Data Protection for VMware vSphere GUI

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The Data Protection for VMware vSphere GUI (vSphere GUI) component is a graphical user interface that accesses VM data on the VMware vCenter Server.

Overview

The Data Protection for VMware vSphere GUI is the primary interface from which to complete the following tasks:

Initiate or schedule backups of your VMs to an IBM Storage Protect server.
Initiate a full recovery of your VMs from an IBM Storage Protect server.
Issue reports about the progress of your tasks, the most recent events that completed, backup status, and space usage. This information can help you troubleshoot errors that occurred in backup processing.

Tip: Information about how to complete tasks with the vSphere GUI is provided in the online help that is installed with the GUI. Click Learn More in any of the GUI windows to open the online help for task assistance.

Figure 1. Data Protection for VMware system components in a VMware vSphere user environment

Requirements

The Data Protection for VMware vSphere GUI can be installed on any system that meets the operating system prerequisites. The vSphere GUI resource requirements are minimal as it does not process I/O data transfers.

Tip: Installing the vSphere GUI on the vStorage Backup Server is the most common configuration.

The vSphere GUI must have network connectivity to the following systems:

vStorage Backup Server
IBM Storage Protect server
vCenter Server

In addition, ports for the Derby database (default 1527) and GUI web server (default 9081) must be available.

Configuration

You can register multiple vSphere GUIs to a single vCenter Server. This scenario reduces the number of datacenters (and their VM guest backups) that are managed by a single VMware vSphere GUI. A vCenter Server can then manage a subset of the total number of datacenters that are defined on the vCenter Server.

To update the managed datacenters, go to Configuration > Edit Configuration.

When you register multiple vSphere GUIs to a single vCenter Server, the following guidelines apply:

Each datacenter can be managed by only one installed vSphere GUI.
A unique VMCLI node name is required for each installed vSphere GUI.
Using unique data mover node names for each installed vSphere GUI simplifies managing the nodes.

Accessing the vSphere GUI

The vSphere GUI is accessed by the following methods:

A stand-alone web browser GUI. This GUI is accessed through a URL bookmark to the GUI web server, for example:
```
https://hostname:port/TsmVMwareUI/
```
where:
- hostname is the name of the system where the Data Protection for VMware vSphere GUI is installed
- port is the port number where the vSphere GUI is accessible through. The default port number is9080. For secure ports, the default is 9081.
A vSphere Web Client extension that connects to a GUI web server to access virtual machines in IBM® storage (referred to as the data protection extension). The content is a subset of what is provided in the web browser GUI.

You can specify one or more access methods during installation.

Windows operating systems The default installation directory is C:\IBM\StorageProtect\webserver.

Linux operating systems The default installation directory is /opt/tivoli/tsm/tdpvmware/common/webserver.