Project Detail

Hi, in this post I want to highlight and review Nakivo from my perspective as a Backup & Restore Solution for my Homelab Datacenter.
Scenarion of my Lab: There are site for Prod (tier1) & Dev (DRC)

First of all, we need to prepare the software to be deployed on our environment vsphere 7, so lets download Nakivo Trial software from this link https://www.nakivo.com/resources/download/trial-download/. Please input Name, Email (email office), Phone Number. After that you can choose Nakivo that suit your infrastructure of datacenter.

After your download finished, lets deploy ova and upload files to host like picture below. Click Next

Please input virtual machine name, location site & folder for vm

Next, we need to choose cluster and host for our nakivo vm. Ensure the compatibility is succeed

Review details of our configuation

Read license agreement, for me I just scroll then accept the agreement. Click Next

Please select virtual disk format (thin disk) & datastore then ensure the compatibilty check succeed

Then we need to choose network. I have set network for Vlan10 and set the DNS record in my domain name server

The last step, review again then click finish!

While nakivo is installed, we can have a coffee and indomie noodles. Seleraku!

After deployment finished, lets power on vm. By default Nakivo installed with 2vCPU, 4GB Memory & 2 hardisk (30GB & 500GB)

This is Nakivo Display from console, then I need to configure Network Setting

Network is configured like the picture below, F10 for save & exit.

Now, we can access GUI of Nakivo, congrats! Lets input the data to create accout credential

After we login, we need to input vcenter credential login for integration. Click finish.
Note that I input 2 vcenter in this step Prod & Dev. After all of the configuration finished, now lets do a Backup & Replication simulation

Next, we need to chose nodes transporter. For me I let default like picture below:

Then for repositories, I also use defalut for onboard repository. Onboard repository use datastore attach with nakivo VM from first deployment. Click Finish

Finally, we will start our first Backup Job. Lets choose VMware vSphere backup job

We need to choose virtual machine, for me I choose “grafana_10.95”

I choose default for onboard repository

In this step, we can set time, name job, type(weekly,monthly,periodic), run every, start at(time backup job),keep backup for. Please read the nakivo link for more detail.

For final step, I just input name and job priority, for job priority 1-5 with 1 is the highest priority. The rest is default. Finish!

Backup Job started on Nakivo, the process really depend on your machine hardware specification.

We can also check on vCenter, there is event and snapshot created because nakivo will trigger vcenter for this action.

What I like from nakivo is, the backup is not snaphots. Correct me if im wrong, the backup data is stored on their onboard repository. So the snapshot in vcenter is clean after the backup proccess nakivo finished.

Now lets try first scenario, recover 1 file that accidently deleted. Sometimes as an engineer we like to do housekeeping and deleted important file unconsciously. Nakivo provide solution for this problem.
Go to Jobs > Individual Files

We choose virtual machine that want to be recovered for files

For recovery method, I choose download to browser or send email.

Lets assume we accidently delete this file bashrc, from picture below bashrc will be chosen to restore according to backup job start-finish time.

Choose download for file restoration.

Finish, you can reupload data file to your virtual machine using winscp or ftp.

Now lets try another method, recover full VM. Lets imagine our vm is crash and can not power on with PSOD. So lets do VM rcovery fom backup

We need to choose virtual machine for recover

For recovery, I will choose site Dev (DRC). Please check picture below:

The final step to recover vm, For Job option I only input Job name & Job Priority then click finish-Run fo selected VMs.

Waiting the progress, it will spend arround 25-30 minutes but it could be faster if your infrastructure is advance

Finally the job is finished and VMs is recovered. We can see picture below name “grafana_10.95-recovered” created by default from Nakivo as it sync with vcenter