Vranger ...anyone know much???

[jredwine2857]

Using vranger with ESXi seems to be a great mystery to both the folks at vizioncore and at vmware. Neither of them have been able to tell me what I need.

I have ESXi installed and running with a Foundation Essentials license. I am using the latest version of vRanger Pro and cannot get even to the point where it sees my ESX host in the gui.

I went to vranger's KB and typed in ESXi and NOTHING!!!

I added the ESX host to Vranger using the root account and it takes it, but nothing displays in the list of hosts. I tried creating an admin account on the ESX host , but it errored out when I tried to use it in the vranger gui.

Man..Any help here would be huge!! Anyone have this working with ESXi? What licenses did you have to get for VMWare to make this happen?

Thanks!

[athlon_crazy]

Hmmm since vranger backup require service console access, I doubt you can do this on ESXi ..

vcbMC-1.0.6 Beta

vcbMC-1.0.7 Lite

[mjsvirt]

Do you have VMware Consolidated Backup setup?

vRanger requires this component to be enabled and configured..

[jredwine2857]

Good point that might be it.

I have yet to install the vcb framework on the machine running vranger.

Be nice if vizioncore had a document outlining excatly the steps to follow to setup their product to backup esxi hosts.

Bet they'd sell a lot more product.

I can't seem to find any literature on this topic.

athlon, thanks for the input but I do know that vranger does now support esxi. You must have a Std license applied, the free version will not work.

I am going to publish all the steps necessary to do this when complete. Hopefully it helps someone else.

One more thing I just remembered was that it relied on the remote cli.

Thanks for the tips. Has me going in the right direction.

***Sent From My Blackberry Handheld***

Jason Redwine, MCSE, CCNA, CCA

LANRM Technologies

250 East 4th Street

15th Floor

Office (513) 984-3900

Cell (513) 616-6215

www.LANRM.com

Jason.Redwine@LANRM.com

[java_cat33]

I know that previous versions of vRanger never required VCB - it was an optional component. The VCB was only used for LAN-FREE backups. I'd be very surprised if VCB is a requirement in the latest release.

[VMmatty]

I have gone through this issue as well and the result is a frustrating one. In order to use vRanger with ESXi, you must use vCenter as well. vRanger by itself cannot connect to an ESXi host and pull a list of virtual machines to backup. VMware VCB is also a requirement.

I couldn't find anywhere that it was documented that said that vCenter is a requirement, but I spoke with several Vizioncore reps and had it confirmed. That may have changed with the most recent release of vRanger Pro 4.0 DPP (just came out this week), but I know for sure that you need vCenter to use vRanger 3.x on ESXi.

Hope that helps, probably not the answer you were looking for though.

[AndreTheGiant]

You have to use the future release of vRanger Pro 4.0 Data Protection Platform to support also ESXi:

http://www.vizioncore.com/products/vRangerPro/documents/vRangerPro-DPP-FAQ.pdf

Or vRanger Pro 3.3 for ESXi 3.5 Support:

http://www.vizioncore.com/products/vRangerPro/features.php

Andre

[AntonVZhbankov]

Veeam Backup supports ESXi even without VCB.

---

VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[jredwine2857]

Man what a joke vRanger is!! So in order to backup an ESXi box one must purchase both a Foundation Essentials license AND Virtual Center. That's like $3500!!

I am gonna have to take a look at Veeam.

[Troy_Clavell]

check out

[VMmatty · Accepted solution]

That's correct, you'll need at least VI3 Foundation and vCenter Foundation in order to back it up with vRanger. I would check what the requirements are for the latest version (4.0), but I know that those were the requirements for 3.x. If you're looking for a full featured alternative, I'd look at Veeam Backup. It's a really nice product and costs about the same as vRanger.

[jredwine2857]

VMMatty,

I took your advice and went with Veaam and what a piece of cake. Wow those vizioncore people better watch out! I used the SAN NBD method and it worked flawlessly for backing up ESXi Foundation Essential. No VC needed.

Now that's how I expected vranger to be. I seemed to think that vranger had the superior product, but I think I was wrong.

Now to get more space on the datastore to hold the snapshots. It's always something!

Thanks for the help guys!