vRanger 7.7 - Installation/Upgrade Guide

Feature-level requirements

Feature-level requirements

Some vRanger features and functions have requirements or limitations that do not apply to the rest of the product. Review this list to ensure that all requirements are understood. The features and functions described here are:

•	Standard backup, restore, and replication

•	Physical backup and restore

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HotAdd

•	File-level restore (FLR): Windows

•	FLR: Linux

•	Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)

Standard backup, restore, and replication

Standard backup, restore, and replication

For basic backup and replication functions, vRanger supports any Guest OS that is supported by VMware. For a complete list, see the VMware Guest Operating System Installation Guide.

For advanced functions, such as file-level restore (FLR) or additional application consistency, see the requirements in the following topics:

•	File-level restore (FLR): Windows

•	FLR: Linux

•	Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)

Additional replication requirements

The following limitations and requirements apply to replication:

•	vRanger replication does not operate with servers that are behind a network address translation (NAT) firewall. To replicate through a NAT firewall properly, you must have an IP tunnel in place between two NATed subnets. Contact your ISP provider to see if this option is available to you.

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The VM hardware cannot be changed during replication. For this reason, the VM must be at a hardware version level that is compatible with both the source and target servers. The VMware® ESXi™ version of the source and target hosts does not matter, as long as the VM hardware is supported on both ESXi versions. For more information on VM hardware versions and compatibility, see the VMware documentation at https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/.

•	A continuous connection between source and target sites is required when replication is taking place.

•	Excessive network packet loss could result in replication failure. Replication does work with links having average packet loss of less than 2%. Replication is not designed to work in replication environments where packet loss exceeds commercially accepted limits.

•	Networks having 99% uptime and availability generally provide for good Replication performance.

Physical backup and restore

Physical backup and restore

•	Ensure that the physical server is running a supported operating system. Refer to Supported platforms for physical machine backup for more information.

•	Ensure that the physical server is not booting into UEFI. The vRanger Boot CD does not support UEFI.

HotAdd

HotAdd

To perform backup/restore/replication tasks using HotAdd, vRanger must be installed on a VM. Also:

•	HotAdd only works on SCSI disks. IDE disks and vRDMs are not supported.

•	Datastores for the target VMs must be accessible to the vRanger VM.

•	vRanger can only perform operations on VMs within the same data center.

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HotAdd cannot be used if the VMFS block size of the datastore containing the VM folder for the target VM does not match the VMFS block size of the datastore containing the vRanger VM. For example, if you back up a virtual disk on a datastore with 1 MB blocks, the proxy must also be on a datastore with 1 MB blocks.

•	Backing up thick disk requires the maximum disk size to be available. When backing up a thick disk, the vRanger VM’s datastore must have at least as much space available as the maximum configured disk size for the VM to be backed up.