Dell EMC PowerProtect for VMware Cloud Foundation

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information about Dell EMC PowerProtect support for VMware Cloud Foundation.
With Dell EMC PowerProtect, you can discover the management and workload domain components of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), configure the external SFTP (or other supported protocols) server to be used for file system backup of all the VCF components, also set up the Dell EMC PowerProtect backup jobs to protect your entire VCF infrastructure.

Disclaimer:  The partner solution referenced in this article is a solution that is developed and supported by a partner. Use of this product is also governed by the end user license agreement of the partner. You must obtain from the partner the application, support, and licensing for using this product. For more information, see Dell EMC PowerProtect.

Resolution

Below is a summary of target use cases, solution architecture, solution components, and support information.

Target use cases:

Automated Discovery using native APIs of your VCF environment (workload and management domains)
Automatic configuration of File-Based Backups of NSX Manager, SDDC Manager, and vCenter, including schedules, retention, and on-demand backups (where supported).
Automatic configuration of image-based backups as needed by the respective VCF components

Solution Architecture

Below table shows the list of components that Dell EMC PowerProtect Manager protects and the corresponding backup methodology used.
 

VCF DOMAIN	COMPONENT	BACKUP METHOD
Management	SDDC Manager	File-based
Management	vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM)	Image-based
Management	Workspace ONE Access	Image-based
Management/Workload	vCenter server	File-based
Management/Workload	NSX-T Data Center	File-based
Management/Workload	VxRail Manager	Image-based
Management/Workload	vRealize Log Insight	Image-based
Management/Workload	vRealize Operations Manager	Image-based
Management/Workload	vRealize Automation	Image-based
Management/Workload	vRealize Network Insight	Image-based
Management/Workload	vRealize Business	Image-based

The script to perform the VCF configuration can be found in the following location in PowerProtect Data Manager server. Please follow the below steps to run the script.

1. Login to the PowerProtect Data Manager CLI console using admin or equivalent user account
2. Go to the following location “/usr/local/brs/lib/sysmgr/bin”
3. Run the script ppdm-vcf-component-protection.sh to start configuring the VCF components protection.

Solution Components

Dell EMC PowerProtect solution for VCF uses the following components:

• VMware VCF 4.0 or higher
• VMware vCenter 7.0 or higher
• VMware vSAN 7.0 or higher

Note: Always check eLab Navigator of Dell EMC for compatibility

Support Information

Troubleshooting:

For VMware Protection using PowerProtect Data Manager, please refer to section “Best Practices and Troubleshooting” chapter in the Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide.

Log collection:

Please refer to section “Add a log bundle” in chapter “Modifying the System Settings” in Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide

See Also, Documentation available at Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager , provides additional and detailed information on setup as well as configuration for all of the solution components.