One of the perks of being a VMware vExpert is that you now and then get licenses for and a chance to play with new software. Since I needed a backup solution for my lab I remembered a couple of Backup software builders int he list of companies that support the community. From this list I decided to give Altaro a go and requested the vExpert NFR License. Within a day I received the license and it turned out they just released a brand new version of their software: Version 7!
You can go to Altaro’s website to see what’s new in this version.
The mail contained a download link to the software and after a while I had a new (backup) vm rolled out (someone who wants to sponsor a NUC with 32GB RAM for me? ML150G6’s are slooooooow). Installing the software is next next finish so I won’t bore with that. One thing I noticed is no requirement for a database server. Let’s hope my disks are fast enough for what Altaro does.
This post is in no means a deep dive in what Altaro can give you. It’s a step by step guide to set it up and get started with the product. Also I show some features that are present in the console. Except for the NFR license Altaro has had no influence on this post itself.
Getting Started
The first thing you see after the installation is the Welcome screen that let’s you choose to connect to a local or remote server. Just select this machine (I like it that they mention the required port for the remote server though!)
Next up is the Quick Setup screen, select add Hyper-V / VMware Host (duh)
So here you can select between loose ESXi hosts and vCenter, I selected vCenter.
Enter the vCenter’s dns name/ip address and proper credentials (yes I am lazy in my lab) and next (it wil test the connection itself anyway. Under port settings you can set alternate ports if required.
Altaro will now recognize and add the ESXi hosts that are added to the vCenter server. It had no problems with my LABESX01 that is powered down. Hit finish to end this.
You are taken to the hosts screen where they show running on a trial license.
You can hit the 30 days remaining to add licenses, the licensing options will be shown.
The license can be added with the appropriate button. Enter the license key and select assign license.
You need to repeat this for all hosts!
After this I went back to the quick setup screen to add storage. Altaro has several options to write to but I added a couple of cmdk’s to the backup server that run on local slow as **** sata drives on this server.
Select physical disk
Select the disk (yes these screenshots are mixed up), create a new folder if you want and choose select .
When the storage is added you can link vm’s to the storage by drag & drop.
back to the quick setup i went and choose to create the first backup. this will take you to the take backup screen, select the vm to backup and hit take backup.
Schedules
I decided to remove the original schedules and add a new one. The time might look strange but during the daytime no-one is home and I ain’t playing with it unlike in the evening and sometimes nights. After deleting the old ones click Add Backup Schedule
Select the time and days you want to run the backup at.
When the schedule is created drag and drop the vm’s to the schedule to link them. Don’t forget to save these settings at the bottom.
Retention
Setting retentions is fairly easy, by default vm’s are linked to the 2 week retention policy. If you remove them by clicking the X they wil get moved to the Never delete policy! Please be aware that after adding a retention time I wasn’t able to remove it so this might get cluttered easily.
Notifications
Fairly basic stuff in here, you can get notified by email or events int he event log.
Advanced Settings
Not that extremely advanced but under advanced settings you can select deduplication, encryption, iso’s to be backupped and if Change Block tracking needs to be used. The last option is exclude drives where you actually select the vmdk to exclude so make sure what vmdk is what drive or mapping.
VSS Settings
Under VSS Settings you have the option to select application consistent backups and to truncate logs.
The Master encryption Key
.The name says enough about what this does.
The End of part 1
In this part one we got started using Altaro Vm Backup 7 and viewed some of the options In the management console. In the next part we’re going to see if we can actually restore files, maybe start a vm from backup and see what the sandboxing does.