Rapid Recovery 6.6 - User Guide

The Rapid Snap for Virtual feature of Rapid Recovery is supported on vCenter/ESXi or on Hyper-V hypervisors. This feature, also known as agentless protection, lets you protect VMs running on your protected hypervisor in your Core without installing the Rapid Recovery Agent software on each guest machine.

General recommendations

Rapid Snap for Virtual has nearly achieved parity with protection provided by installing the Rapid Recovery Agent software. As a general rule, Quest recommends using agentless protection on ESXi or Hyper-V virtual machines. If the Agent software is installed on ESXi or Hyper-V VMs, unless there is a compelling reason to explicitly protect your VM using Rapid Recovery Agent, Quest recommends removing the Agent software, and protecting your VMs agentlessly.

There are some advantages to protecting agentlessly, and some limitations. These are clearly described in the topic Understanding Rapid Snap for Virtual.

Exceptions to the recommendation to use agentless protection are as follows:

• Gathering metadata for agentless machines is slower than for machines protected by the Rapid Recovery Agent software. If you experience performance issues related to metadata (specifically for agentlessly protected Exchange Server or SQL Server machines), Quest Data Protection Support may suggest installing the software-based Agent on specific application servers for troubleshooting purposes.
•   If protecting only one or two VMs on a hypervisor with multiple sockets, you may consume fewer licenses by installing Agent directly on the VMs instead of the host.
•  If you require features exclusive to Rapid Recovery Agent, install the Agent software on relvant VMs.

Some features are unique to protection by installing the Rapid Recovery Agent software. The following examples apply:

• Performing a SQL attachability check is a capability of the Rapid Recovery Agent software. If protecting your SQL Server machine agentlessly, you must perform SQL Attachability checks using an instance of SQL Server installed on the Core server. To perform this check, you must adjust your Core Attachability setting on the Core to Use SQL Server on the Core.
• Dynamic volumes protected agentlessly are protected at the disk level, not the volume level.
• Live Recovery is a feature of the Rapid Recovery Agent software. You cannot use this feature when restoring volumes protected using Rapid Snap for Virtual (nor for Linux machines or when restoring CSVs).

If you require any of the features described in the previous list for a specific VM, Quest recommends installing Agent instead of protecting the VM agentlessly.

For more information, see the topic Understanding Rapid Snap for Virtual.

Release 6.6 license consumption concepts

As described in the Rapid Recovery Installation and Upgrade Guide topic "Understanding Rapid Recovery licenses," Rapid Recovery 6.2 and later uses only two license pools: Capacity, and Enterprise. If licensing for your Core is set up to use a capacity-based pool, you cannot use another pool type.

DL series backup appliances use back-end capacity-based licensing, and are not affected by license pool restrictions. Software-based Rapid Recovery environments using front-end capacity licensing likewise receive no license benefits from using agentless protection. Other benefits for using agentless protection are relevant even when Capacity license pools are in use.

If your Rapid Recovery release 6.2 or later environment uses an Enterprise license pool, then the following rules apply:

• Hyper-V or vCenter/ESXi hypervisor hosts protected with Rapid Recovery Agent consume one license from the pool for each processor socket. If your hypervisor host has six CPU sockets, it consumes 6 licenses from the Enterprise pool.
• Any other machine (physical or virtual) protected in your Core with Rapid Recovery Agent consumes one license from that pool. This is true even for application servers (such as Exchange Server, SQL Server, or Oracle Database 12c) with multiple CPU sockets.

Licensing benefits of using agentless protection

You can protect guest VMs on a vCenter/ESXi hypervisor host by running the Protect Multiple Machines Wizard. On the Connection page of this wizard, if you specify Protect selected VMs agentlessly, the guest VMs on that host are protected agentlessly. For those VMs, no licenses are consumed from your license pool. While Rapid Recovery Agent is not installed on the host, adding that host to your Core consumes one license for each CPU socket.

When you protect a Hyper-V Server, Rapid Recovery Agent is installed on the host. For each CPU socket on that hypervisor host, one license from your Enterprise pool is consumed. If you specify protecting the Hyper-V server agentlessly, guest VMs are protected agentlessly, and for those VMs, no licenses are consumed from your available license pool.

When you protect a Hyper-V cluster, Rapid Recovery Agent is installed on each node in the cluster. Only a single license is consumed from your license pool. The total number of CPU sockets in the cluster are consumed. If you specify protecting the Hyper-V cluster agentlessly, guest VMs are protected agentlessly, and for those VMs, no licenses are consumed from your available license pool on the cluster.

The chief licensing benefit to using Rapid Snap for Virtual is a reduction in consumption of licenses from your Enterprise license pool for the VMs you protect. If you specify agentless protection for an ESXi hypervisor host, or a Hyper-V server or cluster, all new VMs created on the host are automatically protected agentlessly, and do not consume licenses from your Enterprise license pool.

If some of the VMs on that hypervisor host previously had Rapid Recovery Agent installed, and your Core is running Rapid Recovery release 6.2 or later, you should do one of the following:

• Remove the Agent software and protect the VM agentlessly. No licenses from your pool are consumed.
• If you require the machine to be protected by Agent, and the host is added to the Core, associate the VM with its parent host. You get the benefit of Agent-based protection, and no license is consumed.
• Make no changes. The VM is protected using the APIs in Rapid Recovery Agent, and a single license is consumed.

Each virtual machine on a hypervisor added to your Core is protected agentlessly without consuming a license. To obtain this benefit, you must do the following:

The chief licensing benefit to using Rapid Snap for Virtual is a reduction in consumption of licenses from your Enterprise license pool for the VMs you protect. Each virtual machine on a hypervisor added to your Core is protected agentlessly without consuming a license. To obtain this benefit, you must do the following:

• Protect VMs agentlessly. You can explicitly protect VMs by using the Protect Multiple Machines wizard. When protecting a hypervisor host, you can also select the option to Auto protect new virtual machines, which implicitly protects new VMs when they are created.
• Associate the guest VM with its protected hypervisor host. If Rapid Recovery Agent is installed, its APIs (not those native to the hypervisor) are used to protect the VM. However, you can reduce licenses consumed by associating the VM with the host that has been added to the Core. This association is performed at the machine level for each virtual machine. The process of linking the guest VM with its parent hypervisor host is described in step 3 of the procedure Viewing and modifying protected machine settings.
• Uninstall Agent. Unless otherwise recommended, remove any copies of the Agent software from the virtual machine.

For a discussion of benefits and limitations regarding agentless protection, additional software recommended, minimum requirements for the host, and so on, see the topic Understanding Rapid Snap for Virtual.