we want to backup some vmware vms sitting at a hosters site.
For security reasons, the vcenter is in a different network segment and only available via an exclusive vpn connection.
So i wanted to setup a Pre-Scan script to up and a Post-Backup script to down the VPN.
But for whatever reason, the vmware VSA agent isn’t supporting a Pre-Scan script.
Am I the only one, looking for this feature/function?
Is there a workaround?
I would really like to not have to use another program to schedule the VPN.
Best Regards
Joerg
Best answer by Onno van den Berg
@ADN GMBH don't think you can expect something like this to be ready soon. I have requested it in the past as well as in our use-case it was to being able to stop applications before starting a VSA VM-level snap backup.
Your use-case is pretty simple to address I would say incase you start the job at a specific time than it is just a matter of setting up the VPN via a script a few minutes before the job starts or in case you want to make it more dynamic you leverage the APIs and start an on-demand backup of the VM-group after initiating the VPN connection. You'd put in a watchdog that checks if the job is still running and once it is gone from the job controller you'd close the VPN session.
@ADN GMBH don't think you can expect something like this to be ready soon. I have requested it in the past as well as in our use-case it was to being able to stop applications before starting a VSA VM-level snap backup.
Your use-case is pretty simple to address I would say incase you start the job at a specific time than it is just a matter of setting up the VPN via a script a few minutes before the job starts or in case you want to make it more dynamic you leverage the APIs and start an on-demand backup of the VM-group after initiating the VPN connection. You'd put in a watchdog that checks if the job is still running and once it is gone from the job controller you'd close the VPN session.
I know, that this won’t change over night, but I find it a little but unsatisfactory to see that the option is available for other agents, but because of unknown reasons, the VSA Agent is missing this very helpfull option.
Yes, I understand your unsatisfactory to a certain extend. The VSA agents does not require an agent to be installed, so how would you envision this to be working? Especially taking into account that with vm-centric it just kicks-off a job per VM. In addition you could argue that you ideally would like to run the program/script from within the VM.
Anyway there are plenty workarounds available to satisfy your use-case. Even though I openend a CMR for it in the past I do think there are many other VSA related improvements thinkable who'd I prefer to be implemented first.
