Disaster Recovery just got "sESXi"

Notes on using vRanger Pro & ESXi for Disaster Recovery

Just succesffully proved vRanger Pro to restore backups taken from Production (ESX 3.5, vRanger Pro on physical with VCB) to infrastructure in DR (ESXi 3.5, vRanger Pro on a VM, non VCB). All this from provisioning DR Infrastructure (ESXi Servers, Storage, vCenter VM) within 1 hour. Silver tier recovery just got "sESXi"!

Infrastructure at Production

• ESX 3.5 Update 2 on BL460C
• Storage on 400Gb LUNs presented by IBM SVC
• VC 2.5 Update 2 VM
• vRanger 3.8.2.1 & VCB 1.5 & vRanger Pro VCB Plugin 3.0 on Physical DL380 G5 Server
• VM backups on TSM and replicated to DR
  

Infrastructure at DR

• ESXi Update 3 USB on DL360 G5
• Local Storage
• VC 2.5 Update 4 VM
• vRanger 3.2.9.7 & VCB 1.5 & vRanger Pro VCB Plugin 3.0 on W2K3 SP2 VM + .Net Framework 2.0 SP1
  

Important points to note

If you are running vRanger in a virtual machine to restore workloads backed up by vRanger installed on a physical host, with either traditional LAN based backup or VCB based backup. It is important that the software is installed in the correct order and all the necessary software is installed to enable vRanger to restore both types of backup. If the physical vRanger server performed a backup of a workload using the VCB framework, then you will not be able to restore that workload using another vRanger server unless the VCB framework is also installed. For example, you wish to perform a restore at a DR site.

The correct installation order is

• Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 SP1
  
• vRanger Pro
• vRanger Pro VCB Integration module
• vRanger Pro file-level plugin
• VMware VCB Framework

Tips

• Install software in the correct order
• Create the same directory structure for the VM at the DR site as it is at Production. E.g, if the vRanger working directory is D:\vRanger_Backups at Production, then keep the same directory structure for the vRanger server at DR.
• This will enable you to first restore the vRanger database (esxRanger.mdb), which then populates the Restore table saving valuable time and effort because you will no longer need to use "Restore from Info"
• If restoring a vRanger backup that was taken using the VCB framework, then the vRanger server at DR will also need to have the VCB framework installed.