Open topic with navigation

Creating a full server to ESX appliance job

Use these instructions to create a full server to ESX appliance job.

1. Click Get Started from the toolbar.

2. Select Double-Take Availability and click Next.

3. Select Protect any server with a Linux Virtual Recovery Appliance and click Next.

4. Choose your Double-Take Virtual Recovery Appliance and the ESX server that is hosting the appliance.

   

   • Virtual Recovery Appliance—Specify the IP address of the Double-Take Virtual Recovery Appliance.
   • User name—Specify the root user.
   • Password—Specify the password that you assigned when first you powered on the virtual recovery appliance.
   • Use vCenter—Select this option if you want to specify your vCenter server.
   • Use ESX host directly—Select this option if you want to specify your ESX host.
   • Server—Specify the name or IP address of your vCenter server or ESX server.
   • User name—Specify the root user or another user that has the administrator role on your ESX server.
   • Password—Specify the password associated with the User name you entered.

5. Click Next to continue.

6. Choose your source server. This is the Windows or Linux server that you want to protect.

   

   • Current Servers—This list contains the servers currently available in your console session. Servers that are not licensed for the workflow you have selected will be filtered out of the list. Select your source server from the list.
   • Find a New Server—If the server you need is not in the Current Servers list, click the Find a New Server heading. From here, you can specify a server along with credentials for logging in to the server. If necessary, you can click Browse to select a server from a network drill-down list.

   If you enter the source server's fully-qualified domain name, the Double-Take Console will resolve the entry to the server short name. If that short name resides in two different domains, this could result in name resolution issues. In this case, enter the IP address of the server.

   When specifying credentials for a new server, specify a user that is a member of the dtadmin security group.

    

7. Click Next to continue.

8. For the server that you are protecting, choose the volumes that you want to protect.

   

   • Target datastore—Select a datastore on your ESX host where you want to store the replica virtual machine configuration files. You can specify the location of the .vmdk files later in the workflow.

   • Select the volumes you want to protect—By default, the system volume will be selected for protection. If you are protecting a Linux source, the boot volume will also be selected for protection. You will be unable to deselect these volumes. Select any other volumes on the source that you want to protect.

     On Linux source servers, the swap partition is excluded by default and you cannot select it, however, it will be created on the replica.

      

   • Exclude these paths—If there are specific paths on a volume that you do not want to protect, specify those locations. Keep in mind that excluded data may impact the integrity of your applications. Specify any paths to exclude from protection and click Add. You can also specify a semi-colon delimited list of paths and click Add, and separate exclude rules will be made for each path in your list. If you need to remove a path from being excluded, select the path and click Remove.

9. Click Next to continue.

10. You have many options available for your full server to ESX appliance job. Configure those options that are applicable to your environment.

    Click a link below to see the options available for that section of the Set Options page.

    General

    

    For the Job name, specify a unique name for your job.

    Replica Virtual Machine Configuration

    

    • Replica virtual machine display name—Specify the name of the replica virtual machine. This will be the display name of the virtual machine on the host system. 
    • Number of processors—Specify how many processors to create on the new virtual machine. The number of processors on the source is displayed to guide you in making an appropriate selection. If you select fewer processors than the source, your clients may be impacted by slower responses. The maximum number of processors on a host is four.
    • Amount of memory—Specify the amount of memory, in MB, to create on the new virtual machine. The memory on the source is displayed to guide you in making an appropriate selection. If you select less memory than the source, your clients may be impacted by slower responses.
    • Map source virtual switches to target virtual switches—Identify how you want to handle the network mapping after failover. The Source Network Adapter column lists the NICs from the source. Map each one to a Target Network Adapter, which is a virtual network on the target.
    Replica Virtual Machine Volumes

    

    • Replica Disk Size—For each volume you are protecting, specify the size of the replica disk on the target. Be sure and include the value in MB or GB for the disk. The value must be at least the size of the specified Used Space on that volume.

      In some cases, the replica virtual machine may use more virtual disk space than the size of the source volume due to differences in how the virtual disk's block size is formatted and how hard links are handled. To avoid this issue, specify the size of your replica to be at least 20 MB larger.

       

    • Replica Disk Type—For each volume you are protecting, specify the format of the disk that will be created.
      • Flat—This disk format allocates the full amount of the disk space immediately, but does not initialize the disk space to zero until it is needed. This disk format is only available on ESX 5.
      • Thick—This disk format allocates the full amount of the disk space immediately, initializing all of the allocated disk space to zero.
      • Thin—This disk format does not allocate the disk space until it is needed.

    • Storage Controller—For each volume you are protecting, specify the type of Storage Controller that you want to use for each volume on the target.

    • Target Volume—For each volume you are protecting, specify the volume where you want to store the .vmdk files for the new replica virtual server. You can specify the location of the virtual machine configuration files on the previous Choose Volumes to Protect page.

    If your source is Linux, and it is using LVM (Logical Volume Manager), for each source partition individual fixed disks will be created on the replica.

     

    Replica Virtual Machine Network Settings

    

    • Use advanced settings for replica virtual machine network configuration—This option allows you to configure advanced network settings, which are primarily for WAN support.

    • Source network adapter—Select a network adapter on the source and specify the Target IP addresses, Default Gateways, and DNS Server addresses to be used after failover. If you add multiple gateways or DNS servers, you can sort them by using the Move Up and Move Down buttons. Repeat this step for each network adapter on the source.

      Updates made during failover will be based on the network adapter name when protection is established. If you change that name, you will need to delete the job and re-create it so the new name will be used during failover.

      If you update one of the advanced settings (IP address, gateway, or DNS server), then you must update all of them. Otherwise, the remaining items will be left blank. If you do not specify any of the advanced settings, the replica virtual machine will be assigned the same network configuration as the source.

       

    Mirror, Verify & Orphaned Files

    

    • Mirror all files—All protected files will be mirrored from the source to the target.
    • Mirror different files—Only those protected files that are different based on date and time, size, or attributes will be mirrored from the source to the target.

    • Mirror only if the file on the source is newer than the copy on the target—Only those protected files that are newer on the source are mirrored to the target.

      If you are using a database application or are protecting a domain controller, do not use this option unless you know for certain that you need it. With database applications and because domain controllers store their data in a database, it is critical that all files, not just some of the files that might be newer, get mirrored.

       

    • Use block checksum for comparisons—For those files flagged as different, the mirroring process can perform a block checksum comparison and send only those blocks that are different.

    • Delete orphaned files—An orphaned file is a file that exists in the replica data on the target, but does not exist in the protected data on the source. This option specifies if orphaned files should be deleted on the target during a mirror, verification, or restoration.

      Orphaned file configuration is a per target configuration. All jobs to the same target will have the same orphaned file configuration.

      The orphaned file feature does not delete alternate data streams. To do this, use a full mirror, which will delete the additional stream(s) when the file is re-created.

      If delete orphaned files is enabled, carefully review any replication rules that use wildcard definitions. If you have specified wildcards to be excluded from protection, files matching those wildcards will also be excluded from orphaned file processing and will not be deleted from the target. However, if you have specified wildcards to be included in your protection, those files that fall outside the wildcard inclusion rule will be considered orphaned files and will be deleted from the target.

      If you want to move orphaned files rather than delete them, you can configure this option along with the move deleted files feature to move your orphaned files to the specified deleted files directory. See Target server properties for more information.

      During a full mirror, orphaned file processing success messages will be logged to a separate orphaned file log. This keeps the Double-Take log from being overrun with orphaned file success processing messages. Orphaned files processing statistics and any errors in orphaned file processing will still be logged to the Double-Take log, and during difference mirrors, verifications, and restorations, all orphaned file processing messages are logged to the Double-Take log. The orphaned file log is located in the Logging folder specified for the source. See Log file properties for details on the location of that folder. The orphaned log file is overwritten during each orphaned file processing during a full mirror, and the log file will be a maximum of 50 MB.

       

11. Click Next to continue.

12. Double-Take validates that your source and target are compatible. The Summary page displays your options and validation items.

    Errors are designated by a white X inside a red circle. Warnings are designated by a black exclamation point (!) inside a yellow triangle. A successful validation is designated by a white checkmark inside a green circle. You can sort the list by the icon to see errors, warnings, or successful validations together. Click on any of the validation items to see details. You must correct any errors before you can enable protection. Depending on the error, you may be able to click Fix or Fix All and let Double-Take correct the problem for you. For those errors that Double-Take cannot correct automatically, you will need to modify the source or target to correct the error, or you can select a different target. You must revalidate the selected servers, by clicking Recheck, until the validation check passes without errors.

    Before a job is created, the results of the validation checks are logged to the Double-Take Management Service log on the target.

13. Once your servers have passed validation and you are ready to establish protection, click Finish, and you will automatically be taken to the Manage Jobs page.

Related Topics