Are you among those IT admins who have a wide range of business critical machines with a central server backing up all of them in one go? Then I’m sure you may have faced issues with any one machine going down at a critical point in time without knowing how to proceed.
Vembu VMBackup comes as a saviour by providing the solution for you to overcome such scenarios. Vembu gives you the option to instant boot your backups virtually on a backup server which means you can minimize downtime to maintain business continuity. Using this option you can get the machines up and running in seconds.
We also provide persistent boot options to save changes which can be restored with backups later, if needed.
Instant Boot via NFS:
Apart from these options, Vembu BDR provides a unique, one-of-a-kind feature for users. In an environment where all machines rely on backups from a central server to access VMs, disaster recovery is really a hectic task. Vembu BDR gives you an added solution to overcome this scenario, where the backups can be mounted on Vembu virtual drive and this drive can be shared via NFS (Network File Sharing) to all users.
Enabling NFS sharing is as simple as a single click and is available in the backup server console. You can mount any given backup via any virtual platform. The backups are available in following formats: VHD, VMDK, VHDX and IMG.
Here’s how you can boot VMs via NFS shared drives:
Restore Process:
- Once done with configure, scheduling a successful backup- proceed with restore process. Choose download as Flat-VMDK file and point to a local drive location for restore.
- Check restore location and data to verify that the restore process completed successfully.
Enabling Share access:
- Enable NFS share permission to the restored data folder, and enter an NFS folder name (‘win7extended’) to make it shareable in the Network File System.
- The restored data folder with enabled NFS sharing, is shown below.
DataStore Creation:
- Login ESXi server to create datastore using NFS share.
- Under ‘Hardware’ → select ‘Storage’ and under ‘Datastores’ → select ‘Add Storage’.
- Select storage type as ‘Network File System’ and hit ‘Next’
- Update ‘Backup server name’, ‘NFS share location’ and ‘Datastore name’ and proceed.
- Verify the details entered and confirm VMFS datastore creation by clicking ‘Finish’.
- Verify that a datastore named ‘NFSsharemount’ has been created.
VM creation using NFS share datastore:
- Select New Virtual Machine and proceed with VM creation.
- Choose custom configuration to create VM.
- Enter VM name.
- Select datastore in ESXi server.
- Select VM version as 8.
- Choose guest operating system as Windows and select version.
- Proceed with default selections for CPUs, Memory, Network, SCSI controller.
- Choose to use existing virtual machine disk under ‘Select a Disk’ and proceed.
- Browse NFS share datastore – ‘NFSsharemount’ for existing disk selection and select the restored vmdk file.
- Proceed with advanced options and complete VM creation verifying settings.
- VM is created and booting fine from the NFS shared datastore.
Pre Requirement reference links:
To enable NFS server:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/archive/2012/10/08/server-for-network-file-system-first-share-end-to-end.aspx
To enable NFS client:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753302%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
To learn more about Vembu VMBackup and its features, visit here : Vembu VMBackup
Interested in trying Vembu VMBackup? Click here to download: https://www.bdrsuite.com/try/
Go questions? Email us at: vembu-support@vembu.com for answers.
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