vRanger Pro Evaluation Guide - Quest Software

vRanger Pro Evaluation Guide

Contents 

Overview ...................................................................................................................................................... 3 

About Quest Software ................................................................................................................................................ 3 

About This Guide ........................................................................................................................................................ 3 

The Virtual Infrastructure ........................................................................................................................... 4 

Supported VMware Platforms ..................................................................................................................................... 4 

Recommended Service Console Configurations (ESX Only) ..................................................................................... 5 

Configuring vRanger Pro ........................................................................................................................... 6 

Network Mode ............................................................................................................................................................ 6 

LAN Free .................................................................................................................................................................. 10 

Setting Up Repositories ............................................................................................................................................ 13 

Advanced Configurations ........................................................................................................................ 15 

Fibre/iSCSI Backups ................................................................................................................................................ 15 

Change Block Tracking ............................................................................................................................................ 16 

Job Configuration ..................................................................................................................................................... 16 

Application Consistency ........................................................................................................................................... 17 

Testing vRanger Pro ................................................................................................................................. 19 

Backup Testing ......................................................................................................................................................... 19 

Restore Testing ........................................................................................................................................................ 20 

2

Overview 

vRanger Pro offers comprehensive data protection that supports VMware vSphere. Delivering fast and reliable 

backup and recovery, vRanger Pro captures the entire image of a VM and offers restore at the image, file or 

application level (When using Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange). All backup jobs are executed without 

interrupting service--that is, while the source machine is running. An intelligent resource scheduler maximizes 

throughput by leveraging all available ESX hosts and controlling the number of simultaneous jobs, reducing the 

backup window. To save time and disk storage, vRanger Pro supports multiple space savings mechanisms such as 

Change Block Tracking (CBT), incremental backup, differential backup, and Active Block Mapping (ABM). Finally, 

vRanger Pro allows you to connect to multiple vCenter Servers to easily protect larger or distributed environments. 

About Quest Software 

Quest Software simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our 

innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT management problems easier, enabling customers to save time 

and money across physical, virtual and cloud environments. For more information about Quest, go to 

www.quest.com. 

About This Guide 

This guide is intended to provide guidance on the proper environmental and application configurations needed to 

effectively run and evaluate vRanger Pro. This guide is not intended as a complete resource, but a quick reference 

guide that captures the most common use cases. 

Documentation 

The vRanger Pro documentation set consists of the following: 

• Release Notes (PDF) 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

vRanger Pro Deployment Guide (PDF) 

Getting Started Guide (PDF) 

What’s New Guide (PDF) 

System Requirements Guide (PDF) 

Installation and Setup Guide set PDF): 

User Guide (PDF and online help) 

The vRanger Pro documentation is available online at: http://portal.vizioncore.com 

Quest Online Resources: 

The Quest website contains a wealth of information, including product features and functions, release information, 

product documentation, training, and support forums. 

• General Product Page - Feature Information, Demos, etc: 

• http://www.quest.com/vranger/ 

• vCommunity - A collaborative environment for Quest customers featuring forums, wikis, and more. 

http://vcommunity.vizioncore.com/ 

• Training - Free access to online product training. 

http://training.vizioncore.com 

3

The Virtual Infrastructure 

The performance and reliability of vRanger Pro depends, in large part, on the configuration of the environment in 

which it is used. Please use these configuration recommendations and guidelines within your environment to ensure 

optimal operation of vRanger Pro. 

Supported VMware Platforms 

vRanger Pro supports operation against the following versions of VMware Infrastructure: 

ESX(i) Server vCenter/VirtualCenter VCB 

• 3.5 

• 3.5 Update 1 





• 4.0 


• 4.1 

• 2.5 






• 4.0 

• 4.1 

4 

VCB integration is not supported in 

this release. VMware has 

announced End of Life for VCB and 

is shifting focus to the vStorage API, 

which is supported by vRanger Pro. 

For a complete list of supported platforms and installation platforms, please see the vRanger Pro System 

Requirements Guide at: http://portal.vizioncore.com 

Port Requirements 

If you are using a firewall that might restrict communication between the computers involved in the backup process, 

ensure that these ports are available: 

Port Direction Function 

22 TCP vRanger Pro: outgoing 

Host ESX Servers: incoming 

and outgoing 

Used for backup traffic when 

using Direct-To-Target 

configuration. Also used for 

basic SSH communications 

443 TCP, 902 TCP vRanger Pro: outgoing Used for vCenter and ESX(i) 

host communications via the 

VMware API 

Licensing 

Every ESX(i) host for which vRanger Pro is expected to provide protection must be properly licensed, both by 

VMware and in the vRanger Pro Host Licensing tab. Each physical CPU socket on a licensed ESX host requires 1 

CPU License. In order to use VMware’s vStorage APIs to perform LAN Free Backups, a minimum of “vSphere 

Essentials” licensing is required from VMware. 

While vRanger Pro can restore to a host for which you have not purchased a vRanger Pro license, the application 

does not support the free version of VMware ESXi.

Recommended Service Console Configurations (ESX Only) 

During standard backup operations in Direct-To-Target mode, the ESX Service Console is used to run process data. 

The additional load placed on the Service Console should be addressed by implementing the suggestions below. 

Service Console Configurations 

Please ensure that your ESX build is 219382 or higher. Previous versions are affected by an issue that limits service 

console read/write performance to approximately 20 MB/s. Apply VMware Patch ESX400-200912401-BG or the latest 

available build to avoid this issue. 

The tables below detail the approximate difference in performance provided by the patch. 

vRanger Pro 4.x Backup Time Comparison - vRanger Pro 4.x 

Backup Type ESX 4.0 (Build lower than 219382) ESX 4.0 (Build 219382 and above) 

Compressed, 50 GB, LAN 12-14 MB/s 72-85 MB/s 

Uncompressed, 50 GB, LAN 13-16 MB/s 90-110 MB/s 

Compressed, 50 GB, Fibre 50-60 MB/s 48-58 MB/s 

Uncompressed, 50 GB, Fibre 73-87 MB/s 73-87 MB/s 

In addition to ensuring your ESX Hosts are at an adequate patch level, Quest recommends that the changes below 

be made on your ESX hosts to optimize the backup of VMs when using Direct-To-Target mode. These ESX 

resource settings are not mandatory, but are recommended to minimize potential issues and maximize performance. 

Increase the VIM CPU reservation (2500-3200 MHz): 

In the VI Client inventory, select the ESX host > Configuration tab > System Resource Allocation. In the 

System Resource Pools view, select VIM and click Edit Settings. 

1. Adjust the CPU reservation slider up to the equivalent of one core (2500-3200 MHz). 

2. Select Expandable Reservation and Unlimited. 

Increase the Service Console CPU Reservation to 1500 MHz 


System Resource Pools view, select Console and click Edit Settings. 

1. Adjust the CPU reservation slider up to 1500 MHz. 

2. Select Expandable Reservation and Unlimited. 

Increase the RAM allocated to the Service Console to 800 MB. 


System Resource Pools view, select Console and click Edit Settings. 

1. Adjust the Memory reservation slider to 800 MB. 

Note: These changes requires a reboot of the ESX Host in order to take effect 

5

Configuring vRanger Pro 

vRanger Pro can be used in either a network based mode (using a Direct-To-Target configuration for ESX backups) 

or in a Fibre mode (LAN Free). The installation requirements differ for each mode of installation. Bear in mind that 

actual requirements vary depending upon a number of factors; the values below represent a good starting point for an 

optimal experience during your evaluation. 

For either configuration, the operating system on the vRanger Pro machine can be configured to use any of the 

languages below: 

English French Italian 

German Japanese Simplified Chinese 

Spanish 

Network Mode 

Network Mode within vRanger Pro can be configured one of two ways depending on whether you are using ESX or 

ESXi as your hypervisor. When using ESX, Quest refers to the vRanger Pro architecture as Direct-To-Target. When 

using ESXi as the hypervisor of choice, the only Network Mode option available is to use the VMware vStorage APIs 

over the network from the vRanger Pro server. 

It is not recommended that vRanger Pro be configured in Network Mode due to performance implications when using 

ESXi. Instead, it is highly recommended that the LAN Free configuration be used. This will enable the best backup 

performance and optimize the amount of time it takes to backup the overall virtual environment. See the information 

in the following section for why this configuration is not optimal for ESXi. 

ESXi 

As mentioned, Quest does not recommend that ESXi servers be configured using Network Mode. While this mode 

may provide a simpler setup, it yields significantly deprecated performance results. In this configuration, as illustrated 

below, vRanger Pro must process all data over the network by making a vStorage API call directly to the ESXi hosts. 

As this data transfers over the network, vRanger Pro must process this data and send it on to the target repository. 

Overall, the performance in this configuration is limited to approximately 16-20 MB/Sec, which is several times slower 

than other available methods. 

When using this Network Mode for ESXi, vRanger Pro should be installed on a physical server for the best 

performance. The fact that all data must proxy through the vRanger Pro server means that only the smallest of 

environments should consider using a VM in this configuration. The recommended settings for this server are as 

follows: 

• CPU: 2 vCPUs 

• RAM: 2 GB RAM 

• Storage: At least 10 GB free hard disk space 

• OS: Windows Server 2003/2008 (32-bit or 64-bit) 

6

Advantages Considerations 

• Easiest method to install. Works this way “outof-the-box” 

Expected Performance – ESXi Network Mode 

7 

• Performance often times slower than LAN Free 

methods by a factor of 3-5x 

• All traffic must proxy through vRanger Pro 

server 

• For optimal performance, vRanger Pro server 

should be configured as a physical system 

The values below represent vRanger Pro’s performance in a basic configuration. Performance will vary based on 

hardware used and environmental factors - a properly configured environment, using similar hardware, should yield 

similar results. When using Network Mode for ESXi, it is critical that your ESXi servers are appropriately patched in 

order to provide adequate transfer speeds. Please see Service Console Configurations for more information. 

These values were obtained by performing Full backups of 50 GB VMs, with vRanger Pro installed on a machine as 

described below: 

• Dell PowerEdge 1950 running Windows 2003 SP2 (x86) 

• CPU: 1.6 GHz Intel Xeon (8-core) 

• RAM: 4 GB Ram 

• Network: BCM5078 1Gb Nic 

VMware ESXi 4.0 (Patched) 

Compressed Uncompressed 

16-19 MB/s 17-20 MB/s

ESX 

For network-based backups when using ESX, the backup data flows directly from the ESX Host to the target 

repository. This means that the vRanger Pro server does not directly process any of the backup traffic. This Network 

Mode configuration, also known as “Direct-To-Target”, provides the best scalability when using ESX as your 

hypervisor platform, as the number of concurrent backups jobs can be scaled across multiple hosts to write directly to 

multiple data repositories. 

When using this Direct-To-Target architecture, vRanger Pro simply monitors activity and can be installed in a VM 

without adversely affecting performance. The recommended configuration for this VM is as follows: 

• CPU: 2 vCPUs 




It is important to note that for vRanger Pro does not support a Direct-To-Target configuration for ESXi backups since 

ESXi does not contain a Service Console. 

Network-based, Direct-To-Target backups use the ESX Service Console and the Service Console NIC to process 

and send data directly to a repository. In Direct-To-Target, the repository must be either a CIFS or SFTP repository. 

More repository options will be available with vRanger Pro 5.0. Direct-To-Target is the default configuration option 

out of the box for ESX Hosts, and is suitable from SMB to Enterprise. 

8

For smaller environments, the Direct-To-Target configuration is simple to configure and requires no additional 

hardware. For larger VMware deployments, this configuration allows for a highly scalable backup solution that 

distributes load across multiple hosts and repositories while minimizing single points of contention. For example, 

assume that you have 10 ESX hosts, each with 1 GBit/s network connection. Your total backup bandwidth is 

theoretically 10Gbit/s. As 10 GBit/s networks become more common, this configuration will be able to handle even 

higher throughputs. 


• Easiest method to install. Works this way “outof-the-box” 

• Communications via Service Console NIC 

• Allows for leveraging Direct-to-Target for 

optimal scalability 

• Sufficient configuration for small and large 

environments alike 

Expected Performance – Direct To Target 

9 

• Performs better with a larger number of ESX 

servers 

• Service Console NIC is a limiter of throughput 

• Works well in conjunction with Data 

Deduplication appliances like Data Domain 

• vRanger Pro can be installed in a VM 



similar results. When using the direct-to-target configuration, it is critical that your ESX servers are appropriately 

patched in order to provide adequate transfer speeds. Please see Service Console Configurations for more 

information. 







VMware ESX 4.0 (Patched) 

Compressed Uncompressed 

54-60 MB/s 65-80 MB/s

LAN Free 

vRanger Pro provides a method to offload backup traffic from the network and can perform backups directly via iSCSI 

or Fibre connectivity. The LAN Free configuration is identical whether ESX or ESXi is used, providing the best mix of 

performance and compatibility for protecting your data, especially if your environment has a mix of VMware 

hypervisors. In order to perform LAN Free backups, vRanger Pro must be installed on a physical system attached to 

your SAN environment. This is a high performance configuration that requires vRanger Pro to be installed on a 

physical proxy server connected to your fibre or iSCSI network. In addition, the VMFS volumes containing the VMs to 

be protected must also be properly zoned/mapped to the vRanger Pro proxy server. 

The hardware requirements for installation on a physical server are as follows: 

• CPU: 2 CPUs 




• Fibre: At least one fibre HBA 

- Or - 

• iSCSI: Hardware or Software iSCSI initiator 

10


• Backups are isolated to the fibre channel 

infrastructure or iSCSI network 

• Provides high performance throughput for 

backup traffic 

• Offloads ESX/ESXi hosts and network 

• Communicates via vStorage APIs 

Requirements for a LAN Free Configuration 

11 

• Performs best when backing up data between 

LUNs within the same SAN infrastructure 

• More complicated to setup and configure than 

network backups 

• If not configured correctly there is risk of VMFS 

volume corruption. Make sure to follow the 

instructions below. 

• vRanger Pro must be installed on a physical 

proxy server 

In order to implement a LAN Free configuration, you must install vRanger Pro on a physical proxy server connected 

to your Fibre or iSCSI infrastructure. You will also need to enable LAN Free backups in the vRanger backup job – see 

Fibre/iSCSI Backups for more information on how to properly configure vRanger Pro job settings to take advantage 

of LAN Free backups. 

When using the vStorage API, plan on 1 concurrent backup per CPU core. To calculate the maximum number of 

concurrent backup tasks per proxy server, simply identify the number of CPU cores on that server – that is the 

maximum number of concurrent backups. For example, a Dual-Socket, Quad-Core system will be able to perform up 

to 8 concurrent backup jobs. 

SAN Configuration Requirements 

There are several SAN configurations that should be addressed before installing vRanger Pro on the proxy server. 

Caution: Do NOT initialize or format the DR repository or the production LUNs from the backup server. This 

could potentially corrupt your VMFS volumes. 

• Disable automount on the vRanger Pro machine: 

o From the start menu, select “run” and enter diskpart. 

o Run the automount disable command to disable automatic drive letter assignment. 

o Run the automount scrub command to clean any registry entries pertaining to previously 

mounted volumes. 

• The multi-pathing software from your SAN vendor should be installed and configured for the best throughput 

performance 

• LUNs that are not accessible to the proxy server should be masked in the storage array configuration 

• On your storage device, zone your LUNs so that the vRanger Pro HBA can see and read them 

• Only one proxy should see a set of VMFS LUN’s at one time. The proxy server should have Read-Only 

access to the LUNs.

SAN Configuration Recommendations 

As a general practice, Quest recommends following VMware’s Best Practice of mixing “adaptive” and “predictive” 

storage schemes: 

• Adaptive - the “adaptive” scheme uses larger LUNs and hosts many generic VMs that are not I/O intensive. 

• Predictive - the “predictive” scheme uses separate LUNs for I/O intensive applications, using separate RAID 

arrays within the SAN to isolate I/O intensive applications from the generic VMs. 

VMware provides multiple documents detailing their recommendations for storage configuration. Two key documents 

are the VMFS Overview and Best Practice Guide and the iSCSI SAN Configuration Guide. 

Expected Performance – LAN Free 



similar results. In order to determine whether you have properly configured vRanger Pro for LAN Free backups, you 

can test your configuration using steps identified in the Testing LAN Free section of this document. 







• HBA: BCM5715S fibre adapter 

VMware ESX 4.0 VMware ESXi 4.0 

Compressed Uncompressed Compressed Uncompressed 

38-45 MB/s 55-65 MB/s 36-44 MB/s 53-60 MB/s 

12

Setting Up Repositories 

Repository location, along with the configuration of jobs to those repositories, plays a significant role in the 

performance of vRanger Pro. While performance varies based on environmental factors, data throughput during a 

single VM backup task can routinely reach 30-40 MB/s. For repositories on a Gigabit network, Quest recommends a 

maximum setting of 3 concurrent backups per repository (see Job Configuration for more information), which can 

consume 75% percent of the bandwidth to the repository. 

There are two main scenarios when it comes to configuring repositories: a centralized datacenter or multiple sites. 

While evaluations often use a more basic configuration, it is important to replicate real-world scenarios as much as 

possible. 

Scenario 1: Centralized Datacenter 

If you will be evaluating vRanger Pro in a single datacenter, you will only need one repository. While additional 

repositories will increase your load balancing options, they are not necessary. 

For most customers, a CIFS repository is preferred. If your repository will be hosted by a third party, or if your 

network security is particularly restrictive, an SFTP repository might be a better option as traffic flows through the 

standard SFTP port (22 or user configurable). 

For LAN Free configurations, or for those sites with a large number of ESXi servers, the repository should be local to 

the vRanger Pro machine. 

Scenario 2: Multiple Sites 

If you have a repository located at a remote site, the bandwidth between the sites will most likely become the limiting 

factor in job configuration. Rather than limit all vRanger Pro tasks to fit the limited WAN bandwidth, it may be 

recommended to install a second vRanger Pro server to be used for job management to remote repositories. On this 

second vRanger Pro installation, you may configure the per-repository limit to match the available bandwidth without 

affecting the local backup tasks. The approach to multi-site configuration differs depending on whether you are using 

ESX or ESXi. 

ESX 

In order to take full advantage of the direct to target flexibility, configure one repository at each location. With this 

configuration, the backup traffic will be isolated to each site. This configuration also provides the simples way to 

manage the environment, as only a single vRanger Pro server is required to configure and view backup jobs. 

13

ESXi 

For ESXi backups, all of the data processing must occur on the vRanger Pro server. This means that in order to use 

a single vRanger Pro instance across multiple sites when using ESXi, all backup traffic must traverse the WAN from 

the secondary site back to the primary. If your WAN speed is more than 10 Mbit/s between sites, or the amount of 

data at the secondary site is relatively small with infrequent changes, you may deploy a single vRanger server at the 

primary site. The following diagram illustrates this configuration. 

For larger remote sites, or for organizations that have communication links slower than 10 Mbit/s between sites, a 

local vRanger Pro installation (with its own local repository) should be configured at each site. Using a repository 

local to the vRanger Pro machine eliminates the need for the data to flow back from the secondary site to the primary 

over the WAN. Deploying a local vRanger server in each site for faster backups does not require additional vRanger 

Pro licenses. The following diagram illustrates this configuration. 

14

Advanced Configurations 

There are some advanced job configuration options that will help you get the most out of vRanger Pro. These options 

are described below. 

Fibre/iSCSI Backups 

To perform a LAN Free backup, you must select the Use Fiber or iSCSI option during the backup job configuration. 

When testing LAN Free backups, it is important to ensure that the backup traffic is not flowing over the network. In 

order to do this, clear the Perform Network Backup on Fiber or iSCSI Failure option. This will ensure that if there 

is a configuration problem with your SAN environment, you will be alerted by a backup failure. 

After you have verified your SAN configuration and LAN Free backups are running correctly, select the “Perform 

Network Backup on Fiber or iSCSI Failure” option to ensure that your backups occur uninterrupted. 

Testing LAN Free 

LAN Free backups (Fibre and iSCSI) flow through the Windows proxy to a local NTFS volume. You can use native 

Windows tools to monitor this activity as a simple test. 

Using Perfmon.exe, add Physical Disk counters for : 

Disk Reads/Sec – this is the metric to evaluate backup traffic 

Disk Writes/Sec – this is the metric to evaluate restore traffic. 

15

Change Block Tracking 

Change Block Tracking (CBT) is a feature in vSphere that tracks changes within the VM. With Change Block Tracking 

enabled, vRanger 4.5 only backs up the portions of a disk that have changed since the last backup. This often results 

in shorter backup operations, and reduced resource consumption on network and storage elements. Quest 

recommends enabling CBT within vRanger Pro whenever possible. 

Job Configuration 

CBT is supported for virtual machines running on ESX(i) 4.0 or later hosts 

(with virtual hardware 7). VMs that are created in ESX(i) 3.5 or below must 

be migrated to ESX(i) 4.x and Hardware Version 7 for CBT to be supported. 

Enable or disable CBT by right clicking on any VM in the My Inventory pane 

of vRanger Pro and select Enable Change Tracking (or Disable Change 

Tracking). Three small circles (Red-Blue-Green) indicate that CBT is 

enabled. 

CBT can also be enabled in the vSphere client for each VM, or you can use 

a script to enable CBT for multiple VMs at once. 

vRanger Pro includes global configuration options designed to allow you to throttle backup and restore activity to fit 

your environment. The maximum number of tasks (backups or replications) can be changed based on your 

environment. Start with default values and make sure your backups are successful before you increase any values. 

16

The available options for configuring advanced resource management are: 

• Maximum number of tasks running on vRanger (>=1) – This value limits the total number of 

simultaneous tasks for the vRanger Pro machine. This value is affected by machine type and hardware as 

well as deployment architecture. The default value is 100, which does not normally need to be changed as 

the other limiters will take effect before this value is reached. 

• Maximum number of tasks running off a LUN (1-5) - In order to avoid storage I/O contention issues, it is 

recommended to limit the number of tasks that can be processes based on their storage location. vRanger 

Pro defaults with a limit of 3 backup tasks per LUN. 

• Maximum number of tasks running on a host (1-4) -This setting should be set fairly low as all of the 

backup processing (for standard backups) occurs on the host. The default per-host limit is set to 1. Due to 

the amount of CPU and memory used by the host to process backups, it is recommended to use caution 

when changing this value. 

• Maximum number of tasks running per repository (>=1) – Bandwidth to the repository is the main 

limiting factor here. For repositories on a Gigabit network, Quest recommends a maximum setting of 3 

concurrent backups, which can consume 75% percent of the bandwidth to the repository. 

• Maximum number of tasks running locally (1-20) – This option applies only to LAN Free mode and limits 

the number of simultaneous tasks on the vRanger Pro proxy server. The recommended maximum is 1 task 

per CPU core. 

Application Consistency 

vRanger Pro, by default, provides no quiescing during backups. Quiescing in vRanger Pro is provided by leveraging 

VMware Tools’ VSS Sync Driver. 

This can provide three different levels of backup consistency, as described below: 

Crash-consistent - A crash consistent backup is analogous to pulling the plug on a server and then backing 

up the data. The state of the data that is being backed up with respect to the users of the data is indeterminate. 

Restoring a crash-consistent image is equivalent to rebooting a server after a hard shut-down. 

File System Consistent - File system consistency is achieved through standard quiescing (via the VMware 

Sync Driver.) which ensures that no file system writes are pending when the snapshot is taken. For normal 

VMs, file-system consistency is adequate, although it can cause corruption in database applications. 

Application consistent - Consistency of VSS compatible applications is achieved by freezing application I/O 

just prior to creating the VM snapshots. This ensures that all application writes requests in the machines 

memory are committed to disk before the snapshot is taken. Application consistency is achieved by leveraging 

the Microsoft VSS driver in VMware Tools (for VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 and later, make sure it´s enabled in 

the VMs by going to Add/Remove Programs> VMware Tools >Modify>Check VSS Sync Driver). 

17

Using VMware Tools 

The level of consistency provided by the Enable Guest Quiescing option is dependent upon the version of VMware 

ESX (and the corresponding VMware tools) and the Guest OS. The table below provides more detail: 

Guest OS VMware ESX 3.5 Update 1 (or earlier)* VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 (or later) * 

Windows XP (x86) File-system consistent w/ VMware 

Sync Driver 

Windows Server 2003 (x86) File-system consistent w/ VMware 

Sync Driver 

18 

File-system consistent w/ VMware Sync 

Driver 

Application-consistent with VSS 

component of VMware Tools. 

Windows Server 2003 (x64) Crash-consistent Application-consistent with VSS 


Windows Vista (x32,x64) Crash-consistent File-system consistent with VSS 


Windows Server 2008 (x32, x64) Crash-consistent File-system consistent with VSS 


(On ESX 4.1 hosts, application 

consistency can be provided with VSS 

component of VMware Tools) 

Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64) Crash-consistent File-system consistent with VSS 


(On ESX 4.1 hosts, application 

consistency can be provided with VSS 

component of VMware Tools) 

Other Crash-consistent Crash-consistent 

* With Corresponding VMware Tools 

Using vzShadow.exe 

In addition to the standard VSS implementation using VMware Tools, Vizioncore provides an optional method for 

application quiescing. 

Starting with vRanger Pro 4.5, the vzShadow.exe executable will be included with the application download. 

vzShadow.exe is an optional component that, if you choose, can be installed on Windows VMs to provide an 

additional level of consistency. For more information on vzShadow.exe, see the vRanger Pro Deployment Guide. 

Recovery Manager for Exchange 

While outside the scope of this document, Quest provides a more advanced option for object-level restore of 

individual email messages, folders, and other objects from Microsoft Exchange databases which are protected in 

vRanger Pro backup images – Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange. 

For more information on using Recovery Manager for Exchange with vRanger Pro, see the chapter “Integrating 

vRanger Pro” in the vRanger Pro Deployment Guide.

Testing vRanger Pro 

After ensuring that your environment is properly configured, it is important to test vRanger Pro in real-world scenarios. 

Make sure you backup multiple VMs (10 or more) to see the performance, backup window and impact of your 

infrastructure. If you lose a datastore you will loose multiple VMs, vRanger Pro allows you to do multiple VM restores 

in a single restore job. This will simplify your recovery process in the event of a disaster. 

Backup Testing 

Backup jobs can be created dynamically against vCenter objects (vCenter, Cluster, Resource Pools, Folders etc) or 

against a vRanger Pro configurable Backup Group (a set of VMs). Use the steps below to create a vRanger Pro 

backup job. 

Note –These steps provide a high level overview of the process of creating a backup job. For more detailed 

information about creating backup jobs, see the vRanger Pro User Guide. 

1. Select the object to backup. You may select a vCenter object or create a custom group. When testing 

vRanger Pro, it is best to configure jobs in real-world scenarios. 

2. Exclude any VMs that you do not want backed up as part of this job. 

3. Exclude any disks that you do not want backed up as part of this job Select Repository 

4. Configure your Backup Options, using the notes below for guidance. Also see Fibre/iSCSI Backups 

5. If your repository has built-in deduplication, clear the checkbox for Compress backed up files. 

6. If you need application consistency, select Enable guest quiescing. Also, see Application Consistency. 

7. Enabling Active Block Mapping (ABM) will reduce the backup window and size of the archives. With ABM, 

no deleted files within the Windows file system will be backed up. This generally results in a 20-30% 

reduction of backup time and size. 

8. Configure your Retention Policy 

9. Set the Savepoint count - the number of restore points. 

10. Select a space saving technology. Options are full backups, or differential or incremental backups. 

11. Set your backup schedule 

12. Configure Email notification, if desired. 

13. View the job summary. Job status and progress can be seen under My Jobs. 

19

Restore Testing 

The most important part of any backup is the recovery. It is critical when evaluating backup software that you 

evaluate recovery in order to learn the procedures, the approximate recovery time, and at what level you can restore. 

With vRanger Pro, you may perform either an image level recovery, or a file level recovery. To do either, you must 

first identify the savepoint from which you wish to recover. 

Savepoints 

You can view existing savepoints in the My Repository view. 

Image Level Restore 

An image level restore recovers the entire virtual machine. Use the steps below to create a vRanger Pro image level 

restore job. 

Note: These steps provide a high level overview of the process of creating a restore job. For more detailed 

information about creating restore jobs, see the vRanger Pro User Guide. 

1. In the My Repositories view, select the VM savepoint you want to restore. Click Restore. 

2. You may add multiple savepoints to one restore job. This allows you to restore multiple VMs at one time, in 

the case of a lost datastore, for example. 

20

3. Select the destination host and datastore for your recovery. For recovery testing, use the Restore As option 

as it will create a new VM with the name you choose, rather than overwriting the existing VM. 

4. Configure the network for your restored VM(s). 

5. Select your restore options. 

6. Set your restore schedule 

7. Configure Email notification, if desired. 

File Level Restore 

1. In the My Repositories view, select the VM savepoint you want to restore. Click File Level Restore. 

2. Browse the savepoint file system to select the file to restore. 

3. Select the destination location. Click Restore. 

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vRanger Pro Evaluation Guide - Quest Software

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