disaster recovery question

In case of a Total Disaster where you want the NetWorker Server to be also recovered? or only the VMs to recover?

In case you want the VM's to be recovered from Tape, you need the below things ready from High Level..

1. NetWorker Server with Calatalogs

2. VBA appliance - with DR done

3. Restoration of the VM's from Clone copy

Hi Sgryl,

             At the DR site you will need to redeploy the VBA with the same name and recover the CheckPoint to get all catalogs back. In order for you to restore the VM's at the DR site from Tapes you will need another DataDomain and only then you will be able to recover the Data.

Hi Deb,

On 8.2.x , the DR of VBA is not required. You can simply deploy a new VBA and register it with same NetWorker server.

DR of VBA was required for 8.1.x versions.

Regards,

Chetan Tikandar

Hi sgryl,

As per your explanation, primary backups are to data-domain and then they are cloned to a tape. The clone tapes are now mounted onto the DR site.

I am assuming that on the DR site, the NetWorker backup server is same as the original name ( If you have already not done this, then you will need to have this performed i.e. the DR of NetWorker server and networker server has to come up on DR site with same name and bootstrap imported into it.) Once done, you have to do the following:

1) Deploy a new VBA with a new network, name, IP as you may wish. On 8.2.2 the original VBA is not needed.

2) Register this new VBA onto the same NetWorker server ( this will be your current DR NW server).

3) Launch the vSphere web client GUI and connect to the new VBA that was deployed through the EBR plug-in.

4) Go to the 'Restore' tab.

5) There you will find a new option 'Choose restore points from' . Here click on the dropdown list and you will see that your old VBA name is listed. Click on it and it will generate the backups list.

6) Choose the VM that you want to restore, expand and select the secondary copy availaible and proceed with 'restore' .

Note: You may have to mark the primary SSID copy as 'suspect' in case it doesnt go through.

Let me know,

Chetan Tikandar

Hi Chetan,

I have deployed the VBA @ DR Site but I registered it to DR Site Networker and tested some backups which runs fine.(yes I also installed Hotfix Charlie on it before test )

Now I wanted to test the Restore of VM’s which I back in Prod VBA and Clone to DR Site DD. But I think for that I need to register the DR VBA to Prod Networker.

Also I think 1 VBA can be registered to only 1 Networker server at a time, is that correct?

Also since there is a FW between Prod and DR, so in order to register the DR VBA to Prod Site Networker I need to open some ports.

Can you give me the list of Ports required to be open with source / destination.

Hi Ram,

your vba @DR site that you registered with DR site networker will work like expected setup, it then becomes as good as a primary server.

And 1 VBA can only be registered on 1 networker server.

Is this DR site NetWorker server having the same info as the primary NetWorker server? i.e. NetWorker1 == NetWorkerDR by all means?

The requirement is that You should have the primary and DR VBA both registered to the same NetWorker server. If your primary NW server has gone down then you have to build it up ( disaster recovery of NW server) again with same name in the DR site.

Now here on the DR site, when you launch the NMC, you will see both the primary VBA and secondary VBA listed under Configuration tab. IF the secondary VBA is not there then you can simply follow my steps from earlier comments and get it running.

Once this is done, login to the secondary VBA web client GUI,  you will be able to see the primary copies of the backups taken on primary VBA on the restore tab.

The firewall requirements are on page  28,29 of https://support.emc.com/docu57703_NetWorker-8.2-SP1-and-later-VMware-Integration-Guide.pdf?language=en_US

Hi Chetan,

Thx for your answers. Since the DR site has its own Vcenter server and DR VBA is deployed in DR Vcentre.

Do we also need to open ports for communication for DR VBA @ Prod Vcentre?

Like for eg, below are the ports i have requested to open for this to work, is it ok :

Hi Ram,

You have to open ports between DR VBA and the Production NetWorker backup server.  there is no need for separate vCenter connection but if your environment is behind firewall then you will have ensure that the connection completes from DR vCenter and reaches to the datazone where primary backup server resides.

Additionally the DR VBA will be needed to registered with the primary backup server, once you have the ports open then it will communicate successfully.

Regards,

Chetan Tikandar

Hi Chetan,

Thx for your reply. Finally the FW ports were opened. Now I have also Decom the VBA from DR Networker(since VBA needs to be registered to Prod NW server), using the KB 000335878.

Is there a way we can re-register this VBA to a PROD Networker server.

OR do i need to redeploy the VBA again all the way(Definitely there should be some way vai CLI or something, but unable to find in Support)

Let me know if you have the steps to do it.

Hi Ram,

Registering to another NetWorker server might not be supported. But since this  DR VBA is new, you can try the option 2 below and see if it helps. If it doesn't then option 1 will be the best way going forward.

Option 1) Deploy a fresh VBA on the DR site and then register it with the primary NW backup server.

Option 2)

On the DR site, launch the ebr-configure GUI for the DR VBA. IP will be something like this: https://DR-VBA-FQDN:8543/ebr-configure .  On the configuration page, remove the existing entries of the DR vCenter details and change it with the primary site vCenter credentials. Once this is done, go to the NetWorker configuration tab and then enter the VMUser password and get the VBA through a reboot and see if it helps showing up this DR VBA on the production NetWorker server.

Hi Chetan,

Seems Option 2 cant be done. Since DR Site has its own Vcentre server. And DR VBA is hosted on DR Site Vcenter.

Also the FW ports are opened only in between DR VBA & Prod NW Server.

Changing the Networker Hostname under the Configuration Tab is also grey out.

Thx

Ram

Dear Chetan,

Can you please mention a reference for this information?

And do you mean by this that CP discover and backup are no longer needed?

Hi Ahmed,

The discussion here got side-tracked from the initial query posted.  To answer to the first query that post'er did, I believe, there is a section now in NW-VMware integration guide as to how to DR without DataDomain at DR site. I haven't checked it and unsure though there is an option but a riskier and unsupported by EMC I guess.

To answer your query, on 8.2.x a new feature was introduced i.e. recovery from a secondary site.  Kindly check the NW-VMware Integration for the section with the same keywords.  We can simply deploy a new VBA at DR site by maintaining the original NW server ( or by building the primary NW server at target site again , including the res & mm). Once this new VBA is registered to same VBA server, it would eventually see the details from the primary site VBA too.  So you can simply login to the DR site vsphere web client GUI and choose the primary VBA. This works even when the primary VBA is no longer present. Also works when the primary VBA is still up and running.

For this to work, you should have the saveset already cloned to the DR site so that you can use the 'replica save set copy' for cross-vCenter restore ( i.e. recovery from a secondary site)

And... the references for these information is through my research and experience on EMC VBA and not to forget the EMC documentation available for VBA

Regards,

Chetan Tikandar