As a Service Provider who builds the offering around VMware vCloud Director to reduce infrastructure costs and operational costs, why not to also reduce the costs associated with the backup of the tenant vApps? Why not offload the backup tasks to your tenant to freely backup their vApps at a time that suits them
, and configured as they want?
If you are a service provider, or a company running VMware vCloud Director, and you are not aware of this offering, Veeam software has an exciting, intelligent and innovative product with functionality that can help you to backup your tenants infrastructure with functionality lacking in many backup products on the market.
Although the Veeam vCloud Director integration feature is not new, I have decided to write about it because I notice that many backup admins, IT managers, and CTOs are not aware of what Veeam software can offer in this intelligent backup space. To quote one of the service providers I met some time ago: “This VMware vCloud Director integration is the best integration we have ever seen, and we are using many well-known backup products in our data center.”
Make the Connection
The integration between vCloud Director and Veeam will start after deploying the Veeam Backup & Replication product; all it needs to begin the deployment is to navigate to the Veeam Backup Infrastructure on the Veeam console, (see the icon).
Next, select Add VMware vCloud Director. (see the icon following),
Next, run through the setup wizard by entering the server Hostname/IP:
Last step, tick the checkbox for the credentials of the vCD server and vCentre Server.
Apply and Finish
That’s all that it takes to configure the Veeam vCD integration; simple and to the point. When you wish to start backing up your vCD infrastructure, you will be ready to create a vCD type backup,
and then chose the vApp, or tenant, to be backed up.
Configure the Tenant Self-service Portal
The advanced integration Veeam software offers in vCloud Director is the self-service that service providers can offer to their hosted tenants. By enabling the self-service feature, the hosted tenants can create their own backup jobs, and restore their own data. Again, and as usual with Veeam products, configuring for the integration is very simple. It will start with Veeam Enterprise Manager.
Complete these steps to configure the backup and recover self-service for each tenant:
Run Veeam Enterprise Manager. Browse to the configuration tab; at the Backup Server option, add the Veeam Backup and Replication server.
After you have added the Veeam server, you will notice a new VCLOD option on the left-hand side menu. From here, you can start configuring the self-service for each tenant. Select the VCLOD option, and then press Add. You can now start the tenant self-service option configuration.
Customize the Job Setting for Tenants
From the screenshot shown below, you can see that the Organization “halgroup” has been granted a repository Quota of 200 GB; and it also has unrestricted job scheduling. However, service providers can restrict the tenant self-service job scheduling to the following options:
Also as a service provider, you can copy advanced job settings from a vCD job where the you can change the advanced backup job settings; such as:
- Backup mode
- Storage configuration
- vShpere
- Backup proxy
Tenant Self-Service Portal
Up until this stage, all the above preparations and configurations have taken place on the service provider side. For the tenant to use the self-service feature, he must connect to the service provider’s enterprise manager URL with the following URL to access his own self-service portal:
https://serviceprovide-EM-URL:9443/vCloud/OrganizationName[Tenant]
The tenant must use his vCD organisation’s username and password to access the portal. The tenant can monitor a job, create a backup job, in addition to restoring from the backup.
Conclusion
Veeam VMware vCloud Director integration is a very deep and comprehensive integration. Of course, there are many other features we haven’t addressed on this blog; we want to keep the blogs short and to the point. The big surprise for me, and which lead me to write about this integration, is the lack of awareness among many service provider decision makers and IT professionals about this great feature. By writing about it, I hope everyone can skill up and experience the convenience of this Veeam vCD integration.
