vRanger 7.6.4 - Installation/Upgrade Guide

Introduction

Quest® vRanger®: at a glance

vRanger provides a simple, fast, and scalable data- protection solution that deploys seamlessly into virtual environments. vRanger provides high-speed backup and recovery of VMware®, Hyper-V®, and physical Windows Server® environments. It also provides high-speed replication for VMware. It protects entire virtual environments in minutes, detecting and backing up new virtual machines (VMs) automatically, and delivers safe, scalable data protection to even the largest VMware and Hyper-V environments. With vRanger, you can locate and restore individual files in seconds — even if they are buried in virtual and physical backups — from a single, intuitive interface.

vRanger supports enterprise deduplication and delivers disk-to-disk backup with the Quest DR appliances, EMC® Data Domain®, and Quest NetVault™ SmartDisk to reduce backup storage costs and improve backup time with client-side deduplication.

vRanger scales with your virtual environment by maximizing resources through distributed processing, while simplifying management with central command and control.

vRanger capabilities include:

•	Protect entire VMware and Hyper-V environments in minutes.

•	Deliver high-speed, storage-thrifty backup and restore for VMware, Hyper-V, and physical Windows servers.

•	Quickly locate and restore individual files from virtual and physical backups.

•	Replicate key VMs for offsite disaster recovery preparedness.

•	Deploy scalable data protection for even the largest virtual infrastructures.

Key benefits

Key benefits

vRanger benefits include:

•	Exploits VMware vSphere® performance and scalability enhancements.

•	Provides high-speed, resource-efficient backup, replication, and recovery of VMware® and Hyper-V® VM images.

•	Delivers maximum storage savings when paired with the Quest DR Series appliance, EMC® Data Domain®, or NetVault SmartDisk.

•	Supports EMC Data Domain Boost and Quest DR RDA for optimized deduplication and replication.

•	Operates as an easy-to-deploy, low-resource consumption virtual appliance (VA) for low-impact scalability.

•	Improves VM backup and recovery performance with HotAdd support.

•	Optimizes use of critical resources in virtual environments, including hypervisor hosts, networks, and storage.

•	Includes a catalog for fast file searching and file-level restore.

•	Provides protection for the largest VM deployments.

•	Offers agent-less, maintenance-free deployment.

•	Delivers proven reliability.

•	Provides unmatched performance and scalability.

•	Comes with world-class service and support.

Major feature list

Major feature list

vRanger backs up and recovers physical environments with blazing speed, a minimum of backup storage, and can restore Windows servers and even individual files and folders. With vRanger, you get comprehensive protection for both your virtual and physical environments that you can manage from one simple interface.

•	VMware® Ready™ Certified for vSphere® 6: Ensures reliable, safe, and scalable operation with vSphere 6.

•	VMware vSphere / ESXi / vCloud / Virtual SAN, Virtual Volumes, Storage Profiles, and DRS cluster support – Provides a wide range of backup and recovery and disaster recovery (DR) capabilities for VMware virtual infrastructures.

•	Microsoft Hyper-V 2016: Supports the latest Hyper-V versions.

•	Virtual appliance (VA) architecture: Through centralized and wizard-driven deployment and administration from the vRanger server, delivers scalable and cost-effective distributed data handling and throughput through VAs.

•	Disk-to-disk backup and deduplication: Supports Quest DR Series system Rapid Data Access (RDA) for optimized client-side deduplication and replication.

•	EMC® Data Domain® (DD Boost™) support: Supports distributed deduplication with EMC Data Domain appliances using the DD Boost API.

•	Disk-to-disk backup and deduplication: Offers a Quest NetVault SmartDisk - vRanger Edition add on for enterprise-class deduplication that reduces backup storage footprints by up to 90 percent.

•	VMware HotAdd support: Performs LAN-free backups with vRanger installed inside a VM and from the vRanger VA. Additionally, HotAdd accelerates network backups of ESXi.

•	Patented Active Block Mapping (ABM): Eliminates inactive and white space blocks from protected Windows VMs to speed backup, replication, and recovery jobs as well as reduce network and storage requirements.

•	Change block tracking (CBT): Eliminates the time required to scan for changed blocks in guest images on vSphere hypervisor systems to improve the speed of backup and replication jobs.

•	Instant file-level restore (FLR) for Windows and Linux®: Lets you restore a single file from a backup image in the repository through a one-step process.

•	Patented native, full catalog capability: Provides a native, full catalog of every image in the backup repository, enabling immediate identification of available recovery positions, with one-click restore. Wildcard scanning feature locates backup repository files to be restored.

•	Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)-256: Secures protected images block-by-block on the VMware host as they are read so they are also secure over the network and in the backup repository.

•	Full, incremental, and differential backup:  Enables a complete backup cycle for protected images that is optimized for speed and resource efficiency.

•	Full and differential replication: Provides the full range of options required to replicate VMware VMs over LANs and WANs efficiently.

•	Replication: Offers on- and off-site options for flexible, reliable disaster recovery.

•	Physical Windows Server® support: Supports backup and recovery of Windows physical servers, files, and folders.

•	Synthetic recovery: Delivers single-pass restore, reading each required block only one time from multiple full, incremental, and differential backup images in the repository for the fastest, most efficient results.

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VMware vSphere® vMotion® and Storage vMotion® support: vSphere vMotion support ensures vRanger automatically protects VMware VMs as they move from one host to another, even when backup jobs are running. It also ensures vRanger follows VM storage disks when they are relocated to different data stores; locks VM storage disks when vRanger accesses the disks during a job.

•	Agent-less job execution, patent-pending: Uses binary injection at run time on VMware ESXi hosts; eliminates burdens of license tracking and maintenance upgrades.

•	Advanced savepoint management: Lets you manage and use multiple point-in-time copies of backup and replica images for precise image, file, and object restores.

•	Dynamic resource management: Optimizes real-time use of critical resources; ensures efficiency and that jobs complete faster without exceeding resource capacity.

•	Job multi-streaming: Lets you run multiple backup, restore, and replication jobs simultaneously for dramatic improvement in performance times.

•	Direct-to-target (D2T) architecture: Distributes job execution and movement of data with optimal efficiency to improve data protection and ensure seamless scalability.

•	Inline data validation: Tests integrity of captured data on the source block-by- block as it is read; ensures image recovery from the backup repository and replica-image usability.

•	Remote management: Lets you manage data protection jobs through a central console over LAN and WAN connections for control of all systems and sites in an environment.

•	PowerShell® access: Automate scripts for protection jobs, reducing administrative burdens and human error.

Target audience

Target audience

This guide is intended for backup administrators and other technical personnel who are responsible for designing and implementing a backup strategy for the organization. A good understanding of the operating system (OS) on which vRanger is running is assumed.