Perform the following steps to add a vCenter server as an asset source in the
PowerProtect Data Manager UI for virtual machine protection and Tanzu Kubernetes guest cluster protection.
Log in as a user with the
Administrator role. Only the
Administrator role can manage asset sources.
By default,
PowerProtect Data Manager enforces SSL certificates during communication with vCenter server. If a certificate appears and you trust the certificate, click
Verify.
The SSL certificate enforcement requires that the common name (cn) of the x509 certificate on the vCenter server matches the hostname of the vCenter URL. The common name of the x509 certificate is typically the vCenter server fully qualified domain name (FQDN), but it could be the vCenter server IP address. You can inspect the vCenter server SSL certificate to determine whether the x509 common name is an FQDN or IP. When creating an asset source resource, in order to pass SSL certificate enforcement, the asset source resource hostname must match the common name of the x509 certificate on the vCenter server.
NOTE It is recommended that you do not disable certificate enforcement. If disabling the certificate is required, carefully review the instructions in the section
Disable vCenter SSL certificate validation.
Steps
From the left navigation pane, select
Infrastructure > Asset Sources.
The
Asset Sources window appears.
Select the
vCenter tab.
Click
Add.
The
Add vCenter dialog displays.
Specify the source attributes:
In the
Name field, specify the vCenter server name.
In the
Address field, specify the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or the IP address.
NOTE For a vCenter server, it is recommended that you use the FQDN instead of the IP address.
In the
Port
field, specify the port for communication if you are not using the default port, 443.
Under
Host Credentials, choose an existing entry from the list to use for the vCenter user credentials. Alternatively, you can click
Add from this list to add new credentials, and then click
Save.
NOTE Ensure that you specify the credentials for a user whose role is defined at the vCenter level, as opposed to being restricted to a lower-level container object in the vSphere object hierarchy.
If you want to make a subset of the
PowerProtect Data Manager UI functionality available within the
vSphere Client, select
vSphere Plugin.
Available functionality includes:
The monitoring of active virtual machine/VMDK protection policies, and
Restore options such as
Restore to Original,
Restore to New, and
Instant Access.
NOTE You can unregister the vSphere plug-in at any time by clearing
vSphere Plugin.
By default, the vCenter discovery occurs automatically after adding the vCenter server, and subsequent discoveries are incremental. If you want to schedule a full discovery at a certain time every day, move the
Schedule Discovery slider to the right, and then specify a time.
If there is no hosting vCenter server and you want to make this the vCenter server that hosts
PowerProtect Data Manager, select
Add as hosting vCenter server. If a vCenter server has already been added as the hosting vCenter server, this option will be greyed out.
The
PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides more information about adding a host vCenter server and specifying the
PowerProtect Data Manager host.
If the vCenter server SSL certificate cannot be trusted automatically, a dialog box appears requesting certificate approval. Review the certificate, and then click
Verify.
Click
Save.
The vCenter server information that you entered now appears as an entry in a table on the
Asset Sources window. You can click the magnifying glass icon next to the entry to view more details, such as the next scheduled discovery, the number of assets within the vCenter server, and whether the
vSphere Plugin is enabled.
NOTE Although
PowerProtect Data Manager automatically synchronizes with the vCenter server under most circumstances, certain conditions might require you to initiate a manual discovery.
After discovery,
PowerProtect Data Manager starts an incremental discovery in the background periodically to keep updating
PowerProtect Data Manager with vCenter changes. You can always do an on-demand discovery.
NOTE When you add a host with existing virtual machines to
PowerProtect Data Manager, or read a host with virtual machines that was removed from one vCenter and added to another, an incremental discovery does not discover these virtual machine assets. Wait for the next scheduled full discovery, or initiate a discovery within the
PowerProtect Data Manager UI.
Optionally, you can set warning and failure thresholds for the available space on the datastore. Setting these thresholds enables you to check if enough storage space is available in the datastore to save the snapshot of the virtual machine during the backup process. The backup completes with a warning in the logs if the available free space in the datastore is less than or equal to the percentage indicated in the
Datastore Free Space Warning Threshold. The backup fails if the available free space in the datastore is less than or equal to the percentage indicated in the
Datastore Free Space Failure Threshold. To add Datastore Free Space Warning and Failure Thresholds:
Click the gear icon to open the
vCenter Settings dialog.
Type a percentage value to indicate when a warning message should display due to low datastore free space.
Type a percentage value to indicate when a virtual machine backup failure should occur due to low datastore free space.
Click
Save.
NOTE Datastore free space thresholds are disabled by default.
Select
Infrastructure > Assets.
The
Assets window appears.
If not already selected, click the
Virtual Machine tab.
Results
Upon a successful discovery of the vCenter asset source, the virtual machine assets in the vCenter server display in the
Infrastructure > Assets window.
You can modify the details for the vCenter asset source by selecting the vCenter server in the
Infrastructure > Asset Sources window and clicking
Edit. You cannot, however, clear the
Add as hosting vCenter checkbox when editing an asset source if this vCenter server has already been added as the hosting vCenter server. For this operation, use the
Hosting vCenter window, as described in the
PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide section for specifying the
PowerProtect Data Manager host.
NOTE Discovery time is based on networking bandwidth. The resources that are discovered and the resources that are performing the discovery impact performance each time that you initiate a discovery process. It might appear that
PowerProtect Data Manager is not updating the Asset Sources data while the discovery is in progress.
Next steps
Add a
VM Direct appliance to facilitate data movement, and then create virtual machine protection policies to back up these assets. The
PowerProtect Data Manager software comes bundled with an embedded
VM Direct engine, which is automatically used as a fallback proxy for performing backups and restores when the added external proxies fail or are disabled. It is recommended that external proxies be deployed since the embedded
VM Direct Engine has limited capacity for performing backup streams. To add a
VM Direct Engine, select
Infrastructure > Protection Engines.
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