4XG-2QSFP+ Switch 4 JD092B HPE X130 10G SFP+ LC SR Transceiver 2 JG330A HPE X240 QSFP+ 4x10G SFP+ 3m DAC Cable 1 JC772A HPE 5900AF-48XG-4QSFP+ Switch 2 JC680A HPE A58x0AF 650W AC Power Supply 2 JC682A HPE 58x0AF Bck(pwr)-Frt(ports) Fan Tray Technical white paper Page 55 Resources and additional links HPE Software – VM Explorer, hpe.com/software/vmexplorer HPE ConvergedSystem, hpe.com/info/convergedsystem HPE Hyper Converged systems, hpe.com/info/hyperconverged HPE StoreOnce, hpe.com/storage/storeonce HPE Converged Infrastructure Management (OneView), hpe.com/info/hpeov HPE Reference Architectures, hpe.com/info/ra HPE Servers, hpe.com/servers HPE Storage, hpe.com/storage HPE Networking, hpe.com/networking HPE Technology Consulting Services, hpe.com/us/en/services/consulting.html Contact Hewlett Packard Enterprise, http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hpe/contact/contact.html VMware document, vmware.com/support/pubs To help us improve our documents, please provide feedback at hpe.com/contact/feedback. Sign up for updates Rate this document © Copyright 2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for Hewlett Packard Enterprise products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Hewlett Packard Enterprise shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. Intel and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc in the US and other countries. Microsoft, Windows Server, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group 4AA6-6751ENW, November 2016 Rev. 1