vCloud director back-up jobs get routed to a single cell and does not get distributed across all cells

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• All the backup jobs from third-party vendor are directed to a single cell on vCloud director.
• The back-up jobs are not getting distributed across all the cells.
• The back-up jobs get accumulated and it is identified backup job api requests are being sent to single cell only.

Environment

• vCD 10.x.x

Cause

• vCD does not have the capability to distribute any of the tasks across the cells. It needs a loadbalancer. 
• The reason for the backup tasks being routed to a single cell is potentially due to the configuration of the load balancer, scheduler or the backup tool integration method.

• Backup Solution Targets Only One Cell  : Most of the third-party backup tools (like Veeam or Avamar) connect to vCD using a static FQDN or IP, which may point to a single vCD cell directly or be incorrectly routed by the load balancer.

• No Load Balancer in Front of VCD Cells  :  If there is no load balancer used in front of the VCD cells, backup connections will hit only one cell.

Resolution

How to Distribute Load Across all Cells :

 

1.) Use a Load Balancer :

• • Ensure that your backup solution is configured to connect via the load-balanced VIP/FQDN and not directly to one cell.
  • Make sure the load balancer is distributing HTTP/S traffic evenly across all the vCD cells.

2.) If Backup Tool Supports Multiple Endpoints : 

• • Some backup tools (like Veeam with VCD integration) can support multiple cells or endpoints. 
  • Configure the VCD API endpoint as the VIP address, not the IP of one node.
  • If you're writing custom scripts or using API-based backup logic, try rotating the endpoint or use the VIP.