3. Deploying the Agent for Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure from a QCOW2 Template¶

Such an appliance is a pre-configured virtual machine that you deploy in Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure. It contains a protection agent that enables you to administer cyber protection of all virtual machines in a Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure cluster.

Before you proceed to deploy one or more agents, take note of the following:

• Agent system requirements.

  When deploying the agent virtual appliance(s), you can choose between different predefined combinations of vCPUs and RAM, i.e. flavors. You can also create your own flavors.

  The medium flavor with 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM is optimal and sufficient for most operations. It is recommended, however, to let an agent have 8 GB of RAM and 4 vCPUs to improve backup performance if the backup traffic exceeds 100 MB/s (in 10 Gbps networks, for example).

• The number of agents.

  Even though one agent can protect the entire cluster, you can deploy more if you need to distribute the backup traffic bandwidth load.

  If you have more than one agent in a cluster, the virtual machines are automatically evenly distributed between the agents, so that each agent manages an equal number of machines.

  Automatic redistribution takes place when a load imbalance among the agents reaches 20%. This may happen, for example, when a machine or an agent is added or removed. For example, you may realize that you need more agents to help with throughput and deploy an additional virtual appliance to the cluster. The management server will assign the most appropriate machines to the new agent. The load on older agents will be reduced. When you remove an agent from the management server, the machines assigned to the agent are distributed among the remaining agents. This, however, will not happen if an agent gets corrupted or is deleted manually from a Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure node. Redistribution will start only after you remove such an agent from the Cyber Protection web interface.

  You can view the result of the automatic distribution:

  • In the Agent column for each virtual machine in the All devices section

  • In the Assigned virtual machines section of the Details panel when an agent is selected in Settings > Agents

• Limitations

  • Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure appliances cannot be deployed remotely.

  • Application-aware backup of virtual machines is not supported.