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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 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. 
Last backup status When was the last backup run and its status. 
Last DR Restore Status When did the last DR restore job complete 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. You can also see the security groups selected for the production and test failover settings.

Failover settings hover.png
Failover Checks - Environment

Displays the status of the environmental failover checks with details on the cause and how to resolve it.

 For more information, see DR failover checks - environment.
Failover Checks - Guest OS Displays the status of the guest OS failover checks statuses. For more information, see DR failover checks - Guest OS

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 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 failover checks - Guest OS 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:
    Change Failover Settings.png

    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.

    Note: We've discontinued support for t2.micro and t2.small EC2 instance types for DR failovers. These instance types aren’t available for manual instance type selection or auto-assignment.  If you've selected t2.micro or t2.small instance types in the failover settings for virtual machines in existing DR plans, you must change the instance type to t2.medium or higher. These instances will automatically be upgraded to t2.medium if you run a DR failover without changing the instance type manually.

    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.
    Security Groups

    This is an optional field. Select one or more security groups from the groups available in the selected VPC. The security groups are used during the Production or Test failovers.

    Note: The Security Group checkbox is disabled if the selected virtual machines belong to different VPCs. To change security groups of VMs belonging to different VPCs, filter the Virtual Machines listing by VPCs and change the security group settings in bulk. Alternatively,  change the security groups one VM at a time. For more information, see Filter Virtual Machines.

    Network Settings

    These settings are available when you select a single VM and then select Change Failover Settings.
    Subnet The subnet settings are defined in Network Mappings. The subnet field is greyed out while changing the failover settings.
    Public IP

    Select one of the following:

    • None: No public IP is assigned to the failover EC2 instance.
    • Elastic: Elastic IP addresses are public IPV4 addresses that you allocate to your AWS account. Enter an available elastic IP address that can be assigned to your failover EC2 instance.
    • Auto Assign: An available public IP address is automatically assigned to your failover EC2 instance. Your subnet should be a public subnet. 
    Private IP

    Select one of the following:

    • Static: Enter a static private IP address that is available within your subnet CIDR. This IP address is not reachable over the internet but enables communication between EC2 instances within the same VPC.
    • Auto Assign: An available private IP address from your subnet CIDR is dynamically assigned to your failover EC2 instance. This IP address is not reachable over the internet but enables communication between EC2 instances within the same VPC.
    Security Group

    This is an optional field. Select one or more security groups from the groups available in the selected VPC. The security groups are used during the Production or Test failovers.

    Note: The Security Group checkbox is disabled if the selected virtual machines belong to different VPCs. To change security groups of VMs belonging to different VPCs, filter the Virtual Machines listing by VPCs and change the security group settings in bulk. Alternatively,  change the security groups one VM at a time. For more information, see Filter Virtual Machines.

     

  1. Click Finish. 

Filter Virtual Machines

You can filter virtual machines in a DR plan by the status of failover checks (Guest OS and Environment) and the VPC that the virtual machines belong to. Filtering the virtual machines by the status of the failover checks helps you preemptively correct issues that could cause failovers to fail. For more information, see DR failover checks - Guest OS and DR Failover Checks - Environment.

You can change the security groups for more than one virtual machine at a time. However, all the selected virtual machines must be a part of the same VPC. Use the VPC filter on the Virtual Machines page of a DR plan to filter the virtual machines list by VPC and then update the security group settings for all the virtual machines that belong to the same VPC.

Filters.png

Change security group for multiple virtual machines

You can change the security group for multiple virtual machines at a time, provided all the selected machines belong to the same VPC. Use the VPC filter to get all the virtual machines that belong to the same VPC.

Procedure

  1. Select a DR plan that has VMs whose security group you need to change.
  2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines page of the selected DR plan.
  3. Filter the virtual machines in the plan by a specific VPC. All the VMs that belong to a specific VPC are displayed. 
  4. Select one or more virtual machines whose security group you need to change and click Change Failover Settings.
  5. In the Change Failover Settings dialog box, select the Security Group checkbox and select one or more security groups to the selected VMs.
  6. Note: The Security Group checkbox is disabled if the selected virtual machines belong to different VPCs. To change security groups of VMs belonging to different VPCs, filter the Virtual Machines listing by VPCs and change the security group settings in bulk. Alternatively,  change the security groups one VM at a time.
  7. Click Save.
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