Veritas NetBackup™ for Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) Administrator's Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup (8.2)
  1. Introduction to NetBackup for Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)
    1.  
      Protect AHV using NetBackup
    2. About the Hypervisor policy type to protect Nutanix AHV VMs
      1.  
        Migrating BigData policy to Hypervisor policy
    3.  
      NetBackup terminology related to the AHV backup
    4.  
      NetBackup for AHV environment
  2. Prerequisites and things to consider before using the plug-in
    1.  
      Prerequisites
    2. Things to consider before using the NetBackup plug-in for Nutanix AHV
      1.  
        NetBackup character restrictions for virtual machine names
  3. Downloading and installing the Nutanix plug-in
    1.  
      Plan the installation for Nutanix AHV
    2.  
      NetBackup server and client requirements
    3.  
      License requirements for the Nutanix AHV
    4.  
      Download the Nutanix AHV plug-in binaries
    5.  
      Install the Nutanix AHV plug-in
  4. Configuring NetBackup communication with AHV
    1.  
      Establishing communication between NetBackup and Nutanix AHV
    2. Configuring secure communication between the Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor server and NetBackup host
      1.  
        About the nb_nutanix-ahv configuration file
      2. Managing SSL certificates through ECA framework
        1.  
          ECA_TRUST_STORE_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
        2.  
          ECA_CRL_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
        3.  
          VIRTUALIZATION_HOSTS_SECURE_CONNECT_ENABLED for servers and clients
        4.  
          VIRTUALIZATION_CRL_CHECK for NetBackup servers and clients
    3.  
      Adding the Nutanix Acropolis Cluster credentials for NetBackup
    4. Adding a backup host to the NetBackup master server
      1.  
        Adding a backup host to the NetBackup master access list
    5.  
      Adding a backup host to the Acropolis Cluster access list
  5. Configuring NetBackup policies for AHV
    1.  
      Creating a backup policy using the NetBackup Policies utility
    2.  
      Creating a backup policy using the NetBackup Command Line Interface
  6. Backup and recovery
    1. Back up the Nutanix AHV virtual machines
      1.  
        Basic phases in a NetBackup backup of an AHV
    2. Overview of the Nutanix AHV virtual machines recovery process
      1.  
        About recovering the Nutanix AHV virtual machines
      2.  
        Planning the recovery of a Nutanix AHV VM
      3.  
        Recovering a Nutanix AHV VM using the Backup, Archive, and Restore console
      4.  
        About recovering AHV VMs from the images that are backed up using NetBackup versions 8.1, 8.1.1, or 8.1.2
      5. Recovering a Nutanix AHV VM using the command line for Hypervisor policy
        1.  
          Creating or modifying the rename file
        2.  
          Using the command line to recover Nutanix AHV virtual machines for Hypervisor policy
  7. Troubleshooting issues
    1.  
      Troubleshooting issues related to AHV backup
    2.  
      NetBackup logs
    3.  
      About errors during policy creation, restore, and validation
    4.  
      NetBackup status codes
  8. Appendix A. NetBackup commands to backup and restore Nutanix AHV virtual machines
    1.  
      NetBackup commands for protecting the AHV
  9. Appendix B. Protect Nutanix AHV virtual machines with BigData policy
    1.  
      Using the BigData policy to backup and restore Nutanix AHV virtual machines
    2. Recovering a Nutanix AHV VM using the command line for BigData policy
      1.  
        Creating or modifying the rename file
      2.  
        Using the command line to recover Nutanix AHV virtual machines for BigData policy

Configuring secure communication between the Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor server and NetBackup host

NetBackup provides configuration settings through a Nutanix specific configuration file nb_nutanix-ahv.conf to validate the certificate that the Acropolis Hypervisor server returns during the communication.

NetBackup also supports peer certificate validation for all virtualization servers like VMware, RHV Manager, and Nutanix Acropolis Cluster through a common External Certificate Authority (ECA) framework. This common framework can work with single set of configuration parameters for all virtualization workloads and provides additional validations like certificate revocation lists.

Both these frameworks require a certificate bundle on each backup host that can contain certificates from one or more Certificate Authorities (CAs). In absence of centralized CAs, even self-signed certificates from different servers can be added to this bundle.

From the NetBackup Nutanix AHV plug-in for Hypervisor policy 8.2 release, to enable SSL validation you must configure both the sets of parameters as follows:

Both the certificate bundle path variables that are specified in nb_nutanix-ahv.conf and bp.conf respectively can point to same PEM file, or to different PEM files as per user convenience.

Note that when you configure the SSL parameters in NetBackup, you must ensure that the values that you provide for the following options matches with the Acropolis cluster name that is present in the Nutanix SSL certificate:

If you use the default certificates from Nutanix that contain the Common Name field as CN=*.nutanix.local, NetBackup might fail the SSL validations and not let you backup the AHV VMs. In this scenario, skip the SSL validations. If you want to skip certificate validation, set enable_ssl_validations to false in nb_nutanix-ahv.conf. You can then skip rest of this section, and See Adding the Nutanix Acropolis Cluster credentials for NetBackup.