Dell EMC Networker backup plugin

Abiquo 4.6.1 introduces a new backup plugin to support Dell EMC Networker. 

The Abiquo integration:

• Supports Complete backups only

• Does not create/update/delete policies or workflows from NetWorker

• Expects to manage two sites, which are identified by the hypervisors hosting the VMs

• Expects to have a single policy with two workflows, one for each site using backup (with or without replication/clone action)

Summary of how to configure the plugin:

1. Configure Dell EMC Networker, creating policies and workflows

2. Configure backup plugin properties

3. Set the location of the backup plugin properties file in abiquo.properties. 

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

The constraints for the backup actions are as follows.

Configure plugin properties

Configure the plugin in the networker.properties file. The default location of this file is opt/abiquo/config/networker.properties.

In the `abiquo.properties` file on the Abiquo Remote Services servers, set the path to the plugin properties file using a property in the following format. 

Table of plugin properties

Description of plugin properties

For on-demand backups, to indicate which policy to execute, depending on the user request set:

• abiquo.networker.backup.ondemand.policy

• abiquo.networker.backup.ondemand.policy.replication

To indicate the name of the workflow inside a policy used to backup to one site or the other, set:

• abiquo.networker.backup.workflow.replicationA  

• abiquo.networker.backup.workflow.replicationB

To identify the sites of the VMs, define a list of the hypervisor machine names at each site with the following properties:

• abiquo.networker.siteA.hosts

• abiquo.networker.siteB.hosts

The configuration properties could require changes every time a new host is added to infrastructure or a policy name is changed in NetWorker, so the plugin integration reloads them in order to avoid a tomcat restart. Only the properties defined as reloadable will be reloaded. To configure when the properties will be reloaded, set:

• abiquo.networker.config.reload.period

• abiquo.networker.config.reload.timeunit 

On demand backup and restore operations are tracked by a job. To configure the tracking and set a timeout to fail a job if it appears it will not finish, set the properties starting with: 

• abiquo.networker.client.tracker.