NetApp have finally released the latest and greatest version of their SnapManager for VI product.

An essential addition to any infrastructure running both VMware & NetApp it allows guaranteed crash consistent versions of Virtual Machines to be replicated to secondary sights.

New functionality and enhancements include:

• Singe file restore (SFR)
• A single wizard for creating manual and scheduled backup jobs
• New backup job options:
  • The ability to include independent disks
  • The ability to exclude specified datastores
  • The ability to trigger prebackup or postbackup scripts per backup job (the scripts must be in the server/scripts folder on the SMVI server before you can select them in the SnapManager 2.0 for Virtual Infrastructure user interface)
• An advanced find option to search for specific backup jobs:
  • Most recent backup (default)
  • Backups within a specified time period
  • Backups that include VMware snapshots
• New restore granularity option (besides SFR):
  • VMDKs

So a lot going on here and certainly worth the wait.  You can grab a copy now from the NOW site.

My, my I am excited.  I know that I do get excited about virtualisation related stuff regularly, but the same can certainly not be said about backup technology.  I have made an exception to my no excitement about backup rule after attending the hands-on lab for vCenter Data Recovery, outstanding!!

The best things often are the simplest and this tool is not complicated, but it just did exactly what most SMB businesses want from a backup solution and that is to work, without having to go to another vendor.

A few of the highlights as I saw:

• All managed through an extension to the vCenter Server GUI and completely integrated in a seamless way
• Destination volumes are encryptable
• SAN based backups
• ESX host integrated VCB
• Retention of backups is completely based on policies
  • Few – 7 most recent backups
  • Medium – 7 most recent backups, but kept for longer
  • Many – 15 most recent backups for a similar period to medium
  • Custom – Whatever you want them to be
• Schedule driven
• Multiple jobs can be run at once
• Restore jobs can run alongside backup jobs simultaneously
• Exclusions can be applied
• Restore rehearsal can restore a VM backup without overwriting the original
• Data-deduplication of backups is achieved by only backing up changes after the first full backup
• VSS leveraged using VMware Tools in Windows Virtual Machines

File level backups will be in the final release according to one of the VMware guys manning the lab and the documentation also alluded to this functionality.

I might be wrong, but it looked like it was all being driven by another CentOS JeOS Virtual Appliance, so VMware are staying true to their assertion that the future of software is through dedicated appliances!

Start as you mean to go on.

Finally, someone from VMware has used the name vSphere in public at an event that matters.  I think that it has been fairly well known that this was going to be the name, even amongst those people that are not part of the beta program.

I have to be frank and say that I’m not sure how well received the name will be , but time will tell.

Other announcements included vCenter Heartbeat, which has cropped up a lot in the sessions lists.  I will be attending the sessions covering this new functionality so will bring more information when I can.

I’ve been using the ESX Deployment Appliance for a while now and really, really love it.  One thing that I have had to do though is to change the regional settings and keyboard settings to be UK based instead of US based for the deployed ESX installations.

It’s not difficult to do so here’s how:

Log into the appliance

Open /var/www/ks/ks.php with vi

Change the following:

lang en_US to lang en_UK

langsupport –default en_US to langsupport –default en_UK

keyboard us to keyboard uk

That should be it, as these changes don’t require a reboot. You can check whether they were applied correctly by clicking the ks link next to one of your hosts in the EDA web interface:

I had a customer that had a requirement to backup the ESX Service Console settings and wanted to know the best files to backup. I suggested that it may be more prudent to create unattended installation media to make restores more seamless. This took a turn and I was asked to make a single CD that was capable of restoring any one of the 11 ESX hosts in the clusters. With a lot of reading and a lot of testing this was achieved and this document explains how I did it.

Most of the information came from a multitude of different blog posts and knowledge base articles, but the two main articles are referenced in the appendix, but they deserve special mention:

VMProfessional – Custom .iso with integrated kickstarts

Yellow Bricks – Scripted install

These sites are always fantastic, but they proved absolutely invaluable for me during this exercise, so thanks guys.

I hope that the document adds some value, but if you think that I have got anything wrong or can offer some enhancements please don’t hesitate to comment on the post and I will update the document.

Scott Lowe has written an article that discusses the pros & cons of FlexClone & A-SIS when used in conjunction with a VMware environment.

If you are just getting to grips with these technolgies (like me) it is a very useful starting point to understand how the two technologies may work with VMware.

I was investigating it when used with VMware VDI so there are a few very useful tips indeed.