Hybrid Backup Recovery support back up the local virtual machine image of VMWare vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Windows Server and Linux Server.

In this post, I will walk through the VMWare virtual machine image backup. On the Hybrid Backup Recovery Gateway, click on Actions, Add Server.

On the Add Server dialog box, input the Type, Hypervisor Host IP Address, Username, Password, Description and click OK to complete.

The Hybrid Backup Recovery Gateway will connect to the vSphere host. After a couple of minute, vSphere server detail will be shown on the Server Information console

Once the VMWare vSphere is connected, next step is to create a backup plan. Click on the Create Backup Plan, input the Plan Name, specify the Retention period, select Backup Type, Full Backup Policy, Incremental Backup Policy and click Next to continue.

Next, is to select one or more virtual machines and click Next to continue.

Finally, verify the virtual machine information and click Create.

The backup job will trigger based on the backup policy defined.

Now, I will demonstrate back up the VMWare virtual machines to cloud using Hybrid Backup Recovery.

Prerequisites
Before configure the VMware virtual machine backup, here are the prerequisites:
Firstly, it is always recommended to create a RAM user with AccessKey.
Secondly, create a backup vault

On the Hybrid Backup Recovery console, in the navigation pane, select the On-Premises Backup, VM Client, click Create Client.

In the Create Client dialog box, configure the required settings and click Create.

Once the backup vault is created, download the OVA VM appliance and Certificate.

When the OVA is downloaded, deploy the VM appliance onto the VMWare environment.

Logon to the VMWare vSphere Web Client, click on the VMWare Host Cluster, select the Deploy OVF Template option. In the Deploy OVF Template dialog box, select Local File. Browse to select the VM appliance Alibaba-Cloud-Backup-Appliance-1.0.8.ova and then click Next.

Follow the instruction from VMWare vSphere Web Client console, setting up the VM configuration, for example: name of the OVF template, select a host or cluster, datastore, networking, and so on to deploy the VM appliance into the VM Data Center.

After the OVF template is deployed, power on the virtual machine. Use a browser and access to http://<hostname/IP-address>:8011

Once the Hybrid Backup Recovery Gateway registration is successfully completed, next step is to create a backup plan and backup policy

Before begin a backup job, always create a backup policy to manage the regular backup jobs. On the Hybrid Backup Gateway console, select Backup Policies and click Create Backup Policy. Enter the Policy Name and specify the Effective Date & Time and Backup Interval. Click Submit to complete

I’ll look into the VMware virtual machine image backup in the next post.

Once the Hybrid Backup Recovery client installation and activation is successfully completed, launch a browser to log on to an HBR file client at http://localhost:8011 on the client host.

On the left pane, select Backup Policies, click on the Create Policy. In the Create Policy dialog window, enter the Policy Name and input the the required settings. Click Submit to proceed.

On the left pane, select Backup, then click on Create Backup Job. In the Create Backup Job dialog window, input backup path, select the Running Plan and a Backup Policy.

It is recommended to configure Bandwidth Throttling during peak hours. Specify the required Work Hours and click Add. Then, enter the maximum allowed bandwidth during the specified time range in the Throttling field. This is to prevent the backup job traffic consuming network traffic during peak office hours.

A backup job is created now. We’ll monitor the job status later.

After about 45 minutes, the backup job successfully transferred approx 55GB data to Alibaba Cloud.

On the Overview dashboard, we could monitor the backup vault utilization

We will look into backup VMWare Virtual Machine in up coming post.

Should you need understand more on Hybrid Backup Recovery, drop me a message on the contact me form.

Hybrid Backup Recovery (HBR) is a fully managed storage and backup service, HBR provide an efficient, secure, cost-effective service.

System administrator can use a file client to back up files from local servers or virtual machines and quickly restore files when as and when is needed.

In today tutorial, we will cover the following:
First thing first, let’s ensure all the Hybrid Backup Recovery prerequisites are met.

1. Create RAM users and Access Key
   Resource Access Management (RAM) is to manage user access to Alibaba Cloud resources. An Access Key is required when activating the backup client.

2. Install and activate a client. The client support both 32-bit/64-bit Linux and Windows operating system.

On the Hybrid Backup Recovery console, select a region where to store backup data. On the left-side pane, choose On-Premises Backup > File Client.

Click on Create Client. Configure the mandatory settings, like Backup Vault Name, Client Name, Software Platform and Network Type. Click Create to proceed. Download the client and install to the host server.

Once the file client is downloaded, go ahead to install and activate the client at the host server.

After the client installation is completed, client activation is required. On the Hybrid Backup Recovery console, input the mandatory fields, such as Client IP Address, AccessKey Id, AccessKey Secret, Client Password. Click on Activate Client to complete the process.

When HBR client is activated, backup job can be managed from Hybrid Backup Recovery console.

On the next post, we will configure a backup plan and backup policy to protect the data.

Should you need understand more on the Hybrid Backup Recovery, do drop me a message on the contact me form and I am happy to help.

One of the main feature is data de-duplication and compression at the source. This can reduce the amount of data transferred to the cloud. The compression ratio can reach a maximum ratio of 30:1, thus reduce the bandwidth and cloud storage usage.

The most important is data is encrypted before leaving the source server to ensures the data is secure in the cloud.

Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Backup Recovery is an efficient and flexible of backup data to the Alibaba Cloud.

How is Hybrid Backup Recovery works?
After the initial data transfer is complete, only modified backup data is sent based on set intervals. Built-in features such as deduplication, compression, encryption, retention duration and bandwidth limits can help to improve efficiency.

Hybrid Backup Recovery works on physical machines, VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs) and cloud-based VMs.

Hybrid Backup Recovery Architecture

Hybrid Backup Recovery Benefits

Permission management – Using Resource Access Management (RAM), users can be categorized with multiple permission groups
Deduplication and compression – Supports deduplication and compression technologies to reduce the amount of transmitted data and occupied storage.
Backup alerts – alert notification is available, such as when a backup fails or when a client is disconnected from a server.
Management cost – it is a fully managed backup and storage service, without need to worry of hardware procurement, configuration and security.

I will share more detail on Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Backup Recovery implementation in next few posts.

Stay tune

Should you need understand more on Hybrid Backup Recovery, drop me a message on the contact me form.

To access the App Store, you need to sign up for a Cloudron.io account. Use this account to access the App Store and manage your subscription. For free account, you can deploy up to 2 Standard Apps.

The Cloudron App Store is a repository of apps hosted at cloudron.io. The App Store provides app packages that can be installed on a Cloudron. A Cloudron installation periodically polls the App Store for updates.

Deploy the first WebApps on the Cloudron App Store
The Cloudron dashboard is installed on the subdomain my.alicloud.uk and every app you install is assigned to a subdomain.

For this example, I’ll installing WordPress to test the Cloudron platform.

Enter a subdomain to install WordPress.

When WordPress has been installed, hover your mouse over the app in My Apps and you will see several options to manage it, including:
Backups
Configure
Terminal
Logs

Clicking on Configure lets you change the subdomain, manage users and more.

Finally, we have successfully installed and configured Cloudron on Alibaba Cloud with the first WebApps. Cloudron allows everyone to quickly and easily deploy any WebApps on Alibaba Cloud

Alibaba Cloud service deployed in this tutorial
1) ECS
2) DNS

When the Cloudron installation is complete, reboot the ECS and then browse to https://IP_Address. Ignore the browser security warning of the security certificate is not trusted, we will address the self-sign SSL cert later.

1. Domain Setup
I use alicloud.uk as an example.

Add a domain, so that Cloudron can create the dashboard at my.alicloud.uk and WebApps are installed under subdomains that you specify like git.alicloud.uk, chat.alicloud.uk and so on.

Next, select the DNS service in which the domain in hosted. I used Alibaba Cloud DNS to manage DNS, select the Wildcard or Manual option. The default Certificate Provider option is set as Let’s Encrypt Prod – Wildcard .

2. DNS Settings
Bedore hitting the Next, add the following DNS A record into the Alibaba Cloud DNS

3. Create a Cloudron admin account
Once DNS is setup, Cloudron will obtain an SSL certificate for the server securing the connection and will redirect to https://my.alicloud.uk.

Create a new admin account in a few quick steps as shown below and you’re ready to go.

Now, the Cloudron account setup is complete, you’ll landed into your Cloudron control panel. For the moment, there are no apps installed.

We will talk on deploy an WebApps on the Cloudron App Store next post.

Cloudron is a platform for self-hosting web apps like WordPress to address many of the challenges associated with self-hosting. Cloudron lets you focus on using the apps and not worry about system administration.

Many small businesses use WebApps like WordPress, GitLab, OpenVPN, Redmine, Confluence, Wiki and others in their businesses to power their business processes. Typically, these folks at small businesses are lack of technical and resources to support the installation, configuration and troubleshooting. All the WebApps require setting up of databases, mail, DNS setup, SSL and they need to be updated regularly.

Cloudron is a platform that makes it easy to install, manage and secure web apps on the cloud. All the 70+ applications have been tested and approved to run worry-free. It automates all the tasks from configuring databases and setting up DNS records to installing and managing certificates.

1. Sign up with Alibaba Cloud
First things first, Follow the link here to register an Alibaba Cloud account and you’ll receive $300-1200 worth of free trial. Also, high-performance SSD Cloud Server starting from $2.50 a month.

2. Launch an Elastic Compute Service (ECS)
Create a new ECS on Alibaba Cloud is an easy and straightforward process.
Minimum server requirement is

1. Ubuntu 18.04 (x64) server
2. 1GB RAM
3. 20GB Disk space

Following this guide to launch an Alibaba Cloud ECS in 3 easy steps.

3. Installing Cloudron
Connect to the Alibaba Cloud ECS via ssh
Cloudron provides a quick and easy installation method via a setup script.

wget https://cloudron.io/cloudron-setup
chmod +x cloudron-setup
./cloudron-setup –provider generic

You will then see an output similar to the example below.

##############################################
Cloudron Setup (latest)
##############################################

Follow setup logs in a second terminal with:
$ tail -f /var/log/cloudron-setup.log

Join us at https://forum.cloudron.io for any questions.

=> Installing software-properties-common
=> Ensure required apt sources
=> Updating apt and installing script dependencies
=> Checking version
=> Downloading version 4.1.7 …
=> Installing base dependencies and downloading docker images (this takes some time) …
=> Installing version 4.1.7 (this takes some time) …
=> Waiting for cloudron to be ready (this takes some time) ….

Visit https:// and accept the self-signed certificate to finish setup.

The server has to be rebooted to apply all the settings. Reboot now ? [Y/n]

When the installation is complete, you will be prompted to restart the server. Select Y and press the enter key to reboot.

Continue to part 2

Data Management is a database management system (DBMS) is system software for creating and managing databases

Data migration is the process of transporting data between computers, storage devices or formats

Data Warehouses is collection of corporate information and data derived from operational systems and external data sources.

Data Lake is a storage repository that holds a vast amount of raw data in its native format until it is needed, it is a centralized repository for all data, including structured and unstructured

A data architecture encompasses data, software, hardware, networks, cloud services, developers, testers, sysadmins, DBAs, and all other resources of an IT infrastructure.

High Performance Computing

High Performance Computing (HPC) allows scientists and engineers to solve complex, compute-intensive problems. HPC applications often require high network performance, fast storage, large amounts of memory, very high compute capabilities, or all of these.

Data Visualization

Data visualization is the process of displaying data/information in graphical charts, figures and bars. It is used as means to deliver visual reporting to users for the performance, operations or general statistics of an application, network, hardware or virtually any IT asset.

Big Streaming
Data streaming is the process of transferring a stream of data from one place to another, to a sender and recipient or through some network trajectory.

Reference

Big Data Application: Technical Architecture of a Big Data Platform

High Performance Computing (HPC) with Amazon Web Services

What is Streaming Data?