VADP Proxy
In IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, running VMware Backup jobs can be taxing on your system resources. By creating VADP-based VMware Backup job proxies, you enable load sharing and load balancing for those jobs.
The backup of a VMware virtual machine includes the following files:
- VMDKs corresponding to all disks. The base backup captures all allocated data, or all data if disks are on NFS datastores. Incremental backups will capture only changed blocks since the last successful backup.
- VM templates
- .vmx and, if available, .vmfx configuration files
- .nvram, which stores the state of the virtual machine's BIOS
If proxies exist, the entire processing load is shifted off the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus host machine and onto the proxies, else the entire load stays on the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus host. Within a Backup job, the processing load for any single VM is shifted to a single proxy machine; multiple VMs are shifted to multiple proxies if available.
If a proxy server goes down or is otherwise disabled before the start of the job, the other proxies (or if there are no other proxies, the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus host) take over and the job completes. If a proxy server becomes disabled during the running of a job, there is a possibility that the job will fail.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN:
- Determine how many proxies to create; the more proxies, the faster the jobs run. Each proxy is used merely to process data, and the results are returned through the host IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server. The only impact seen by the user is the improvement in performance when running the job.
System Requirements:
This feature is supported only in 64-bit quad core configurations in the following Linux environments:
- CentOS Linux 6.5+
- CentOS Linux 7.0+
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Fix pack 4 or later
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, all updates are supported
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, all updates are supported
The proxy must have the ability to mount NFS file systems, which in many cases requires an NFS client package to be installed. The exact package details vary based on the distribution, but are required for VADP proxy usage.
A minimum of 8 GB of RAM is required (16 GB recommended), along with 60 GB of disk space.
Each proxy must have a fully qualified domain name and must be able to resolve and reach vCenter.
vSnap servers must be reachable from the proxy. If a firewall is active on the proxy, the following ports on the vSnap server must be reachable (both TCP and UDP): 111, 2049, and 20048.
Port 8080 on the VADP proxy server must be open when the proxy server firewall is enabled. If the port is not open, VADP Backups will run on local vmdkbackup instead of the VADP proxy server.
Installer Notes:
The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus version of the VADP Proxy installer includes Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK) version
- External VADP Proxy support with vSphere 6.5
To create a proxy:
- From the navigation menu, expand System Configuration, then click VADP Proxy.
- Click Register Proxy. The Install VADP Proxy pane displays.
- Populate the fields:
- Hostname/IP
- Enter the resolvable IP address or a resolvable path and machine name.
- Select a site
- Select a site to associate with the VADP Proxy server.
- Use existing user
- Enable to select a previously entered username and password for the VADP Proxy server.
- Username
- Enter the user name for the VADP Proxy server.
- Password
- Enter the password for the VADP Proxy server.
- Click Install. The VADP Proxy is added to the VADP Proxy table.
- Click Register to register the VADP Proxy server. The server can be unregistered or suspended through the Actions menu. Suspending a VADP proxy prevents upcoming backup jobs from using the VADP proxy, and jobs utilizing a suspended or unregistered proxy will run locally, which may impact performance. Maintenance can be performed on the proxy while suspended. To resume usage of the proxy, select Actions > Resume.
- After successful registration, the service vadp is started on the proxy machine. A log file vadp.log is generated in /opt/IBM/SPP/logs directory.
- Repeat the previous steps for each proxy you want to create.
Set proxy options through the Actions > Set Options menu:
From the Options icon associated with a VADP proxy, select Set Options. The following options are available for registered VADP proxies:
- Site - Assign a site to the VADP proxy.
- User - Select a previously entered username and password for the VADP Proxy server. To enable automatic updates of the VADP proxy, a previously entered username must be selected.
- Transport Modes - Set the Transport Modes to be utilized by the VADP Proxy. Available options include File, SAN, HotAdd, NBDSSL, and NBD. For more information about VMware transport modes, see the following VMware article - https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vddk.pg.doc%2FvddkDataStruct.5.5.html.
- Enable NBDSSL Compression - If utilizing NBDSSL, enable compression to increase the performance of NBDSSL data transfers. Available options include LIBZ, FASTLZ, and SKIPZ. To turn off compression, select Disabled.
- Log retention in days - Set the number of days after which logs will be deleted.
- Read and write buffer size - Set the buffer size of the data transfer, measured in bytes. Available options include 64K, 128K, 256K, 512K, 1024K, 2048K, and 4096K.
- Block size of NFS volume - Set the block size to be used by the mounted NFS volume, measured in bytes. Available options include 64K, 128K, 256K, 512K, and 1024K.
NEXT STEPS:
- Run the VMware Backup job. The use of the proxies are indicated in the job log by a log message similar to the following:
-
Uninstall the proxies when you cease running the VMware Backup jobs. To uninstall a proxy, on your host machine, run
uninstall_vmdkbackup
from the uninstall subdirectory of the installation directory: /opt/IBM/SPP/uninstall.
Run remote vmdkbackup of MicroService: http://<proxy node name>, IP:<proxy IP address>
The installation directory is removed.
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 10.1.2
Licensed Material - Property of IBM Corp. © IBM Corporation and other(s) 2018. IBM is a registered trademark of the IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. | 8/23/2018