Nakivo: How to install and configure Nakivo Transporters < ProVirtualzone

After our initial article, How to install Nakivo Backup & Replication v6 in Windows Servers, today we will install and configure a Nakivo Transporter.

As we also discuss briefly in the last article, the Transporter is an application, which performs all of the data protection and recovery tasks: data read, compression, deduplication, encryption, transfer, write, verification, granular and full VM recovery, and so on.

We can use just one (using Default), or create multiple Nakivo Transporters to have better Backup Performance and distribute load into different Transporters, or to reach an isolated network, or not reachable by Nakivo Backup Server.

Example: Let’s assume that we have Nakivo Server in a subnet 192.168.1.x VLAN 10, but there are some ESXi hosts (or even a vCenter) that are in a subnet 192.168.10.x VLAN 20 that is not reachable by Nakivo (or even some isolated network that cannot be accessed), we then create a VM, or use an existing one, in that Subnet and that VM will have both subnets and VLANs.

Then Nakivo to backup Virtual Environment will use that Transporter to access that network through the Transporter to read/write from the Source and write/read to the destination (Nakivo Repository). With this design, only Transporter VM can access the Network and Nakivo Server will never access that network directly.

First, let us install one extra Nakivo Transporter in our Nakivo Backup Server (Nakivo Server has one local transporter by default).

First, run in the future Transporter Server (in this case a VM Windows Server 2012 R2) the Nakivo Backup installer file.

For this particular Transporter Install here my System details:

Nakivo Backup & Replication Version: 6.2.0 (build 14770).

Virtual Machine:

SO: Windows 2012 R2
Memory: 8Gb
CPU: 4 vCPU
Hard Disk: 60Gb
1st Network Interface: Management control (subnet 192.168.1.16 no VLAN)
2nd Network Interface: iSCSI Storage (subnet 192.168.10.16 VLAN 33)
3rd Network Interface: VLNA10 Network (subnet 192.168.20.16 VLAN 10)

Backup Source: ESXi vSphere v6.0 (running in subnet 192.168.20.10 VLAN 10)
Backup Destination: Nakivo Backup & Replication (running in subnet 192.168.1.10 no VLAN)

This is the design:

Step 1: Install Nakivo Transporter in Transporter Server destination.

In the Installation Type, select “Transporter Only”.

After Nakivo Transporter is install, we need to add the new Transporter to our Nakivo Backup Infrastructure.

Step 2: Add Transporter to Nakivo Backup Server.

Click in the “Transporter” Tab

Then click the “Add Transporter” button and select the option “Add existing transporter”

Next, add the details from the Nakivo Transporter that you have installed in the Step 1 and click add.

Note: In this case, we need to use the IP address from the subnet 192.168.1.x, then inside the Transporter will route the traffic to 192.168.20.x subnet.

After you add your Nakivo Transporter you have now 2 Transporter (one default, and a second one that we added).

After we finish adding the Transporter, we will create a Backup job to connect to our isolated ESXi host and backup those VMs.

Step 3: Add new Inventory to Nakivo Backup Server.

First, we need to add the isolated ESXi host into our Nakivo Backup inventory.

In the main screen click again in the “Configuration” option.

Next click in “Inventory” tab, and then in “Add New…” button and select “VMware vCenter or ESXi host” option.

Add your vCenter/ESXi details and credentials to add the new Backup Source to Nakivo Backup inventory.

Note: To add the ESXi host to Nakivo Inventory, Nakivo Server needs to be routed to the same subnet (since my network is not routed between subnets or VLANs, I added a third Network Interface into the Nakivo Server with an IP address 192.168.20.x connected to the same VLAN)

Step 4: Create Backup Job and with the new Transporter as the transporter source.

After we add the ESXi/vCenter to the repository, we return to the Dashboard and select “Create” and the option “VMware vSphere backup job”.

We will now create a new Backup Job for the ESX host that we added in the previous step, and then use the Transporter that we added in the Step 2.

As we learn in the first Nakivo article there are 4 steps to create the Backup Job, we will not go through all 4 steps again (if needed, please check the first article), we will only talk about the Step 1 and Step 4.

In the Step 1, just select the VMs you want to backup and click “Next”.

Then in the Step 4, we will choose and select the Transporter Source for this backup.

In the Step 4, click “Advanced Options” and in the bottom of the screen, you change the option “Transporters:” and select “Manual – configured per host”.
Then Select the Transporter. In our case it is the “VLAN10” Transporter.

With these options, we have to select to use this Transporter to Backup VMs from that particular ESXi host.

Note: Since this is an isolated Network and we always want to use this Transporter, we will deselect the option “Automatically select a replacement for unavailable transporter”. We can select this option if we have other Transporters that have access to the source Infrastructure we are trying to Backup.

In the Option “Transporters”, we can also select the option “Manual – configured per VMs”. It works in the same way as per host, but in this case we will select VMs individually that will use this Transporter to Backup (example: If you have some VMs that are in some special Network and you need to Backup Objects, like Exchange, SQL or Active Directory). With this option, the Transporter will route the traffic to those VMs just to Backup.

In the next image, we can see the Backup Job created and configured for that particular Transporter.

As we can see in the right bottom, Transporter for the source is our “VLAN10” and the target is the default Transporter (Nakivo Backup Server).

Final Note: We can create Transporter also to Replication and/or to Backup to our Cloud Environments. Since they need special configurations, we should create a particular Transporter for our Cloud Backup/Replications. In future articles we will talk about Backup/Replicate to Cloud.

With this last final note, we finish this article about Nakivo Transporters.

Hope this information was useful.

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