How to configure VMware backups using NBD or NBDSSL transport to run over a dedicated backup network

Description

It may be desirable to configure VMware backups using NBD or NBDSSL transport to run over a dedicated network.

For this to work, all of the following conditions must be met:

1. The network interface on the ESXi host that is chosen to be used for the backup must be a VMkernel interface.
2. The interface must be enabled to carry management traffic.
3. The backup host must resolve the ESXi hostname returned by vCenter to the IP address of the network interface chosen for the backup.

Condition 3 can be achieved by editing the hosts file on the backup host.

Use the following example as a guide:

master01 (NetBackup Master Server)
media01  (NetBackup Media Server and VMware backup host)

vcenter1 (VMware vCenter Server configured in NetBackup)
esx01    (ESX Host name configured in vCenter and NOT configured in NetBackup)

The vCenter server, the NetBackup master, and NetBackup media servers all resolve 'esx01' to 192.168.0.110.

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To setup a different interface for NBD backup traffic, do the following on the Backup host:

In vCenter, select the ESX host (esx01) and create another VMKERNEL interface to carry management traffic and assign it an IP address.

For example, assign

IP 192.168.10.110 to the new VMKERNEL interface to give the ESX host 2 IPs

192.168.0.110 and 192.168.10.110

On the VMware Backup host (media01), edit the /etc/hosts file so that esx01 resolves to the new vmkernel IP.

192.168.10.110    esx01

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The resulting changes will provide the following:

1) ESX host esx01 will be resolved to 192.168.0.110 by the vCenter server and the NetBackup Master.
2) ESX host esx01 will be resolved to 192.168.10.110 by the Backup host only