PowerProtect Data Manager 19.15 Kubernetes User Guide

Add a VM Direct Engine

Perform the following steps in the Protection Engines window of the PowerProtect Data Manager UI to deploy an external VM Direct Engine, also referred to as a VM proxy. The VM Direct Engine facilitates data movement for virtual machine protection policies, Kubernetes cluster protection policies that require a VM proxy instead of the cProxy, and network attached storage (NAS) protection policies.

1. From the left navigation pane, select Infrastructure > Protection Engines.
   The Protection Engines window appears.
2. In the VM Direct Engines pane of the Protection Engines window, click Add.
   The Add Protection Engine wizard displays.
3. On the Protection Engine Configuration page, complete the required fields, which are marked with an asterisk.
   • Hostname, Gateway, IP Address, Netmask, and Primary DNS—Note that either only IPv4 addresses or only IPv6 addresses are supported.

     Deploy protection engines with fully qualified domain names (FQDNs) or IP addresses only. Short names are no longer supported. Existing protection engines which were deployed with short names are deprecated. Subsequent releases might require you to delete and redeploy these protection engine with FQDNs or IP addresses instead. When you deploy protection engines with FQDNs, each FQDN must have a DNS record.

   • vCenter to Deploy—If you have added multiple vCenter server instances, select the vCenter server to which to deploy the protection engine.
     NOTE:Ensure that you do not select the internal vCenter server.
   • ESX Host/Cluster—Select to which cluster or ESXi host you want to deploy the protection engine.
   • Network—Displays all the networks that are available under the selected ESXi Host/Cluster. For virtual networks (VLANs), this network carries Management traffic.
   • Data Store—Displays all datastores that are accessible to the selected ESXi Host/Cluster based on ranking (whether the datastores are shared or local), and available capacity (the datastore with the most capacity appearing at the top of the list).

     You can choose the specific datastore on which the protection engine resides, or leave the default selection of <automatic> to allow PowerProtect Data Manager to determine the best location to host the protection engine.

   • Transport Mode—Select Hot Add.
   • Supported Protection Type—Select whether this protection engine is intended for Virtual Machine, Kubernetes Tanzu guest cluster, or NAS asset protection.
4. Click Next.
5. On the Networks Configuration page:
   If this is a cloud-based OVA deployment of PowerProtect Data Manager, click Next and proceed to step 7.

   The Networks Configuration page configures the virtual network (VLAN) to use for Data traffic. To continue without virtual network configuration, leave the Preferred Network Portgroup selection blank and then click Next.

   1. From the Preferred Network Portgroup list, select a VST (Virtual Switch Tagging) or VGT (Virtual Guest Tagging) network.
      If you select a VGT portgroup, the list displays all virtual networks within the trunk range. If you select a VST portgroup, the list displays only the virtual network for the current VLAN ID.
   2. Select one or more virtual networks from the list.

      A protection engine requires an IP address from the static IP pool for each selected virtual network. If there are not enough IP addresses in a pool, the wizard prompts you to supply additional addresses for that network.

      Ensure that the selected virtual networks support a traffic type that is compatible with protection engines. The PowerProtect Data Manager Administrator Guide provides more information about traffic types.

   3. If required, type an available static IP address or IP address range in the Additional IP Addresses column for the indicated virtual network.

      For convenience when working with multiple virtual networks, you can also use one of the Auto Expand options:

      • Expand Last IP—The wizard increments the host portion of the last IP address in the static IP pool. Click Apply.
      • Same Last Digit—The wizard adds the network portion of the IP address to the specified value. Type the host portion of the IP address and then click Apply.

      The wizard updates the value in the Additional IP addresses column for each selected network. Verify the proposed IP addresses.

   4. Click Next.
6. When adding a VM Direct Engine for Kubernetes guest cluster protection, add a second network interface card (NIC) if the PowerProtect controller pod running in the guest cluster cannot reach the VM Direct Engine on the primary network. Provide information for the second NIC, and then click Next.
7. On the Summary page, review the information and then click Finish.
   The protection engine is added to the VM Direct Engines pane. An additional column indicates the engine purpose. Note that it can take several minutes to register the new protection engine in PowerProtect Data Manager. The protection engine also appears in the vSphere Client.