One of many VMware vExpert benefits besides recognition in community is possibility to work with different companies. Quite recently I was contacted by company called Altaro - well-known company offering backup software for Hyper-V and VMware.

After few months of hard work Altaro is introducing backup software as well for VMware vSphere products. I tested Altaro VM Backup - VMware and I am more than happy to share few words about it.

Software specification

At the beginning few words about supported versions and backup management.

Versions of VMware supported:

• VMware vSphere 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 and 6.0
• VMware vCenter 5.1, 5.5 and 6.0
• VMware ESXi 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 and 6.0

To manage backup configuration and jobs from a separate machine, you can install the BETA on these OS’s:

• Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012 and 2012 R2
• Windows 7 (64-bit),8 (64-bit) and 10 (64-bit)

First steps

Altaro VM Backup - VMware Beta requires installation on Windows Server. I had a small problem with installation on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 for unknown reasons. I contacted Altaro Support and they quickly suggested to extract installer from **.exe ** installer and this worked fine. This is what I like and how support should looks like 🙂

This is the problem I faced.

Altaro VM Backup - VMware Beta initial setup

Like with every software you have to configure source (what you want to back up) and destination (where do we backup).

1. In order to do this let’s launch Altaro VM Backup first.
   
2. In console simply select This Machine and click connect.
3. Altaro did well by simplifying initial setup which is done in three steps. In step one we click Add Hyper-V / VMware host.
4. Select VMware ESXi or VMware vCenter Server. I will go with vCenter Server - select it and click next.
5. Provide vCenter Server IP or FQDN name, user credentials with administrative rights and password. At the end click Test Connection.
6. Last screen shows you summary of your environment - in my case it is just four ESXi hosts. Click Finish.
7. Next step is to select what do we want to back up. Click on dashboard and select Step 2 - Choose Where to Store Backups.
8. You can select Physical Drive (USB, eSata, iSCSI or Internal Drive) or Network Path (Network Drive, NAS or other Network Location). In my case I will test backup to local disk.
   
9. Click Finish and let’s go to third and last step.
10. Let’s finish with initial setup by taking first backup. Select Take First Backup.
    
11. Now click on Click here to configure Virtual Machines.
12. Choose which host and all of it virtual machines should be back up or select particular virtual machine. I selected one nested ESXi to be protected. Simply drag and drop virtual machine on backup location.
13. When you selected all virtual machines to be backed up click Save Changes.
14. Click on Virtual Machines section and select virtual machine to back up.
15. My first backup finished with errors, but this is due to nested ESXi itself and not Altaro VM Backup 🙂
16. Once backup is taken you can see it on very informative dashboard.

Summary

After a week of testing I can say that Altaro VM Backup for VMware is solid software. If  you would like to test program here is the product link: http://www.altaro.com/vm-backup/

You can check as well Quick Start guide available here Altaro VM Backup Quick Start Guide.