Tag: Vembu

[Advertorial]Vembu v3.9.0 is almost here

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Introduction

Last year I wrote a couple of posts about Vembu, somewhere in the next couple of weeks they are expecting to release version 3.9.0 of their Backup Suite. They have some very new features to be added with this version like Windows Event Viewer integration. This gives the administrator a way to check if backups have succeeded without having to logon to the backup server, besides that it also provides an easy way with almost any monitoring product to make an status for the backups.

For those of you who still require data to be written to tape Vembu will also add that function trough the Vembu console. Besides VMware ESXi backups you will be able to quick recover Hyper-V Machines and Disk Image backups as well. Another important addition is the encryption of backups with AES-256 bit encryption, just make sure to safeguard that key or you might not ne able to recover anything.

Overview of announced changes:

Tape Backup Support

Vembu extends its support to native tape backup through the Vembu BDR console. You can
utilise the best known 3-2- 1 backup strategy of having 3 copies of backup data in 2 different
media and 1 off-site location for an efficient DR plan. This secondary backup approach will help
you to archive the image based backups in both virtual and physical environments like VMware,
Hyper-V and Windows Servers and recover them in multiple formats like VHD, VMDK,
VHDX, VMDK-Flat and RAW.

Auto Authorization at Off-site DR

Enabling the auto authorization feature will allow only the authorized Vembu BDR servers to get
connected with Vembu OffsiteDR servers (Replication) using the registration key.

Quick VM Recovery on ESXi for Hyper-V and Disk Image Backups

Instant recovery of backed up data on VMware ESXi is now made available for both the Hyper-
V VMs and Windows Servers backup jobs for an effective Disaster Recovery. This recovery of
the virtual machines happens in a matter of seconds by booting the backed up machine directly
from the backup storage repository, from where all the files, folders and applications can be
accessed.

Windows Event Viewer Integration

All the events of the Vembu BDR, Off-siteDR & agents like information on critical, warnings
and major events are updated in the Event Viewer of Windows Servers when enabled for better
management.

Advanced Backup level encryption for all agents

Users will be able to configure AES-256 bit encryption for all their backup jobs of VMware,
Hyper-V, Disk Image through their customized passwords using corresponding password hints
as well.

OffsiteDR Server retentions using Vembu Network Backup

OffsiteDR retention policies is now available for the Network Backup plugins too, like the image
based backups of VMware, Hyper-V and Disk Image backups at the too.

Listing of files & Folders in aciTree structure

The listing of files and folders while configuring backups on a Network Backup plugin is now up
with the aciTree structure for easy and quick navigation.

Pre/Post backup scripts for all Network & Image Backup clients

This feature provides the ability to configure running custom actions before and after the
execution backup schedule. The custom actions may include running an application using some
script files.

AngularJS conversion of UI for Vembu OnlineBackups

The overall UI of Vembu OnlineBackup is improved for better performance like the current
Vembu BDR and Off-siteDR.

Update of consumed space on the Vembu Portal

Based on the display of the consumed space of Vembu Online Backup and SaaSBackup plugins,
the customer will be able to allocate and purchase further cloud storage post purchase and
upgrade.

 

Vembu part 2: Update to 3.8 and actually making backups

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Intro

So last time I gave an introduction to Vembu version 3.7. Last week 3.8 was released so I will talk about the upgrade and actually running some backups in this post. My backups have been running for some weeks already (when the lab is powered on that is) so I’ll also try to recover some data from before the upgrade. The release notes for the 3.8 release are at the bottom of this post.

Upgrading

First download the update from Vembu and then install the update. Except for an uninstall or update option and maybe one or two uac questions it’s a matter of next next finish. After logging back on to the web console the first thing I noticed is a bit of a different color scheme that I like better then the old one. Is this something I care about in a backup product? No but I like it anyway.

Setting up backups

So after we enter the console it’s time to go to the backup menu > VMware vSphere (isn’t the new Vembu logo lovely?)

Click on add VMware vSphere Server, enter all required data and hit save

Vembu will add the vCenter server or ESXi host and bring you back to the list of servers. Now hit the backup button on the right of the server you want to create a schedule for.

Select the servers you want to backup and if needed exclude disks

The next page gives to option to use Application aware Settings. These are expensive words for VSS so if you have included Linux vm’s you might want to ignore failures for this or create a different backup job for them. If you want to truncate logs from this job that can also be doen from here. The VMware Guest Credentials are required for this to work.

The next page gives the option to create the actual schedule. What I like most is the ease of setting up an extra  regular Full backup schedule with it’s own retention rule.

The last page gives the option to set the retention policy. Basic counts in daily incrementals while under advanced a combination of weekly and monthly can be made.

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The last tab let’s you review the settings before committing them.

Restoring

For restoring there’s a boatload of options available. It would be stupid and really boring to explain them all in here but if you have done some restores in the past their name will be self explanatory.

First you pick from what backup job to recover the data. Note that you also see the sql backups even though they are managed from the sql box itself.

One thing that shows Vembu is more SMB is the fact that no restores are possible if a backup is running.

So if there are no active jobs you can pick whatever recover poison you like. There’s a lot of options to use from here.

For this walktrough I will pick the File Level recovery since that probably will be the most used one. Now select the required point in time , virtual machine,vmdk and the file or folder to recover.

I was only able to select the local disks from the backup server to restore to.

The last page again lets you review what to restore and hit restore now for the obvious reason.

I also tried the Disk Image Mount and this mounted the disk from my file server in seconds to my backup server.

Reporting

This belongs under the improvements of v3.8 but reporting has improved quite a lot. Under Reports > Backup Status Report there is still the default view that only shows the status of the different jobs.

Onder VM Status Report though there is now a good usable list of all the vm’s and their own backup status, schedule and size.

And clicking the more button gives you an even better view of that vm with it’s history.

Conclusion

For me Vembu is a very useful backup product that just does what it has to do without any hassle. It backups my data and if I want to get anything back that also works without any problems. While it might not be an Enterprise product for SMB it does the trick and then some more with the plugins they have.

Version 3.8 changelog

New features
Disk Image Backup from BDR Server

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

FLR from GUI (Backup & Replication)

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

Seed load backup data to OffsiteDR

Storing copy of backup data for DR requirements is now an easy task to be accomplished by
seed loading backup server data to desired offsite data center. This save loads of time and
bandwidth from being consumed.

Auto Authorization

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

Encryption Settings

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

Storage Pooling

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

MSI Installer : For all Clients

Users will now get the client agents installer as .msi format also.The installer will check for the
following packages based on the OS types (32 bit or 64 bit) and it will install the following (if not
installed previously),

  • Visual C++ 2008 redistributable packages x86
  • Visual C++ 2008 redistributable packages x64
  • Visual C++ 2013 redistributable packages x64
  • Visual C++ 2015 redistributable packages x86
Enhancements in v3.8
Enable or Disable retention for VMBackup / ImageBackup

User can enable or disable retention policy for the backups based on their requirements.
Disabling retention allows user to maintain all the backups without any merging of the
incremental timestamps. This option is used when the backup size is low.

Disk level download option for VMware & Hyper-V plugins

Users can download backup data in multiple disk file formats such as: VHD, VMDK, VHDX,
VMDK-Flat and RAW.

Similarly, if user need to download individual disks in a virtual machine, he can perform disk
level download by selecting the disks.

From a group of virtual machines in a host backup, multiple disks can be downloaded with same
disk file format.

Disk Management Mount(Hyper-V)

This option lets you instantly attach backup data to disk management as a VHD/VHDX file and
proceed with the restore process. The VHD/VHDX file is created by virtually mounting the
backup data on the vembu virtual drive. Users can access backup data via disks attached on disk
management.

Once done with requirement, unmount backup data. This will resume backup job, so that
incrementals will run as scheduled.

List VMs in an alphabetical order

Virtual Machines that are present in the host will be listed in an alphabetical order based on the
ASCII table values, thereby making it simpler for the user to search and configure the backup. In
the Review Configuration page, the Virtual machines that are chosen for backup is listed in the
selected order.

Note: Virtual Machines will be listed in the following hierarchical order <special characters>,
<numeric characters>, <Uppercase letters>, <lowercase letters>.

Search option for VMs in backup config page & restore list page

This option allows user to search the Virtual machines that are available in the ESXi host. Also,
the user can search VMs/ host/cluster from a vCenter server. By specifying the required VM
name in the search option you can select the VMs that are to be backed up from a ESXi
host/vCenter Server.

VM level reports in OffsiteDR Server

This page lists all replicated jobs configured from backup server to the offsite server where you
can see a report option alongside every replicated job

New menu for consolidated VM level report in BackupServer & OffsiteDR
VM level report gives the user the centralized report page of all VMs that are configured for
backup. It allows user to view the detailed backup reports of virtual machines configured from
both ESXi or Hyper-V Host.

Full featured free edition

Post 30 days trial version, user can either opt to purchase the product or continue using the free
edition.
In Free edition user has two options to proceed with backup configurations : Full featured free
edition or Limited Edition.

Admin\Read Only Access privileges at both Backup Server and Group Level

 

Email Settings in Backup Agents
Email Report for OffsiteDR
Backup Verification Email Report (Backup Server &amp; OffsiteDR)
Backup Level Report in Backup Status Report (Backup Server)

Vembu Backup & Disaster Recovery – Introduction

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Introduction

So a while back Vembu asked me if I would like them to sponsor this blog. After some thought I decided to do so but for me that also meant I wanted to test their product. It implemented their product but was really busy with other project so I wasn’t able to write something about it until now.

Please remind me what is Vembu?

Vembu BDR is a suite of products aimed at the medium Enterprise and SMB markets. It offers on and off-premises backups, replication but for example also backups of your saas applications like Office 365 and Google G-suite (former Google apps).

Installation

The primary way of installing Vembu is by deploying a Windows server where you install the software. It is also possible to install it on a Linux host but that might require some more work. For me the most promising way to start was using the Linux appliance they offer when you ask for it. This basically is a Ubuntu LTS installation that comes with the software preinstalled. It has 8 vcpu’s configured and 16GB of ram which was a bit rich for me plus I ran into some problems with it later on (It couldn’t quiesce my backup snapshots because I couldn’t add AD credentials, this works perfectly with the windows installation). While you might spare a Windows license when using the Linux installation it seems like Vembu prefer the Windows installation themselves. The installation on Windows actually is really a straight forward next next finish installation, nothing fancy about it.

The Interface

The backup server offers a shortcut to the software on the desktop but assuming that firewalls are no issue you can connect to the server on port 6061 from any other system. This has to be doen using https though because using http will result in a 400 bad request error. The used certificate is of the self signed variety but on their knowledge base Vembu offers a simple guide to use a proper certificate.

Once you login with your credentials this is the dashboard that is shown, clean and simple.

Backup & replication

The menus under backup and replication might be a bit confusing, The vSphere or Hyper-V at top aren’t to see all jobs related to that but are to setup new backup or replication jobs. The List all jobs or List jobs buttons will show all configured jobs.

Actually it doesn’t show all configured backup jobs, it actually shows all backup jobs that run on this system. If you have physical or virtual machines using the agent then those jobs are only visible on the machine it runs on. For me this is proof that Vembu might not be a an enterprise product because for one or two it might be doable to manage them this way but for more I would prefer to have one GUI handling them all.

This shows the list of jobs while the one job I have us running

Clicking the green triangle shows the status for the running job

Recovery

What ? You expected anything else for this menu item then to do recover files and things?

Reports

Under reports you can find some very basic reports about jobs. Don’t expect to find any information on what failed exactly or anything

 

It is also possible to schedule email status reports besides the mail send when a job is finished.

It might also be wise to create a filter for information you actually would like to receive.

Management

Under management several settings and other things can be found. Like what storage to use for backups (NFS/CIFS/SMB), email server and cloud targets.