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 a Linux server with a Linux Virtual Recovery Appliance and click Next.

4. Choose your Double-Take virtual recovery appliance and the target ESX server that is hosting the appliance.

   

   • Virtual Recovery Appliance—Specify the IP address of your appliance. You can also use the name of the appliance, if the Double-Take Console machine can resolve the appliance's IP address.
   • User name—Specify the root user.
   • Password—Specify the password that you assigned when first you powered on the appliance.
   • Use vCenter—Select this option if you are using vCenter server.
   • Use ESX host directly—Select this option if you are not using vCenter.
   • Server—Specify the name or IP address of your vCenter server or ESX server.
   • User name—If you are using vCenter, specify a user that has the administrator role for your vCenter. If you are using your ESX host directly, enter your ESX server credentials.
   • Password—Specify the password associated with the User name you entered.

5. Click Next to continue.

6. Choose your source server. This is the 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.

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 and boot volumes will be selected for protection. You will be unable to deselect these volumes. Select any other volumes on the source that you want to protect.

     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.
    • 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

    

    If your source has volume groups, you will see them listed in the Volume list. Highlight a volume group and set the available Volume Group Properties that are displayed to the right of the Volume list.

    • Datastore—Specify the datastore where you want to store the .vmdk files for the volume group. You can specify the location of the virtual machine configuration files on the previous Choose Volumes to Protect page.
    • Replica disk format—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; if you select this disk type on ESX 4, a thick disk will be created.
      • 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.
    • Physical volume maximum size—Specify the maximum size, in MB or GB, of the virtual disks used to create the volume group. The default value is equal to the maximum size that can be attached to the datastore you selected. That will depend on your ESX version, your file system version, and the block size of your datastore.
    • Volume Group size—Specify the maximum size, in MB or GB, of the volume group. The default value will match the source. This value cannot be less than the logical volumes total size that you are trying to create on the volume group.

    

    If your source has logical volumes, you will see them listed in the Volume list. Highlight a logical volume and set the available Logical Volume Properties that are displayed to the right of the Volume list.

    The size and space displayed may not match the output of the Linux df command. This is because df shows the size of the mounted file system not the underlying partition which may be larger. Additionally, Double-Take uses powers of 1024 when computing GB, MB, and so on. The df command typically uses powers of 1000 and rounds up to the nearest whole value.

     

    • Disk size—This field displays the size of the logical volume on the source.
    • Used space—This field displays the amount of disk space in use on the source logical volume.

    • Replica volume size—Specify the size, in MB or GB, of the replica logical volume on the target. 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 5 GB larger.

       

    • Name—This field displays the logical volume name.

    

    If your source has partitions, you will see them listed in the Volume list. Highlight a partition and set the available Partition Properties that are displayed to the right of the Volume list.

    The size and space displayed may not match the output of the Linux df command. This is because df shows the size of the mounted file system not the underlying partition which may be larger. Additionally, Double-Take uses powers of 1024 when computing GB, MB, and so on. The df command typically uses powers of 1000 and rounds up to the nearest whole value.

     

    • Datastore—Specify the datastore where you want to store the .vmdk files for the partition. You can specify the location of the virtual machine configuration files on the previous Choose Volumes to Protect page.
    • Replica disk format—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; if you select this disk type on ESX 4, a thick disk will be created.
      • 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.
    • Disk size—This field displays the size of the partition on the source.
    • Used space—This field displays the amount of disk space in use on the source partition.
    • Replica volume size—Specify the size, in MB or GB, of the replica partition on the target. The value must be at least the size of the specified Used space on that partition.

     

    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.

      By default, the source IP address will be included in the target IP address list as the default address. If you do not want the source IP address to be the default address on the target after failover, remove that address from the Target IP address list.

       

    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, do not use this option unless you know for certain that you need it. With database applications, 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. Make sure you always enable this option for full server to ESX appliance jobs.
      File Differences Mirror Options Compared

      The following table will help you understand how the various difference mirror options work together, including when you are using the block checksum option configured through the Source server properties.

      An X in the table indicates that option is enabled. An X enclosed in parentheses (X) indicates that the option can be on or off without impacting the action performed during the mirror.

      Not all job types have the source newer option available.

      Source Server Properties	Job Properties			Action Performed
      Block Checksum Option	File Differences Option	Source Newer  Option	Block Checksum Option
      (X)	X			Any file that is different on the source and target based on the date, time, size, and/or attribute is transmitted to the target. The mirror sends the entire file.
      (X)	X	X		Any file that is newer on the source than on the target based on date and/or time is transmitted to the target. The mirror sends the entire file.
      	X		X	Any file that is different on the source and target based on date, time, size, and/or attributed is flagged as different. The mirror then performs a checksum comparison on the flagged files and only sends those blocks that are different.
      X	X		X	The mirror performs a checksum comparison on all files and only sends those blocks that are different.
      (X)	X	X	X	Any file that is newer on the source than on the target based on date and/or time is flagged as different. The mirror then performs a checksum comparison on the flagged files and only sends 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.

      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 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 mirror, and the log file will be a maximum of 50 MB.

       

    Network Route

    

    For Send data to the target server using this route, Double-Take will select, by default, a target route for transmissions. If desired, specify an alternate route on the target that the data will be transmitted through. This allows you to select a different route for Double-Take traffic. For example, you can separate regular network traffic and Double-Take traffic on a machine with multiple IP addresses. You can also select or manually enter a public IP address (which is the public IP address of the server's NAT router) if you are using a NAT environment.

    Compression

    

    To help reduce the amount of bandwidth needed to transmit Double-Take data, compression allows you to compress data prior to transmitting it across the network. In a WAN environment this provides optimal use of your network resources. If compression is enabled, the data is compressed before it is transmitted from the source. When the target receives the compressed data, it decompresses it and then writes it to disk. You can set the level from Minimum to Maximum to suit your needs.

    Keep in mind that the process of compressing data impacts processor usage on the source. If you notice an impact on performance while compression is enabled in your environment, either adjust to a lower level of compression, or leave compression disabled. Use the following guidelines to determine whether you should enable compression.

    • If data is being queued on the source at any time, consider enabling compression.
    • If the server CPU utilization is averaging over 85%, be cautious about enabling compression.
    • The higher the level of compression, the higher the CPU utilization will be.
    • Do not enable compression if most of the data is inherently compressed. Many image (.jpg, .gif) and media (.wmv, .mp3, .mpg) files, for example, are already compressed. Some images files, such as .bmp and .tif, are decompressed, so enabling compression would be beneficial for those types.
    • Compression may improve performance even in high-bandwidth environments.
    • Do not enable compression in conjunction with a WAN Accelerator. Use one or the other to compress Double-Take data.

    All jobs from a single source connected to the same IP address on a target will share the same compression configuration.

     

    Bandwidth

    

    Bandwidth limitations are available to restrict the amount of network bandwidth used for Double-Take data transmissions. When a bandwidth limit is specified, Double-Take never exceeds that allotted amount. The bandwidth not in use by Double-Take is available for all other network traffic.

    All jobs from a single source connected to the same IP address on a target will share the same bandwidth configuration.

     

    • Do not limit bandwidth—Double-Take will transmit data using 100% bandwidth availability.
    • Use a fixed limit—Double-Take will transmit data using a limited, fixed bandwidth. Select a Preset bandwidth limit rate from the common bandwidth limit values. The Bandwidth field will automatically update to the bytes per second value for your selected bandwidth. This is the maximum amount of data that will be transmitted per second. If desired, modify the bandwidth using a bytes per second value. The minimum limit should be 3500 bytes per second.

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