Abiquo Backup Improvements

Introduction

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

• Infrastructure: Backup
• Tenants: Manage Enterprises in the section about Allowed datacenters
• VMs: VM backups

Integrated backup plugins

In the Abiquo backup feature, backup plugins were previously run as a separate service and they have now been integrated into the core product.

Abiquo backup plugins support the following backup systems:

• Veeam
• Avamar

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

Configure backup plugins

abiquo.avamar.config.path=  
abiquo.veeam.config.path=

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. 

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

Abiquo now supports setting the Avamar replication option.

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.  

Virtual machines

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 virtual machine. To open a list of restore details, which is now in the lower section of the same tab, the user clicks on the backup. 

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

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

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

Technical details

When the user deploys, reconfigures or undeploys a virtual machine, Abiquo will include a new job called BACKUP_SCHEDULE in that task. If the job fails because Abiquo cannot schedule the backup, then the virtual machine operation will roll back. As before 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 backup plugins are configured using:

• Abiquo property on API / Server: check 
• Abiquo property on Remote Services: configuration file location
• Backup system configuration files in the same folder as the Abiquo properties file on the remote services

API changes

There are new Abiquo API methods for working with backups. Previously, developers could create a backup integration using virtual machine metadata and events. Now developers should upgrade their integration to use the new API methods for backups, with new data media types. The Abiquo UI now works with the Abiquo API instead of virtual machine metadata. So backup results and restores in virtual machine metadata is valid but it will not be visible through the Abiquo UI. Backup results cannot be written using the Abiquo API.

In the API, there have been changes to the methods for virtual machine backups. And Abiquo now stores virtual machine backup policy definitions in the virtual machine instead of under metadata. And Abiquo stores backup and restore results in the database instead of the virtual machine metadata. See API Changelog v4.0

Configurations and constraints

In the initial version, the supported configurations for the plugins are as follows.

The constraints for the backup actions are as follows.