This page provides a guide to protecting and recovering VMware virtual machines (VMs) running in Google Cloud VMware Engine using Backup and DR Service. It outlines how to configure backups, perform restores, and monitor your VMware environment.
Overview
Google Cloud VMware Engine is a fully managed service that lets you run the VMware platform in Google Cloud. Google manages the infrastructure, networking, and management services. For more information about Google Cloud VMware Engine, see the Google Cloud VMware Engine overview page.
Before you begin
Before you can back up Google Cloud VMware Engine instances, you must complete the following Backup and DR Service procedures:
To start backing up a Google Cloud VMware Engine instance, complete the following procedures in the listed order:
Configure backup job
During VMware VM backup jobs, the backup/recovery appliance needs to resolve the fully qualified names of the VMware ESX servers running in your Google Cloud VMware Engine private cloud. The easiest way to achieve this is to add a Domain Name System (DNS) from your private cloud to the backup/recovery appliance. If you don't want to do this, you need to manually add a host entry for each ESX host in the Host resolution tab on the System management page in the Google Cloud console.
In the Google Cloud console, click the navigation menu.
In the Compute section, click Google Cloud VMware Engine to open Backup and DR Service.
Select Resources, then select your private cloud.
Under Private cloud DNS servers copy either one or both Internet Protocols (IPs).
Go to Backup and DR Service in the Google Cloud console.
Click Manage.
Click Appliances.
Right-click the appliance and choose Configure appliance networking.
The System management page opens in a new window.
Under the *DNS, NTP page*, add the DNS as either primary or secondary and remove any unneeded DNS suffix searches.
Under Troubleshooting, complete the following steps:
Click the Utility drop-down and select Test DNS.
Click the Resolve drop-down and select IP.
Enter the IP address in the IP to resolve field. It should resolve to a name. If it doesn't, validate the connectivity between Google Cloud VMware Engine private cloud and the Backup and DR VPC.
Set NFS ingress firewall rules for the Backup and DR appliance
Use the following instructions to set the ingress firewall rules for the backup appliance to make sure NFS mounts don't encounter unexpected errors. When performing Google Cloud VMware Engine VM mounts using NFS, the backup/recovery appliance provides access to the virtual machine disk using an NFS datastore.
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Firewall policies page in Network Security.
Find the Virtual Private Cloud firewall rule for your backup/recovery appliance which contains the following information:
Target: the service account for your backup appliance. For example,
my-service-account@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.comtcp: 26, 443, 3260,5107
Edit the firewall rules and add the following information:
In the Source IPv4 range, add the system management subnet of your Google Cloud VMware Engine private cloud. Find the system management subnet in Google Cloud VMware Engine portal using the following steps:
Go to Resources.
Click Select your private cloud.
Click Subnets.
tcp: 26, 111, 443, 756, 902, 2049, 3260, 4001, 4045, 5107udp: 111, 756, 2049, 4001, 4045
Click Save.
Add a new vCenter host to the Backup and DR management console
Backup and DR uses VMware vSphere Storage APIs data protection, formerly known as vStorage APIs for data protection or VADP, to create backup images of VMware VMs, placing these backup images either in the snapshot pool of the backup/recovery appliance or in OnVault Pools.
To issue API calls, the backup/recovery appliance needs to connect to the vCenter host with a username and password that have authority to perform the required actions. In this section, we add the vCenter as a host and supply those user credentials (which are stored securely by the service).
Use the following instructions to add a new vCenter host to the management console:
In the management console, go to Manage.
Click Hosts.
Select + Add host.
In the Add host form, enter the name and an optional friendly name. The name of a host should start with a letter, and can contain letters and digits (0-9). Underscore (
_) characters aren't valid in host names.Enter the IP address of the vCenter server appliance in the IP address field.
In the Appliances section, select the management console managed appliances that you want to serve this host. If the list is long, you can use the search box to find a specific appliance or group of appliances.
From the Host type drop-down, select vCenter and add the following information:
Validate the data transport mode, either NFS or SAN. NFS is the default setting and we recommend you don't change it.
Enter the username and password of the solution user you configured earlier to connect to the vCenter server appliance and then use the Test button to validate the added credentials.
Click Add.
Create a backup plan template
Google Cloud VMware Engine VMs are captured in their entirety using Google Cloud VMware Engine API calls. You manage a VM by assigning a template and a resource profile to it to define the backup plan to capture the entire VM.
When a backup/recovery appliance associates a backup template with an entire VM it isn't aware of VM content so no application-specific actions are performed.
When an entire virtual server is captured, a fully functional virtual server (operating system, applications, and their data) is captured. This enables the data to be accessed quickly and without issues. Since the image presented is a fully functional virtual server, it can be migrated to a new, permanent ___location if needed. Capturing whole virtual servers allows groups of virtual servers and their applications to be managed with a single backup template.
Templates are composed of backup policies. In policies, you can defines when to run a backup, how frequently to run a backup, how long to retain the backup image for (Days, Weeks, Months, or Years), and also additional configuration when the policy is applied to a VM. Refer to Create a backup template to create a template and assign a backup policy.
A resource profile specifies the storage media for VMware VM data backup images. Resource profiles define which snapshot pool is used (if a snapshot policy is in the template) and which OnVault pools are used (if OnVault or direct to OnVault policies are in the template). For more information, see Create a resource profile.
Apply a backup plan template
Use the onboarding wizard to discover VMware virtual machines (VMs) managed by a vCenter. Once you have discovered one or more applications, you can protect them all at once by applying a backup template and profile or you can add them to the applications list as unmanaged or ignored VMs.
Use the following instructions to discover and protect VMware VMs:
From the Backup and DR Service management console, click App Manager.
Select Applications from the drop-down.
The Applications page opens.
Click Add Application.
Select Google Cloud VMware Engine.
From the server list, select a vCenter where you want to perform VM discovery and click Next.
On the Manage page, a list of VMs appears. Select a VM to discover and click Next.
Apply the policy template and profile to the Google Cloud VMware Engine instance:
Select a VM that you want to protect.
Select Manage backup configuration.
From the Choose action drop-down list, select Manage backup configuration.
The Choose template drop-down list opens.
From the Choose template drop-down list, select a template.
The Choose profile drop-down list opens.
Click Apply backup plan.
Click Application Settings for each VM in the list to make changes to the default configuration.
The Application Details and Settings page opens. See Configure application settings for VMs.
In case there are multiple VMs and you want to make the same changes to all the VMs, click define settings for all applications and make the necessary changes.
Click Next.
Review the summary screen. If everything is correct, select Finish to complete the onboarding process. The selected VMs are backed up based on the Policy template you select.
After onboarding is complete, a dialog appears. Click Finish again. Once the policy template is attached to the selected VMs, the status changes to a green check mark. The green check indicates that your VMs is all set to run a backup job within the schedule by the policy. If you want to run the job immediately, see Run an on-demand backup.
Run an on-demand backup
On-demand backup is a type of backup that you can manually trigger at any time. On-demand backups are useful for situations where you need to backup your data before a specific event. For example, you might want to backup your VM before applying updates or patches to be sure that you can restore it to its previous state if any issues arise during the update process.
Use the following instructions to run an on-demand backup of a managed application:
From the Backup and DR Service management console, click App Manager.
Select Applications from the drop-down.
The Applications page opens.
Select an Google Cloud VMware Engine instance and then click Manage Backup Configuration.
From Policies, select Snapshot.
Enter a Label and click Run Now. An on-demand backup will be triggered for the selected policy.
Recover a VMware Engine VM
To recover a Google Cloud VMware Engine VM, you must have performed the mount for a Google Cloud VMware Engine VM. A Google Cloud VMware Engine VM mount operation can be performed using the following methods:
Once the mount process is completed, you can recover a mounted VMware VM to production storage.
Restore a VMware Engine VM
Restore is the process of restoring data from a backup image. To restore a VM, see Restore a Google Cloud VMware Engine VM.
To clone a VM, see Clone an image of a VMware VM.
Monitor Google Cloud VMware Engine
You can monitor the Google Cloud VMware Engine jobs using the management console. To learn more about how to monitor Google Cloud VMware Engine jobs or events, see the Backup and DR Service documentation about how to monitor jobs or events.
What's next
To backup Google Cloud VMware Engine VM and database resource types, refer the following quickstarts links.