One of the new product features that didn’t get a lot of exposure during the recent VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1 launch are the enhanced data protection and recovery mechanisms for VCF. These new capabilities, enabled through SDDC manager, automate comprehensive backup and recovery workflows via a set ofAPIs with industry leading data protection solutions. This new capability will be certified with Cohesity and Dell Power Protect product offerings
Some of the key enhancements that are being delivered as part of the SDDC Manager backup and recovery workflows and APIs are as follows;
- Initiating backup on successful task completion
- Automatic retry for halted backup processes
- Notification banner in SDDC Manager UI when a backup job fails
- Management of number backups to retain, delete incomplete backups
- To increase robustness, add additional pre-backup checks,
- GUI Improvements for configuring the backup schedule, backup retention policy and taking on-demand backup.
- Public APIs support for 3rd party ecosystem partners
- Certified backup solutions from Dell PowerProtect and Cohesity
Here are some details about the partner integrations that have been certified with VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1:
Dell PowerProtect Data Manager v.19.6:
The Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for VCF fully integrates with SDDC Manager’s backup-restore APIs to provide full stack data protection of the Management Domain, K8 enabled WLDs and vRealize infrastructure deployed on Readynodes and VXRails private clouds.
- A software-defined stand-alone solution that is deployed as an open virtual appliance (OVA) in the vCenter environment. It runs as a virtual machine and stores backups to connected integrated storage
- Automated Discovery using SDDC Manager APIs of your VCF environment (workload and management domains)
- Auto discovery of vRealize deployed component VMs as a protection job
- Backup customer provided Secure FTP (sFTP) service of encrypted backed-up datasets (NSX, SDDC Manager file-based backups).
- Easy to use backup-recovery administration UI (vCenter plugin included)
- Discovers workloads such as virtual machines, databases (SQL, Oracle, SAP HANA and Exchange), file systems, and Kubernetes, and protects its assets by creating policies.
- Protects and manages the workloads based on the protection Policies and SLA Compliance
- Data Manager protects workloads on VMware SDDC, the heartbeat of the VCF
- Dell Data Protection for Kubernetes Video
Cohesity Data Protection Solution
The Cohesity Data protection solution is a certified VCF backup solution that fully integrates with SDDC Manager’s backup-restore APIs to provide centralized, full stack data protection of the Management Domain VMs and vRealize infrastructure components deployed on Readynodes.
Cohesity’s data protection solution fully automates the backup-recovery of VMware Cloud Foundation’s management components using file and image-based backups from the management console which provides the following features:
- Automated Discovery using native APIs of your VCF environment (workloads and management domain)
- Easy to install and operate – Cohesity software-appliance runs external and securely connects to your SDDC Manager instances
- Automatic configuration of File-Based Backups of NSX T Manager, SDDC Manager, and vCenter, including schedules, retention, and on-demand backups where supported.
- Auto discovery of the vRSLCM managed components such as vRA, vROPS, Log Insight on VCF on-premises clouds
- Provides Secure FTP (sFTP) service and persistent storage to hold encrypted backed-up datasets
- Simplified experience with policy-based backup and 15 minutes recovery of the VCF platform
- One solution to backup-restore management and tenant workloads
- Solution is now available on the Cohesity marketplace!
- Solution Demo here
- VMware VCF certified and VCG listed here
VMworld 2020 promises to be a very special event and if you’re looking to fill some calendar slots, then check out this blog for all of the VCF focused breakout sessions.
Stay tuned to this blog for more updates on the data protection capabilities with VCF and the expansion of industry leading data protection partners!
Resources:
VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1 Announcement
VMware Remote Clusters Announcement
VMware Cloud Foundation at VMworld
