vRanger 7.8.1 - Installation/Upgrade Guide

Considerations for installing vRanger in a VM

Considerations for installing vRanger in a VM

Read the following notes regarding limitations and considerations about installing vRanger in a VM:

•	When installing vRanger in a VM, it is not supported to perform a machine-based backup of the vRanger VM. In other words, the vRanger VM cannot back itself up. You may, however, perform a VA-based backup of the vRanger VM.

•	When using vRanger with machine based HotAdd to backup encrypted VMs, the vRanger VM must also be encrypted.

When using vRanger with VA-based HotAdd to backup and replicate encrypted VMs, the VA must also be encrypted.

•	When creating the VM for vRanger, Quest recommends that you create a fresh VM rather than cloning an existing VM or template.

In recent versions of Windows®, volumes are recognized by a serial number assigned by Windows. When VMs are cloned, the serial number for each VM volume is cloned as well. During normal operations, this cloning is not an issue; however, when vRanger is cloned from the same source or template as a VM being backed up, the vRanger volume has the same serial number as the source volume.

For backup operations using HotAdd, source disk volumes are mounted to the vRanger VM. If the source VM volumes have the same disk serial number as the vRanger volume, which is the case with cloned VMs, the source VM’s serial number is changed by Windows when mounted to the vRanger VM. When restoring from these backups, the boot manger does not have the expected serial number, causing the restored VM not to boot until the boot information is corrected.

Installing vRanger on a physical server

Installing vRanger on a physical server

Installing vRanger on a physical server provides a method to off-load backup resource consumption from the VMware® ESXi™ host and network. While you can perform Machine-based LAN in this configuration, LAN-free backups are the primary driver for using vRanger in a physical server. For more information, see LAN-free backups (VM backups only) and LAN backups.

 

NOTE: With vRanger installed on a physical server, you can still take advantage of the vRanger VAs for backup, restore, and replication activity. For more information, see Installing the vRanger virtual appliance (VA).

Available transports

Available transports

The transports available when vRanger is installed in a physical machine include the following:

•	With vRanger VA:

▪	VA-based HotAdd

▪	VA-based LAN

▪	Machine-based SAN

▪	Machine-based LAN

•	Without the vRanger VA:

▪	Machine-based SAN

▪	Machine-based LAN

LAN-free backups (VM backups only)

LAN-free backups (VM backups only)

With vRanger installed on a physical machine, you may perform LAN-free backups with either the VA-Based HotAdd or Machine-based SAN transports.

•

VA-based HotAdd: This transport mounts the source VM’s disk to the vRanger VA deployed on the source host or cluster. This method allows vRanger — through the VA — to have direct access to the VM data through the VMware® I/O stack rather than the network. In this configuration, data is sent directly from the VA to the repository.

This method is the recommended transport option due to the simplicity and flexibility of the configuration. To use this option, you must have a vRanger VA deployed on every host or cluster for which you want to configure backups. For more information on HotAdd, see Requirements for a HotAdd configuration.

•	Machine-based SAN: This transport option uses your fibre-channel infrastructure or iSCSI network to transport backup data to the vRanger machine.

To perform machine-based SAN backups, vRanger must be installed on a physical system attached to your SAN environment. This setup is a high performance configuration that requires vRanger to be connected to your fibre or iSCSI network. In addition, the VMFS volumes containing the VMs to be protected must also be properly zoned and mapped to the vRanger server.

Configuring vRanger for machine-based SAN backups

With vRanger installed on a physical server, the following configurations must be made:

•	Disable automount on the vRanger machine:

Click Start > All Programs, and enter diskpart.

Run the automount disable command to disable automatic drive letter assignment.

•	Run the automount scrub command to clean any registry entries pertaining to previously mounted volumes.

•	On your storage device, zone your LUNs so that the vRanger HBA or iSCSI initiator can see and read them.

•	Only one vRanger server should see a set of VMFS LUNs at one time. For backups only, The vRanger server should have only read-only access to the LUNs. To perform LAN-free restores, ensure that the vRanger server has Read + Write access to any zoned VMFS LUNs to which you want to restore.