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Knowledge Base / Managing VMware servers / Add ESXi Host and VCenter Server and perform backup

Add ESXi Host and VCenter Server and perform backup

Information Covered

Purpose

Backup your virtual machines (VMs) running on VMware ESXi host and v-Center server to the IDrive BMR device. To begin, add the ESXi host and vCenter server to the BMR device and schedule the backup.

Description

Backing up your VMware virtual machines through IDrive BMR is easy, fast, and safe. It is one of the most reliable solutions to backup VMware virtual machines of any operating system platform and disk configurations running on ESXi and vCenter server, without any software installation. BMR enables you to perform full, incremental, and manual backup including backup of the entire virtual machine via ESXi host and v-Center server.

IDrive BMR performs VMware backup of the VMs at the Hypervisor level and as such does not depend on the type of the Operating System running on the VM. So, all OS platforms supported by VMware hypervisor will be supported for VMware backup in IDrive BMR.

You can perform VMware backup of hard disks that are up to 2TB in size. You are recommended to install the backup agent inside the VM for devices more than 2TB in size (only for Windows OS). The backups will be displayed under the 'Physical Machines' tab.

To backup your virtual machines you need to add the VMware ESXi host and vCenter server to the BMR device. When you add the ESXi host or vCenter server to your BMR device, you will have the option to schedule the backup of the VMs. Alternatively, you may disable scheduled backup and choose to rely on manual backup to secure your Vmware machine data.

Add an ESXi host to the BMR device

To add an ESXi host,

  1. Sign in to the IDrive BMR device web interface.
  2. Go to the 'VMware' tab and click 'Add ESXi Host'.
  3. Enter the ESXi name, IP address, username, and password and click ‘Next’.

  4. Select the required virtual machines and click 'Next'.


     

    Note: IDrive BMR follows VMware's naming conventions and restrictions for virtual machines. Hence names with the special characters colon, quotation marks, and slash (:, ", \, and /) are not supported.

  5. Configure the backup schedule in the ‘Schedule’ tab and click 'Next'. You may select 'Disable Schedule' if you want to backup the virtual machines manually.
  6. The ‘Confirm’ tab provides a summary of the backup operation and click ‘Confirm’. Once the ESXi host is added to the BMR device, backups will occur for the running VMs as per the schedule.

Note: If you have a vCenter server managing other ESXi hosts in your infrastructure then you don't have to add every single ESXi host to initiate backup of your VMs. You can simply add the relevant Vcenter server and all the ESXi hosts associated with it will be automatically added for backup.

Add a v-Center server to the BMR device

To add a vCenter server.

  1. Sign in to the IDrive BMR device web interface.
  2.  Go to the 'VMware' tab and click 'vCenter'.
  3. Click 'Add vCenter Server'.
  4. Enter the vCenter name, IP address, username, and password and click 'Next'.

  5. Select the virtual machines to be added and click 'Next'.
     
    Note: IDrive BMR follows VMware's naming conventions and restrictions for virtual machines. Hence names with the special characters colon, quotation marks, and slash (:, ", \, and /) are not supported.
  6. Set backup schedule parameters and click 'Next'.
  7. Read the summary of the backup operation and click ‘Confirm’. 

Perform an immediate backup of the VMware virtual machines

Post VMware server addition, you can perform manual backup of the added VMs running on these servers. 

To perform an immediate backup,

  1. Sign in to the IDrive BMR device web interface.
  2. Go to 'VMware' > 'ESXi'/'vCenter'.
  3. Click the 'Backup Now' button on the respective ESXi / vCenter tab to perform an immediate backup.

Track VMware backup activities

Click on the bottom-right corner to expand the ‘Activities’ tab. Track the progress of VMware backups in the ‘VMware Activities’ tab.

The information displayed under this section lists the following parameters for every VM in that server:

Server - The device on which the target virtual machine is running.

Virtual Machine - The assigned computer name of the virtual machine.

Action - The type of ongoing backup activity, full or incremental.

Disk Name - The assigned name of the virtual disk drive that is being backed up.

Progress - The current status of the ongoing backup operation.

ETA - The estimated time by which the backup will be complete.

Speed - The rate at which the backup is being performed by the BMR device.

Use the ‘Stop’ button to prevent BMR from backing up your VMware machines running on ESXi and vCenter server at any point of time during the backup operation.

Manage the added ESXi hosts/VCenter servers

Manage the VMs, backup schedule, and update the password of the added ESXi hosts and vCenter servers in the ‘VMware’ tab of the ‘Dashboard’ page.


Navigate the required ESXi/vCenter server block and edit the configurations using the following icons: 

- To add new virtual machines.

- To view and modify the backup schedule.

- To update the new password. (If your ESXi or vCenter password gets changed due to some reason, the backup will fail. In such a case, you may need to update the password.)

- To view and manage recovery points of the VMware server for effective storage utilization.

Click ‘Backup Now’ to perform a manual backup.

View and manage recovery points of a VMware server

Click  to open the ‘Manage Recovery Points’ page for the virtual machines of the VMware server. In the ‘Manage Recovery Points’ page use the dropdown menus to select the required ESXi server (This step is not relevant if you navigated here from the ESXi tab) and virtual machine. 

Select the recovery points you wish to delete and click ‘Delete Recovery Points’ and click ‘Yes’ to confirm. These recovery points will be queued for deletion and removed from the BMR device in the same order. You can click ‘Refresh’ to view the latest status of the recovery points.

Alternatively, click on the ESXI / vCenter server tile-header and navigate to the required VM. Click (dropdown icon) and select ‘Manage Recovery Points’ to view and manage the recovery points.


 
Until the recovery point is deleted, you can revert the operation by clicking ‘ Undo Delete’.

Remove an ESXi host/vCenter server from the device

To remove an ESXi host or vCenter server from the BMR device, navigate to 'VMware' > 'ESXi'/'vCenter' and click on the required ESXi/vCenter. Click 'Yes' in the confirmation window.

The list of deleted ESXi hosts and vCenter servers will be displayed at the bottom half of the page and will be removed from the device during cleanup. You can click 'Do not remove' to retain the required ESXi host and vCenter server.

Note: Delete operation will delete all the backups for the particular ESXi host/vCenter server that you have added. Hence, perform the delete operation only if you do not need the data present on the BMR device any longer.
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