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Introduction

This document provides a description of the Abiquo backup plugins. For a description of the complete feature, please see also:

• Manage backup policies in Infrastructure view: Backup
• Allow tenants to work with backup policies: Manage Enterprises in the Allowed datacenters section
• Configure backups on VMs: VM backups
• To create your own backup plugin, see Backup Plugin Archetype

Integrated backup plugins

Backup system support

Abiquo backup plugins support the following backup systems:

• Veeam

• Networker

• Avamar

  Rubrik

The Abiquo integration with both of these systems supports Complete complete backups only.

For more details, see individual plugin configuration pages and the functionality and constraints sections below.

Licenses

• Each backup integration and version has a separate plugin that requires a separate license

Configure backup plugins

There are two new properties See the following pages to configure the backup plugin and load the configuration files for each backup system.

See Abiquo Configuration Properties#backup

abiquo.backup.avamar.config.path=/opt/abiquo/config/avamar.properties
abiquo.backup.veeam.config.path=/opt/abiquo/config/veeam.properties

For details of these configuration files, see Configure Abiquo Avamar Plugin and Configure Abiquo Veeam Backup Plugin properties 

Changes to configuring backups in infrastructure

You can edit backup properties as before. The Backup now option is only available in the UI when you are working with Avamar, not Veeam.

To use a backup system, you should first create a backup manager for the datacenter. The backup manager configures the connection to the backup system including the endpoint and optional credentials. Here you should specify the type of the backup plugin. Abiquo does not validate the connection details. In this initial version, a connection will be made to the backup system when a user requests a backup operation. Tip: When adding a Veeam backup manager, don't forget to add the slash "/" at the end of the URL. Abiquo does not display the credentials. The administrator can edit all values except the backup type. If you change the backup manager, future requests to the backup system will use the new values. 

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As before, in each datacenter, create backup policies that contain the available configurations. 

Abiquo now supports setting the Avamar replication option.

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Tenants

Abiquo will automatically allow access to backup policies for the enterprise of the administrator who creates the backup policies. For other enterprises, you must select the allowed backup policies for each datacenter.  

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VMs

After the user creates a backup, it displays in the list on the Backup results tab, which now combines the previous Latest backups and Restore results tabs.

While the backup system is performing a backup, Abiquo now locks the VM. To open a list of restore details, which is now in the lower section of the same tab, the user clicks on the backup. 

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Abiquo now displays events from the backup system on the Events tab. 

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To see full details, the user double-clicks a backup event.  

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Users can only restore a backup for a deployed VM. If you undeploy a VM and then deploy it again, you can restore backups for this VM.each plugin. 

• Configure Abiquo Veeam backup plugin

• Configure Dell EMC NetWorker backup plugin

• Configure Rubrik backup plugin

Set Abiquo properties for backups

Log in to the Remote Services server and edit the abiquo.properties file. 

• Optionally set the delay between executions of the backup results check in milliseconds. The default of 600000 represents 10 minutes.

• Set the Abiquo Configuration properties to configure a backup plugin and load the configuration file for the required backup system.

See Abiquo configuration properties#backup

Configure backups in Abiquo

Here is a brief outline of how to configure Backups in the Abiquo UI

1. Configure backup policies in Infrastructure view: Backup

2. Allow tenants to work with backup policies: Manage Enterprises in the Allowed datacenters section

3. Users configure backups on VMs: VM backups

Information for cloud users

Please inform cloud users of the following:

• The cloud user should check that the selected backup time for a VM is set as UTC + offset.

• All disks will be backed up by Veeam, even if they have been deselected in the Abiquo VM backup configuration dialog

• Abiquo will allow users to create more than one backup per VM, but Veeam will allow only one backup. Therefore, only the most recent backup job is used

• The Snapshot on-demand functionality uses VMware Snapshots that are only valid if the original disk is available

Technical details

When the user deploys, reconfigures or undeploys a VM, Abiquo will include a new job called BACKUP_SCHEDULE in that task. If the job fails because Abiquo cannot schedule the backup, then the VM operation will roll back. As before events  Events from the backup system are incorporated into Abiquo and streamed by the outbound API. 

The backup plugins work with the API (for backup management), and remote services: virtual factory and cloud provider proxy. The and NARS. As described in the configuration section, the backup plugins are configured using :

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the Abiquo property on Remote Services

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to give the configuration file location

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and the backup system configuration files in the same folder as the Abiquo properties file on the remote services server.

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Functionality

In the initial current version, the supported configurations functionality for the backup plugins are is as follows.

Constraints

The constraints for the backup plugin actions are as follows.

 = requires vCenter credentials; add to Backup manager credentials with separator

Veeam frequently asked questions

Why does the Veeam integration support complete backups only?

Veeam performs backups by doing a full backup the first time it backs up a VM and then snapshot backups from then on. This means that Veeam users cannot request full or snapshot backups - they just request a backup and Veeam decides what sort to do. Veeam also does not support the backup of file systems. For this reason we recommend that you do not enable the Snapshot and File System backup configurations in your Abiquo datacenter.

Why doesn't the Veeam integration support a one-off backup at a defined hour?

To use the Veeam one-off backup at a specific time, the Abiquo backup plugin would need to create a new job every time. Because the Veeam REST API does not allow users to delete jobs, these jobs would accumulate in the Veeam system. For this reason the Abiquo backup plugin does not support the Complete Backup at Defined Hour, so do not configure Backup policies to use this option in your Abiquo datacenter. If the option is enabled and it is selected for a VM, it will be ignored by the Abiquo backup plugin.

How does the integration detect finished jobs?

Veeam does not provide notification to the Abiquo backup plugin when a job has been run. The results are logged in the Veeam logs. At regular intervals, the Abiquo backup plugin reads these logs and updates the Abiquo server by adding the backup results by performing a put request to the VM.

How does Abiquo add backups to Veeam?

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The Abiquo backup plugin searches the current jobs in Veeam Backup and Replication and checks if any of these jobs have the same granularity as the new VM backup. If so, the new VM is added to a current job. Otherwise one of the dummy jobs is cloned to create a new job and the new VM is added to this job. When the user changes their VM backup settings, the Abiquo backup plugin will remove the VM from one job and add it to another, or create a new job as necessary. Although Abiquo will allow users to create more than one backup per VM, Veeam will allow only one backup. Therefore, the most recent backup job is used. 

Deprecated backup plugins

• For VMware snapshots as on-demand backups only, there is also a standalone plugin, see /wiki/spaces/doc/pages/311378137