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Hitachi Data Instance Director Connector for VMware vRealize Orchestrator (HDID Connector for VMware vRO) – Part 0: What’s the point?

By Dylan Yatigammana posted 12-20-2019 09:20

  
Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID) can be used to schedule backups of selections of VMs within a vCenter all without affecting performance of the VMs on that vCenter. Then in a recovery scenario, select the backup recovery point in time, what VMs to restore/clone and whether to recover to the same or different vCenter. This is great from the point of view of an admin dealing with storage, but what if you are not a HDID admin? What if you are a vCenter admin, or even a non-admin user with their own VM(s)? Someone without the HDID knowledge, but you still want to create a restore point of a VM in its current state, for whatever reason e.g: before you do something that could potentially break your VM! Well now you can have the power of HDID within vSphere, without having to know how to use HDID! Thanks to the HDID Connector for VMware vRealize Orchestrator (HDID Connector for vRO).

Just take a look at how easy it is to create a specific backup of any VM in HDID from within vSphere:
  • Step 1 - On the VM you wish to backup, select "Ad Hoc Backup" from the "All vRealize Orchestrator plugin Actions" menu: 
  • Step 2 - On the "Ad Hoc Backup" Workflow parameters window that pops up, select "Finish": 
  • Step 3 - Sit back and relax while HDID Connector for vRO does all the behind the scenes work of initiating a backup of only this VM using HDID: 

This vRO context menu allows the vSphere user to perform a number of different HDID operations from a VM driven focus.

 

This first plugin for vRO is aimed at providing a VMware user simple HDID backup and restore functionality. This is achieved via prebuilt vRO Workflows which are user (VM) focused, that can be used from within either VMware vRealize Orchestrator, or within vSphere itself. The workflows allow the user to perform:
 

Backup

Ad Hoc Backup

Perform an ad hoc backup of the selected VM only.

Recovery

Clone a VM

Clones a selected VM that exists in vCenter (from a recovery point in HDID).

Clone This VM

Clones the current VM (from a recovery point in HDID).

Restore a Deleted VM

Recreates a VM no longer in vCenter, from a recovery point in HDID, that doesn't exist in vCenter.

Mount VMDKs to This VM

Mounts, to the current VM, the disks from a VM backed up as a snapshot in HDID.

Unmount VMDKs from VM

Unmounts, from the current VM, the disks from a VM backed up as a snapshot in HDID.

 

All of this without the VMware user having to create Dataflows, Policies, nor navigating backups to find the VM they want. This is a user (VM) focused approach to HDID from within VMware.

In the next few “HDID Connector for VMware vRO” Blog Posts we shall explain: how to setup HDID to allow these Workflows to be used by any VMware user; cover these Workflows in a little more detail where needed; and any additional setup that may be required for particular scenarios you might want to achieve.

 

Upcoming Posts:

HDID Connector for VMware vRO – Part 1: Connecting vRO to HDID – Enabling the recovery workflows

 


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