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Backing up and restoring VMware vCenter Server. Part 2 – Veeam Backup and Replication

In the previous article, we talked about how to restore vCenter using native backup. In this part, we will talk about how to restore VMware vCenter Server using Veeam Backup and Replication.

Although restoring a VM using Veeam is a simple task, but when we are talking about vCenter Server a few moments should be considered.

Let’s get started.

Quick Tip: How to change the MAC address on a vSphere VM by editing the VMX file

Someone may know that a vSphere 8.0 Update 2 bug prevents you from setting a static MAC address for a VM (KB 95189).

The symptom is simple – you change the MAC address in the VM’s network interface settings, but after you click OK, nothing changes.

As a workaround, there is a solution – do the same using vSphere Host Client (ESXi Web interface). But in my case, this workaround doesn’t help, I’ve received an error:

Failed to reconfigure virtual machine pleasechangemymac. Invalid configuration for device '4'.

If you are in this situation and you need to change a VM MAC address, one good old hack still works – edit the VM’s VMX file.

Next – how to change the MAC address.

Backing up and restoring VMware vCenter Server. Part 1 – Native backup

vCenter server is a critical part of the VMware infrastructure stack, and most components and 3rd-party solutions depend on it. Although downtime of vCenter may not cause a problem with overall infrastructure and will not cause a VMs downtime, it will affect the provision of new resources, management, backups, and so on. So, keeping your vCenter up and running is a priority task in most cases.

In the few articles, we will look at how to backup and restore the vCenter server, if something goes wrong. There are a few strategies for protecting the vCenter server, but all of them depend on the required availability of the service. It can be backup, replication, vCenter HA functionality, or even deploying a new vCenter and connecting hosts manually.

We will look at two options – backup and restore vCenter using the native backup function and backup and restore vCenter using 3rd party backup software.

In this article, we will take a closer look at how to backup vCSA using native backup, available in VAMI.

How to backup Nutanix AHV using Veeam Backup and Replication 12.1 and Veeam Plug-In for Nutanix AHV v5

In this article, we will look at backing up Nutanix AHV virtual machines using VBR 12.1 and Nutanix AHV Plug-In v5.

The main difference between the v4 plugin and v5 is the possibility of creating backup jobs related to Nutanix AHV VMs right in the VBR console. You don’t need to connect to the backup appliance deployed in a Nutanix cluster to create a backup job.

Also, please make sure, that you’re using version 5.1 of the plugin or higher because of the critical bug found in v5.0.

What’s new at Nutanix University?

Nutanix has updated the Nutanix End User Computing Administration (NEUCA) course, which focuses on managing virtual desktop infrastructure, to version 6.5.

Following the course, according to tradition, the Nutanix Certified Professional – End User Computing (NCP-EUC) v6.5 exam has been updated.

The exam is currently available to take free of charge. You must register by December 28, 2023. When registering for the exam, you must use the code NXFREUC65.

How to create a bond interface and VLAN using nmcli

In this short article, we will look at how to create a bond interface and VLAN on top of it using nmcli.

Updating the VMware vCenter server from version 8.0 U1 to 8.0 U2 using the Reduced Downtime Upgrade procedure

With the announcement of vSphere 8.0 Update 2 a new interesting feature called vCenter Reduced Downtime Update (RDU) was introduced.

This feature can reduce overall vCenter Server downtime during updates and upgrades.

In a nutshell, RDU is a vLCM feature that creates a new already updated vCenter Server virtual machine and copies all data from running vCenter to the new copy. After data is copied, all we need to do is to switch over to the updated copy of vCenter. Switchover takes less time than the full upgrade procedure and minimizes the downtime of vCenter.

In this article, we will look at how to update the vCenter server from version 8.0 Update 1 to version 8.0 Update 2 using RDU.

Deploying Nutanix Community Edition 2.0 on VMware vSphere 8

This year Nutanix Community Edition 2.0 (CE 2.0) was released, based on Nutanix AOS 6.5 – the most actual LTS version at the time of writing.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how to deploy a three-node Nutanix CE 2.0 cluster on a VMware vSphere 8 infrastructure.

VMware vSphere 8.0 Update 2 is out

VMware vSphere 8.0 Update 2 is out with a number of interesting features. If you don’t know what’s new in this release you can start with What’s new article, released right after the announcement of U2.

Release notes for vCenter Server 8.0 Update 2 are here.

Release Notes for ESXi 8.0 Update 2 are here.

Please note, that at the time of writing this post, vCenter Server was released as GA (General Availability) and ESXi was released as IA (Initial Availability). You can read about the differences between GA and IA here.

Preparing for the Nutanix Certified Master – Multicloud Infrastructure 6.5 Exam

Nutanix Certified Master – Multicloud Infrastructure 6.5 is the next certification level after NCP-MCI 6.5, and successful completion of this certification provides access to the NCX and NPX expert-level exams.

If we draw a parallel with the certifications of other vendors, this certification belongs to the Advanced Professional category and, for quite a long time, was called Nutanix Certified Advanced Professional (NCAP).

Since version 6.5, this exam has changed its format, and now it is not a familiar test, but a laboratory work with a certain number of scenarios and tasks that need to be performed on real clusters. Again, the closest analogies are VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Deploy or any of the Red Hat exams.

Next, we will look in more detail at what the exam is, the list of topics, as well as the preparation procedure.