Learn how to enable and use the Veeam Managed Backup option to secure your VMs within a Hosted Private Cloud VMware on OVHcloud solution
Requirements
- A Hosted Private Cloud infrastructure.
- A user account with access to vSphere and the permission to add resources for the pertinent data center.
- vSphere High Availability (HA) enabled
- Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) enabled
- Windows SPLA Licensing enabled
OVHcloud Control Panel Access
- Direct link: VMware vSphere
-
Navigation path:
Hosted Private Cloud>Managed VMware vSphere> Select your vSphere service
Instructions
Protecting and backing up your VMs is an essential part of ensuring long-term stability for your infrastructure. This is why we offer a managed backup solution based on Veeam Backup & Replication technology. You can use it to restore your data simply by enabling automatic backup for your VMs.
Backups are performed using a virtual machine (VM) within your Hosted Private Cloud infrastructure. The backup data is outsourced to an independent storage space at OVHcloud. Backups are performed during nighttime, with a retention time depending on the solution level you choose.
Activating the backup option
From the OVHcloud Control Panel, select your vSphere infrastructure and click the Backup tab.
Choose the appropriate plan and continue by clicking Choose solution. Validate the contracts by ticking the "I have read and accepted the General Terms of Use" checkbox and clicking Enable solution.
Once the service is ready, a confirmation email will be sent, and the active backup solution will be indicated in the Control Panel.
The service can be used directly from vSphere. On your vSphere infrastructure, you will see a virtual machine corresponding to the backup server, as shown in the screenshot below.
Enabling backups for virtual machines
After the service is activated, you will need to complete the backup requests for each virtual machine identified as critical from the vSphere client.
Select the VMware data center, then the Configure tab, and click Backup Management from the OVHcloud section of the menu.
Select the VM for which you want to enable backups from the list. On the right panel, click Enable backup on this VM to start the activation request.
In the confirmation window, click OK.
Veeam is informed of this new request and creates the virtual machine backup job. Every night, starting at 10 p.m. (default), a backup task will be scheduled according to the backup scheme defined by the chosen solution.
Every day, an email with the status of all actions performed is sent to the OVHcloud account’s email address.
NOTE: Removing a VM from your inventory or disk does not disable the backup job for that machine, regardless of the information in the report.
The VM limit must be 2 TB to enable backups.
Restoring a backup
Select the VMware data center, then the Configure tab, and click Backup Management from the OVHcloud section of the menu.
From the list, select the VM for which you want to restore a backup (its Backup state must be Enabled).
On the right-hand panel, click Restore Backup to open the restore request.
A new window opens to create the restore job.
- Verify the VM's name.
- Select the backup date to restore.
- Choose the datastore (storage space used as the restore target).
- Click
Restore Backupto start the process.
A window then confirms that the Veeam server is notified of this new request and that the virtual machine restore job has been created.
The VM is restored next to the source machine.
NOTE: The restored machine is connected to the network. If you start the VM without turning off the source VM, there may be an IP address conflict.
To edit these settings, select the data center in your inventory, click the Configure tab, then choose Backup Management. On this page, you have access to the list of your backup jobs, with the number of backups and the last status of the job.
Disabling backups for a VM
Select the VMware data center, then the Configure tab, and click Backup Management from the OVHcloud section of the menu.
Select the VM for which you want to disable backups from the list.
On the right-hand panel, click Disable Backup on this VM.
Then confirm the deactivation by clicking OK.
NOTE: Backups can be reactivated at any time from the moment the VM is present in the infrastructure.
Please note that the backups remain available for recovery only until the retention period expires.
Follow the same instructions to disable the backup of a deleted VM. It is also possible to disable the backup temporarily and reactivate it afterwards.
Go further
For more information and tutorials, please see our other VMware on OVHcloud or Hosted Private Cloud guides. You can also explore the guides for other OVHcloud products and services.