Virtualize via Hypervisor for VMware environments

Topic

This article describes the process of connecting a SIRIS to an VMWare ESXi host and running a virtualization via hypervisor offload. These instructions apply to virtual and physical SIRIS appliances.

For Hyper-V instructions, see Virtualize via Hypervisor for Hyper-V environments.

Environment

  • Datto SIRIS
  • VMWare vSphere

Description

Prerequisites

First, set up the Hypervisor Connection.

Procedure

  1. Start the ESXi virtualization via the device GUI by selecting the Virtualize via Hypervisor option on the Restore page.

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Figure 1: The Restore page in the Datto device GUI

  1. Choose a recovery point and the appropriate hypervisor from the drop-down menus, then click START RESTORE.

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Figure 2: Choose a recovery point

  1. The ESX Virtualization page will open and display the following options:
    • CPU Cores
    • System RAM
    • Controller
    • Network Options
    • Create Rescue Agent

For detailed information on each of these options, see our Local virtualization options article.

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Figure 3: ESX virtualization

If you are virtualizing from an agentless system, you can choose to use the original virtual machine configuration. You can also download the VMX file if you wish to review the original configuration settings.

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Figure 4: Agentless options

  1. Once you have made your selections, click START VM.

The virtualization process

vSphere is a third party software and is updated frequently. Your screens may look different than the ones pictured below.

After you start the virtual machine from the device GUI, you can see the tasks in vSphere under Recent Tasks.

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Figure 5: vSphere Tasks

  1. The SIRIS creates iSCSI targets to the .datto file. The targets then connect to the host via the ESXi iSCSI adapter.

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Figure 6: iSCSI Initiator Properties

  1. vSphere rescans the HBA to get information on the new devices available through the iSCSI adapter.
  2. A virtual disk is created through RDM to the .datto file through the iSCSI target on the SIRIS. This procedure attaches the .datto file to the virtual machine created on the ESXi host. If there is more than one disk in the backup, RDM creates a virtual disk for each.

The RDM creation can sometimes fail. This failure will typically produce the status "A specified parameter is not correct. spec.device" under the Create virtual disk task. It will retry up to 3 times for each virtual disk attached to the virtual machine.

If vSphere cannot access backup images on the SIRIS through iSCSI for ESXi virtualization, then it will attempt access through NFS as a failover.

  1. vSphere registers the virtual machine with the <agent>-restore naming convention.
  2. vSphere powers on the virtual machine

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Figure 7: Restore Listed in VMWare Virtual Machines tab

The screenshot verification process works the same way except for step 1, which involves manually starting up the virtual machine from the web interface. The naming convention for the virtual machine may also be slightly different.

Out of date VirtIO drivers on your guest VM can cause slow performance. See Installing VirtIO driver on an existing Windows virtual machine (external link) for information on updating the VirtIO driver.

NOTE   We recommend disabling snapshotting on VMs in vmware, that are created using the virtualization via hypervisor feature. Enabling snapshotting on the VM host will cause production data to be written to vmware host, not the datto device. This will not effect the virtual machine functions, but can cause missing data when attempting to restore from the Rescue Agent snapshots.