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Manage virtual machines

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Overview

Druva Phoenix allows you to add virtual machines from multiple registered vCenters/ESXi hosts and administrative groups to the DR plan. In order to recover virtual machines in the event of a disaster, you must add virtual machines to the DR plan. 

To view virtual machines configured for disaster recovery

  1. Log in to the Phoenix Management Console.
  2. On the menu bar, click the drop-down next to All Organizations, and select the required organization from the drop-down list.
  3. Click Disaster Recovery. The Disaster Recovery page opens.

  4. Select a DR plan from the DR plan dropdown list.  

  5. In the left navigation bar, click Virtual Machines. 

Virtual machine details

The following details of the VMs that are configured are disaster recovery is available. 

Field  Description
VM Name Name of the virtual machine.
DR Enabled Indicates if disaster recovery is enabled for the VM. 
Prerequisite Check Status of the prerequisite checks. See, DRaaS failover prerequisite checks.
Last backup status When was the last backup run and its status. 
Last DR Restore Status When was the last DR restore job completed and its status. 
RPA Recovery Actual Point (RPA) represents the time elapsed since the last successful snapshot of the VM that is available for failover. See, Managing Recovery Point Actual (RPA).
Failover settings Hover to view the details of the test and production failover settings. The Instance Type column shows Auto Assigned if you chose to let Druva Phoenix automatically assign an instance type for the production or test failovers of the VM.

Auto Assigned on hover.png

Operations for virtual machine management

You can perform the following operations to manage your virtual machines for disaster recovery. 

Operation Description
Change Failover settings

You can update the production and test failover settings. 

See, Manage disaster recovery failover. 
Add VM

You can add virtual machines from multiple registered vCenters/ESXi hosts and administrative groups to an exisitng DR plan. You can also configure the failover settings while you add the VMs to the DR plan.

You can add only those VMs that are configured for backup by Druva. 

See, Add virtual machines to and existing DR plan.
Update DR copy Druva Phoenix regularly updates the DR copy of the backed up virtual machines based on the schedule defined in the DR plan set during configuration. In addition to the scheduled DR copy update, you can manually update the DR copy at any time.
Update Credentials You can assign credentials to the virtual machines that are part of the DR Plan. Credentials are required to perform prerequisite checks during the VM backup. Prerequisite checks proactively identify issues that could cause failures during failovers. You can also update credentials assigned to virtual machines.
Enable DR You can enable disaster recovery for a virtual machine associated with a DR plan to recover the backup data in the event of a disaster. After enabling, the DR copies are updated for the virtual machines and you can failover virtual machines using these DR copies.
Disable DR You can disable the disaster recovery service for a virtual machine associated with a DR plan at any time. After disabling, the DR copies not updated for the virtual machines. However, you can failover the virtual machine using the last DR copy created before the DR was disabled. The DR copy updates will resume only after you enable the service on the virtual machine.
Remove VM You can unconfigure virtual machines from the configured DR plan. When you unconfigure virtual machines from a DR plan, the assets created during the previous DR copies get deleted. Failure of deletion of assets generates an alert containing assets details.

Considerations for adding virtual machines to the DR plan

Before adding a virtual machine to a DR plan, you must consider the following points:

  • You can add only those virtual machines to a DR plan for which the storage region for backup is the same as the region specified in the DR plan.
  • You cannot add the same virtual machine to multiple DR plans.
  • Once you add a virtual machine to a DR plan, DR copies for that virtual machine is created periodically as per the schedule specified in the DR plan.
  • When adding a virtual machine to a DR plan, Druva Phoenix sets the virtual machine-specific failover settings for launching an instance with its DR copy to the predefined default values. You can edit these settings later.

To add virtual machines to an existing DR plan

  1. Log in to the Phoenix Management Console.

  2. On the menu bar, click the dropdown next to All Organizations, and select the required organization.

  3. On the menu bar click Disaster Recovery. 

  4. On the DR Plans page, click the DR plan to which you want to add virtual machines. Alternatively, you can select a DR plan from the Select DR plan dropdown list.  

  5. In the left navigation bar, click Virtual Machines, and click Add VM. 

  6. The VM Selection tab of the Add VMs dialog box displays a list of the configured virtual machines and details, such as the registered vCenter/ESXi hosts, administrative groups, and Guest OS Credentials. Select the virtual machines that you want to add to the DR plan.

    Note: The Add VMs page displays only those virtual machines which are configured for backup.

  7. The Guest OS credentials column displays the credentials assigned to the virtual machines. The credentials displayed here were assigned to the VMs from the All Virtual Machines page under Protect > VMware. A yellow exclamation mark next to the credential in the Guest OS Credential column signifies that the credentials for the associated VM are invalid. If there is no icon next to the credential, then it means that either:

    1. The credential is valid, or
    2. The credential validation information is not available, or
    3. The credential was assigned to the VM after the VMware application discovery job finished. The VMware application discovery job runs every 24 hours. It validates the credentials and stores the application discovery and credential validation status.

  8. The Prerequisite Check section lets you assign credentials to VMs selected under the Source VM section. Credentials are required for the DR prerequisite checks that run while the backup of a VM is in progress. You can either select pre-existing credentials from the drop-down or click New Credentials to create and assign new credentials. See Adding a new credential for field descriptions. The newly created credentials are stored securely in the Credential Store.
    The credentials assigned in this dialog box will show up under the Guest OS Credentials column on the All Virtual Machines page under Protect > VMware. These credentials will be used to run DR prerequisite checks the next time a backup of the VM is in progress.
    Note: If a VM already has credentials assigned to it, selecting the VM and assigning it credentials from this dialog box will override the existing credentials.

  9. Click Next and update the failover settings for the virtual machines you want to add. 

To add failover settings for the newly added VMs

  1. From the Recovery Step dropdown list, select the recovery step for the VM to be included in the recovery workflow.
  2. Update the Production Failover and Test Failover settings.

    Add VM- Failover settings.png

    Select Same as the production settings to use production settings for test failovers settings.

    Configure the following options for failover:

    Option Description
    Instance Type

    This is the type of EC2 instance that Phoenix creates in the AWS account when it performs recovery of the VMware virtual machine from the available DR copy. 
    You can either select an instance type manually from the drop-down list or let Phoenix automatically assign an instance type based on the CPU, Memory, Region or Availability Zone, and Operating system version of the VMs selected in the DR plan. The Auto Assign option is selected by default. We recommend using the Auto Assign option.

    Manual selection:

    Clear the Auto Assign checkbox. Select an instance type from the drop-down next to Instance Type. Select an instance type that is the same size or larger than your source virtual machine.

    Automatic selection:

    • Ensure that the Auto Assign checkbox is selected to let Phoenix automatically select instance types for the VMs.
    • Click View recommendations to view instance types that will be assigned to each VM selected in the DR plan if you use the Auto Assign feature. If you do not want to assign the recommended EC2 instance, you can deselect the Auto Assign option and manually assign an appropriate instance type.

    Phoenix caps the instance size to 24xlarge in situations where the vCPU of your virtual machine exceeds 96, or the memory exceeds 384 GB. Phoenix displays 24xlarge in the recommendations if this instance size is available in your AWS region.
    Instance type recommendations.png

    Note: You must upgrade the VMware backup proxy to version 5.0.0 or later. The backup of all VMs selected in the DR plan should be successful after the VMware backup proxy upgrade.

    The Auto Assign functionality is disabled, and the View Recommendations link is unavailable if the backup of one or more selected VMs is not successful post the proxy upgrade.
    Auto assign blocked.png

    See,  Failover Limitations for more information.
    IAM Role

    With the implementation of AWS PrivateLink (If you have deployed a Phoenix AWS proxy version 4.9.1-101573 or later), only the existing IAM roles will be displayed in the IAM Role drop-down. If you have created a new IAM role in your AWS account, you need to manually type the name of the IAM role which is the IAM instance profile ARL name.

    For more information, refer to the AWS documentation.
    Volume Type

    Select the required type of the Amazon EBS volume that you want to attach to the EC2 instance. Select one of the following options:

    • Magnetic: These are standard volumes backed by the magnetic drives and used for workloads that are infrequently accessed. These volumes deliver approximately 100 IOPS on average.
      For more information, refer to the AWS documentation.
    • General Purpose SSD: These are cost-effective storages that are used for a broad range of workloads. These volumes deliver approximately between 100 to 16,000 IOPS on average.
      For more information, refer to the AWS documentation.
    • Provisioned IOPS SSD: These provisioned storages are used for I/O-intensive workloads such as database workloads. These volumes deliver approximately between 100 to 64,000 IOPS on average.
      For more information, refer to the AWS documentation.
      • IOPS: Enter the input/output operations per second capacity for the volume.  The IOPS box is displayed only if the Provisioned IOPS SSD option is selected as the volume type.

    Note: Select the Provisioned IOPS SSD volume type only if the disk sizes are greater than 4 GB
    Instance Tags (Key-Value)

    Enter a label in the key-value format and assign it to your AWS EC2 resources to categorize the AWS resources in different ways. Keys should not be name or conversion_id as these are used by Druva.

    For more information about tags, refer to the AWS documentation.

     

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