Preventive Service Planning
Abstract
This document details the backup and restore requirements for hypervisors (Microsoft® Hyper-V and VMware) and for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances for IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Version 10.1.6.
Content
This document is divided into linked sections for ease of navigation. Use the following links to jump to the section of the document that you require:
Hyper-V requirements
The Microsoft Hyper-V server must meet the following minimum requirements:
- Hyper-V Server 2016 or Microsoft Hyper-V on Windows Server 2016
- Hyper-V Server 2019 (beginning with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus V10.1.4) or Microsoft Hyper-V on Windows Server 2019 (beginning with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus V10.1.3)
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus protects virtual machines (VMs) that are enabled to use the Hyper-V Replica feature. Depending on your Hyper-V environment, you might be required to update some service level agreement (SLA) policies when you update your system environment to IBM Spectrum Protect Plus V10.1.6. For more information about the requirements for upgrading VMs in Hyper-V environments, see Additional steps for updating virtual machines in Hyper-V Replica environments
To protect Hyper-V data, first add Hyper-V servers to IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, and then create jobs to back up and restore the Hyper-V data, as described in Backing up and restoring Hyper-V data
Before you configure Hyper-V servers, review the requirements for each configuration step:
- Registering the providers that you want to back up.
Hyper-V servers can be registered by using a Domain Name System (DNS) name or an Internet Protocol (IP) address. DNS names must be resolvable by IBM Spectrum Protect Plus. If the Hyper-V server is part of a cluster, all nodes in the cluster must be resolvable by DNS. If DNS is not available, you must add the server to the /etc/hosts file on the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus virtual appliance by using the command line. If more than one Hyper-V server is set up in a cluster environment, you must add all of the servers to the /etc/hosts file. When you are registering the cluster in IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, register the Failover Cluster Manager. - Configuring SLA policies.
If a VM is associated with multiple SLA policies, ensure that the policies are not scheduled to run concurrently. Either schedule the SLA policies to run with a significant amount of time between them, or combine them into a single SLA policy.
If a VM is protected by an SLA policy, the backups of the VM are retained based on the retention parameters of the SLA policy, even if the VM is removed. - Ensure that the 64-bit Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package is installed on the VM guest machine, before you start restore operation from a backup image.
- Ensuring that the newest Hyper-V integration services are installed:
- For Microsoft Windows environments, see Supported Windows guest operating systems for Hyper-V on Windows Server
- For Linux® environments, see Supported Linux and FreeBSD virtual machines for Hyper-V on Windows
Before you back up or restore Hyper-V data, take the following actions:
- Ensure that the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Service is running on all Hyper-V servers, including cluster nodes. In the Services window, set the startup type for the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Service to Automatic so that the service is available when the Hyper-V server or cluster node starts.
- Ensure that the appropriate roles and resource groups are assigned to users who will initiate backup and restore operations. Grant users access to roles and resource groups by using the Accounts pane. Add the user to the local administrator group on the Hyper-V server.
- If you plan to restore a VM by using clone mode and by using the original IP configuration, ensure that credentials are established through the Guest OS username and Guest OS Password options within the backup job definition.
Restrictions
- For Hyper-V data, backup and restore operations are supported only for virtual hard disks (VHDX). For more information, see Known Issues and Limitations: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus V10.1.6.x
- When you restore files from an IBM Spectrum Protect archive, files are initially migrated from tape storage to a staging pool. Depending on the size of the files to restore, this process might take several hours.
VMware requirements
The following VMware vSphere versions are supported:
- vSphere 6.0, including all updates and patch levels
- vSphere 6.5, including all updates and patch levels
- vSphere 6.7, including all updates and patch levels (beginning with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus V10.1.2)
- vSphere 7.0, including all updates and patch levels (beginning with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus V10.1.6)
Ensure that the most recent version of VMware Tools is installed on VMware VMs.
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus supports VMware VM tags.
Backing up and restoring encrypted VM is supported with vSphere 6.5 and later.
Ensure that the 64-bit Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package is installed on the VM guest machine, before you start restore operation from a backup image.
A Network File System (NFS) volume might be mounted to any number of datacenters that belong to the same vCenter. If an NFS volume is mounted on more than one datacenter, vCenter treats the same volume as two different datastores. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus treats it as a single datastore and combines all of the VMs and virtual machine disks (VMDKs) residing on the datastore from all of the datacenters on which the datastore is mounted. Any SLA selection against this datastore causes all of the VMs from the different datacenters to be backed up or restored in IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus V10.1.5 and later protects VMs that are managed by a VMware Cloud (VMC) on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC). For more information, see IBM Spectrum Protect Plus for VMware Cloud on AWS
To protect VMware data, first add vCenter Server instances to IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, and then create jobs to back up and restore data, as described in Backing up and restoring VMware data
- When a vCenter Server instance is added to IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, an inventory of the instance is captured. The inventory is required so that users can complete backup and restore jobs, and run reports.
- At least one SLA policy must be configured for the VMware data.
- Before an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus user can implement backup and restore operations, roles and resource groups must be assigned to the user. Grant users access to roles and resource groups by using the Accounts pane.
- If a VM is associated with multiple SLA policies, ensure that the policies are not scheduled to run concurrently. Either schedule the SLA policies to run with a significant amount of time between them, or combine them into a single SLA policy.
- If your vCenter is a virtual machine, to help maximize data protection, have the vCenter on a dedicated datastore and backed up in a separate backup job.
- Ensure that destinations for restore jobs are registered in IBM Spectrum Protect Plus. This requirement applies to restore jobs that restore data to new hosts or clusters.
- If you plan to restore a VM by using clone mode and the original IP configuration, ensure that credentials are established through the Guest OS username and Guest OS Password options within the backup job definition.
Restrictions
- Restored VM templates cannot be powered on after recovery of a VM.
- Secure Shell (SSH) keys are not a valid authorization mechanism for Windows platforms.
- Ensure that the most recent version of VMware Tools is installed in your environment.
- Physical RDM (pRDM) volumes do not support snapshots. VMs that contain one or more raw device-mapping (RDM) volumes that are provisioned in pRDM mode are backed up. However, the pRDM volumes are not processed as part of the VM backup operation.
Amazon EC2 requirements
Beginning with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus V10.1.6, support is added or backing up and restoring data in Amazon EC2 instances.
To protect Amazon EC2 data, first add an EC2 account to IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, and then create jobs for backup and restore operations for the EC2 instances that are associated with that account, as described in Backing up and restoring Amazon EC2 data
Before you back up or restore Amazon EC2 data, review the following requirements:
- To add an EC2 account to IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, access keys are required. Access keys are long-term credentials for an identity and access management (IAM) user or the AWS account root user.
- When an Amazon EC2 account is added to IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, an inventory of the instances that are associated with the account is captured. You can then run backup and restore jobs and generate reports for the instances.
- Ensure that one or more SLA policies are configured for the EC2 instances.
- Ensure that IBM Spectrum Protect Plus roles and resource groups are assigned to the user who will configure backup and restore jobs.
- If an account is associated with multiple SLA policies, ensure that the policies are not scheduled to run concurrently. Either schedule the SLA policies to run with a significant amount of time between them, or combine them into a single SLA policy.
- Ensure that destinations that you plan to use for restore jobs are registered in IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.
Related Information
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Modified date:
10 May 2021
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ibm12487063