ESX hosts are being backed-up in the traditional "direct-to-target" manner in (i.e. where the ESX host processes the backup itself and writes the archive directly to the Repository storage), but extremely slow throughput is noticed. Also, very large amounts of network i/o occur on the vRanger machine/VM, unlike the very low levels one would expect in a direct-to-target backup scenario.
By default, in vRanger 5.x, two credentialing types are available when the application is configured initially; Virtual Center credentials and Host credentials. During the initial Startup Wizard configuration of Ranger, when the Virtual Center is added (or subsequently, a new Virtual Center is added from the "My Inventory" screen), credentials are entered for the Virtual Center to allow vRanger to use it. Adding these credentials alone in vRanger 5.x is sufficient to grant access to the hosts that the particular Virtual Center manages. This is meant to make credentialing ESXi/vSphere 5.x hosts individually unnecessary, as those VMWare host types cannot perform direct-to-target backups (due to the fact they have no Service Console present upon which to process them). With these host types, all backups are proxied through the vRanger machine using the VDDK vStorage API from VMWare. While Virtual Center credentialing allows setup of ESXi/vSphere 5.x to be simpler, since no individual host credentials need to be applied, this is disadvantageous if the VMware environment consists of ESX 4.x hosts (i.e. with a Service Console component), and direct-to-target backups are desired. The reason for this is that the Virtual Center credentialing method forces all backups to use the VDDK API, and hence proxy through the vRanger machine. This explains the high network utilization/slow backup speeds in this scenario, as all traffic is now being processed by the vRanger machine itself, and not the ESX hosts.
The credentialing of individual hosts needs to be done to allow the traditional direct-to-target backup method.
1) Go to "Tools --->Startup Wizard". Go to the screen where the Virtual Center(s) and ESX hosts are added.
2) Note that for Virtual Center credentialing, a small, "two-boxes" green VMWare icon appears next to the host name on the left. A larger gold-key on the right indicates the host is licensed (by either credentialing method). A grey key indicates the host is credentialied (by either method), but not licensed (these hosts may be restored to only; backups require them to be both licensed and credentialied).
3) For ESX hosts with the Virtual Center credential icon appearing, check the checkbox next to the name of the host(s). When all needed hosts are selected, click the "Edit" button. Enter the appropriate ESX username and password and the "root" password for the host(s). If direct root access via SSH is enabled on your host(s), simply enter "root" as the username, then the root password.
4) Click the "Save" button, and all the hosts (if the right username/passwords have been supplied) should now show a second small gold key icon in place of the "two boxes" green VMWare icon that was initially present. This indicates Host-level credentials are applied to the host, and backups should now progress normally.
See the vRanger 5.x Install and Deployment guides for more in depth information.
