Backing up vCenter with VDR

[marcelgr]

Hi,

I am running vCenter in a VM. VDR seems to back it up successfully, but I cannot find any way to restore it. The vCenter server is not listed as a source for restores, and when I right-click on the server and select Restore, it tells me that the virtual machine has no restore points available.

Could someone please confirm whether this is a known problem/limitation, or if it is something that is specifically wrong on my side?

Thanks

[AndreTheGiant]

You must be able to do backup also of VC.

Be sure that on the VC there is a backup job, then try to run it manually and see if if starts without errors.

Andre

[marcelgr]

At fist the VC VM was grouped in a Backup Job with other VMs, so I created a new job that only contains the VC VM. While the job executes I can see how the job creates the snapshot, copies the data and removes the snapshot, but afterwards the VC server is still not available for restore.

[AndreTheGiant]

Very strange.

How does is take to make the backup?

Have you tried to restart the VDR appliance?

Andre

[marcelgr]

I'm hoping to catch the eye of someone that can confirm whether they can or can't restore VC using VDR...

The first backup took a while, but subsequent backups are very fast (as is to be expected). Restarting the VDR server makes no difference

Marcel

[wkloss]

Well, in my config (3xESXi + SAN), it is working like a charm. But I don't no what to do with that backup. In case of of a vcenter failure, the vdr appliance won't work either.

[Paul11]

No, that is not true. I have successfully restored my VirtualCenter DB-Server without VitualCenter running (no Database - no VirtualCenter). You must create a blank VM and point the disk you want to restore to this Template VM. Than you can do the restore without VirtulCenter, if you login to this ESX-host on which the VDR-Appliance is running. If you are lucky and the VirtualCenter Server is on the same host as your VDR-Appliance than you do not need the trick with the Template VM. But otherwise you need a VM for restoring the disk, because you do not see the VM's from the other ESX-hosts in your cluster environment. So you can restore your VirtualCenter Server with VDR without a running VirtualCenter Server.