Feature overview

Introduction

The VMware backup and disaster recovery feature is a full-machine protection solution from Cloud Backup for virtual machines (VMs) in on-premises VMware environments and Alibaba Cloud VMware Service (ACVS). It backs up entire VMs to the cloud simply, securely, and reliably. If an on-premises data center fails, a VM goes down, production data is accidentally deleted, or a ransomware attack occurs, you can restore the entire VM from a backup vault in the cloud. You can restore to an on-premises VMware environment, Alibaba Cloud VMware Service, or Alibaba Cloud ECS. This provides disaster recovery for business systems and ensures data security and business continuity.

Key advantages

• No on-premises hardware required

  Back up data directly from your on-premises environment to the cloud without purchasing separate hardware.

• Agentless

  No client installation inside the VM operating system is required. Deploy one or more backup gateways in the VMware environment instead.

• Integrated backup and disaster recovery

  After a VM is backed up, you can restore it to your on-premises VMware environment, Alibaba Cloud VMware Service, or Alibaba Cloud ECS. This ensures both data security and business continuity.

• Source-side deduplication and compression

  The Cloud Backup gateway compresses and deduplicates data at the source before backup. This saves bandwidth during upload and reduces backup storage consumption in the cloud.

• Backup locking to prevent accidental deletion

  Cloud Backup provides a backup vault-based locking feature. Backup data cannot be deleted by any account or method before the configured retention period expires.

How it works

In the vCenter environment that you want to back up, deploy and activate a Cloud Backup VMware backup and disaster recovery gateway using the OVA VM template provided by Cloud Backup. Each vCenter environment requires only one gateway, but larger environments may need more. The gateway backs up VMs according to the backup plan.

When a backup job runs, the backup gateway takes a snapshot of the specified VM. It then reads the snapshot data using the official VMware software development kit (SDK). After data deduplication and compression, the gateway uploads the data to the cloud to complete the backup. Cloud Backup uses an automatic incremental backup and merge mechanism. After the first full backup, each subsequent backup uploads only the changed data. This data is then synthesized into a new full backup in the cloud. This process reduces network and storage consumption. Cloud Backup also supports the official VMware incremental interface. This lets you read native incremental data directly, which greatly reduces data transmission over the internal network.

Cloud Backup supports migration to Alibaba Cloud over the Internet, a VPN, or a leased line. For backups over the Internet, the backup gateway only needs to access the Internet. You do not need to expose its IP address to the Internet.

Cloud Backup supports restoring VMware VM backup data as an ECS image in the Alibaba Cloud environment. Clone the source VM's data from a specific backup point in time to enable VM-level disaster recovery and migration from an on-premises data center to the cloud.

When restoring a backed-up VMware VM to an ECS image, Cloud Backup automatically creates a temporary intermediate ECS instance to restore data and generate the image. The system creates a snapshot for this image by default, which incurs storage fees. After the image is generated, the intermediate instance is automatically released, leaving only the ECS image. Create ECS instances from this image as needed to restore data and rebuild your system environment.

Procedures

• On-premises VMware

  To back up VMware VMs in an on-premises VMware environment, follow these steps:

  

  1. Activate Cloud Backup

     Activating Cloud Backup is free. Ongoing charges include a software usage fee for VMware backup and a storage capacity fee. For billing details, see Billing methods and billable items.

  2. Prepare a backup account

     Create a dedicated VMware username and password so that Cloud Backup can authenticate to vCenter Server and access the resources it needs to run backup jobs.

  3. Add a disaster recovery gateway

     Create a disaster recovery gateway in the Cloud Backup console. The disaster recovery gateway helps you perform backup and restore jobs.

  4. Install and activate disaster recovery gateway

     Download the gateway package and its certificate, then install and activate the gateway in your VMware environment. After activation, you can create backup and restore jobs in the Cloud Backup console.

  5. Add vCenter

     Before you back up VMware VMs, you must add the vCenter Server in the Cloud Backup console.

  6. Back up VMware virtual machines

     Create a backup plan and configure the plan name, backup cycle, and retention period. Cloud Backup starts the plan and backs up your VMware VMs on the defined schedule.

  7. Restore a VMware virtual machine

     If a VM encounters an issue, create a restore job to recover it to an on-premises server, an ECS instance, or Alibaba Cloud VMware Service.

• Alibaba Cloud VMware service (ACVS)

  To back up VMs in Alibaba Cloud VMware Service (ACVS), follow these steps:

  

  1. Activate Cloud Backup

     Activating Cloud Backup is free. Ongoing charges include a software usage fee for VMware backup and a storage capacity fee. For billing details, see Billing methods and billable items.

  2. Prepare the VMware service environment

     Get the login credentials and address for your VMware components, then configure the firewall rules for the virtual private cloud (VPC) and the dedicated VMware environment.

  3. Add a disaster recovery gateway

     Create a disaster recovery gateway in the Cloud Backup console. The disaster recovery gateway helps you perform backup and restore jobs.

  4. Install and activate the disaster recovery gateway

     Download the gateway package and its certificate, then install the gateway in your VMware environment. After installation, you can create backup and restore jobs in the Cloud Backup console.

  5. Add vCenter

     Before you back up VMware VMs, you must add the vCenter Server in the Cloud Backup console.

  6. Back up VMware virtual machines

     Create a backup plan and configure the plan name, backup cycle, and retention period. Cloud Backup starts the plan and backs up your VMware VMs on the defined schedule.

  7. Restore a VMware virtual machine

     If a VM encounters an issue, create a restore job to recover it to an on-premises server, an ECS instance, or Alibaba Cloud VMware Service.

Billing

What to do next

• Learn about the preparations for VMware backup and disaster recovery (on-premises VMware environment) and preparations (Alibaba Cloud VMware Service).

• Learn about Cloud Backup best practices.