NDMP appliances

Requirements for NDMP appliance Backup and Restore

• Amanda server must be running  Linux distribution listed on the Zmanda Network Supported Platforms page.
• Amanda Enterprise 3.1 (including dependencies) must be installed on the Amanda server.
• The Amanda server includes the NDMP application. The NDMP backup can be performed only from the Amanda server not from an Amanda client.

Installation

• No additional packages are required for NDMP application. Amanda server includes all necessary software.
• NDMP is a licensed application. All product licences from Zmanda are in a single license file. If you have bought licenses recently, you will have to download the license file from Zmanda Network. The license file should be installed as /etc/zmanda/zmanda_license on the Amanda server. It should be owned by amandabackup user and disk group with file permissions 755.

Configuring NDMP volumes/directories for Backup

Configuring NDMP backups requires configurations steps using Zmanda Management Console and some manual steps.

• Zmanda recommends creation of separate backup set for NDMP DLEs.
• Create a backup set for the NDMP appliance in the Zmanda Management Console.
• Configure the backup set in the Backup What page.

• Configure Backup devices in the Admin Devices page and bind them to the backup set in the Backup Where page.
• Configure minimal staging area in the Backup Where page. Using staging area for the VMware ESX backups does not add any value.
• Change the Data Timeout value in the Backup How page for the backup set.  The value should be increased to at least 7200 seconds. Increasing the value does not impact the backup window (time to complete the backup).

• Modify the /etc/amanda/<backup set name>/disklist.conf to add backup entries for each guest VM that has to be backed up. See below for the line that must be added. The ip address of the ESX server and guest VM will have to be changed for your configuration (it has to be done in couple of places). You can use ESX host name instead of ip address of the ESX server. The Guest VM name must be the name of the VM folder on the data storage (may not be the name that appears on Vsphere client). You can have multiple entries in the file.

localhost "\\\\<ip address of the ESX server>\\<guest VM name>" "\\\\<ip address of the ESX server>\\<guest VM name>" {
      comment "Base dumptype for VMWare ESXi virtual machine"
      zmc_global_base
      zmc_bsdtcp_auth
      estimate    server
      compress    server best
      encrypt none
      property        "zmc_version"   "3"
      property        "zmc_type"      "vmware"
      property        "zmc_amanda_app"        "vmware"
      zmc_vmware_app
}

Please make sure you do not edit using Backup What page on the Zmanda Management  Console for this backup set.

• Create the ESX authentication file in /etc/amanda/<backup set name>/esxipass . This file should have the ip address for the ESX server, user name and password for the root user. This should be readable only by amandabackup user. An example esxipass file is shown below:

//esx4.company.com  root%root_password

esx4.company.com is the IP address or the name of the ESX server whose guest VMs are being backed up by the backup set. root is the user on the ESX server used for the backup operations and password for the user is root_password. The password must not be encrypted.

• Before scheduling backups, it is important to verify the VMware ESX application configuration. Run the amcheck command to verify the configuration.

$ amcheck -c <backup set name>

Please resolve any configuration errors found.

Configuring NDMP tape changer

Scheduling backups of NDMP appliance

You can schedule backups using Zmanda Management Console Backup When page or run immediate backups for the backup set from the Backup Activate page.

The status of the backup are shown in the Monitor page. Backup reports will be available under the Report tab in the Zmanda Management Console.

Performing NDMP appliance Restores/Recovery using command line

This section describes how to use Amanda recovery command amrecover to perform NDMP volume/directory restoration. 

1. Run amrecover command on the Amanda server as root user. You will need to provide the backup set name as a parameter. The values for options -t and -s will not change.
   
       # amrecover -C <backup set name> -t localhost -s localhost
    
2. Set the host to localhost and the disk to DLE name that was used in the backup set configuration. The DLE name will have //<ip address or the name of filer>/<name of the guest VM>.

amrecover> sethost localhost

200 Dump host set to localhost.

amrecover> setdisk //netapp1.company.com/vol/vol3

200 Disk set to //netapp1.company.com/vol/vol3

3. You can list the files in the backup using ls command. Add all the files or specific files to be restored and run extract command to restore the files.

amrecover> ls

2010-03-03-17-22-35 MyData
2010-03-03-17-22-35 MyMusic
...

amrecover> add *
Added file /rhel4-32.vmx
Added file /rhel4-32.vmdk

amrecover> extract

4. The amrecover command ask you to load the necessary tapes to the tape changer. Confirm that the tapes are loaded. The files will be restored to the original location. Please note that existing files in the original location will be deleted.