HYCU provides a free Community Edition version of its backup solution for owners of a Nutanix Community Edition installation. Here’s how to get it and deploy it on a cluster.

What is HYCU?

HYCU is a backup software for hyperconverged IT environments. The HYCU solution provides data protection for platforms such as Nutanix, Google Cloud Platform and VMware by supporting backup, recovery and

data management for these specific environments. HYCU offers a simplified approach to data backup and recovery compared to the competition.

Here are the main key features of HYCU:

Simplified backup and recovery: HYCU simplifies the data backup and restoration process by automating recurring tasks. This helps reduce administration by teams and speeds up recovery when needed.

Integration with specific environments: HYCU is designed to integrate seamlessly with platforms such as Nutanix, VMware and Google Cloud Platform, providing a solution optimized for these environments.

Backup policy management: Setting custom backup policies based on specific business needs, such as backup frequency, data retention, etc.

Application backup: HYCU now offers to backup your SaaS applications such as Office 365, Jira, Okta, and many others.

Resource optimization: HYCU has been designed and optimized to have a minimal impact on the overall performance of the environment.

Reporting and Monitoring: The tool offers reporting and monitoring tools to track backup status, policy compliance, and overall backup system health.

Disaster Recovery: HYCU provides options for rapid and reliable recovery with the ability to quickly restore data in the event of a disaster or major outage.

Now that the introductions are done, let’s get down to business!

Setup files download

We will start by retrieving the files necessary for deploying the HYCU solution directly from the publisher’s site.

To do this, go to: https://www.hycu.com/get/trial-start

Then select “Nutanix” in the Private Cloud & Data Center category:

You will then need to complete the following form:

Select Nutanix again from the list of available environments:

Then select the type of hypervisor installed on your cluster, in our case it is obviously the Nutanix AHV hypervisor:

PLEASE NOTE: I remind you that this tutorial shows how to deploy HYCU on a Nutanix Community Edition environment for homelab use. If you wish to put this solution into production, I invite you to contact a distributor of the solution in order to obtain a quote for a license adapted to your environment.

Finally click on “download .qcow2” to start downloading the image:

Now that the file is recovered, we can move on to the installation.

Prerequisites for deployment

Before deploying, we will ensure that our Nutanix cluster is ready to receive HYCU.

For sizing the virtual machine, you will need the following resources:

Given that we are in a lab context, the smallest sizing will be largely necessary. Make sure you have these resources available on your cluster before deploying.

A service account on the Nutanix cluster with “cluster admin” rights will also be required. On the Prism Element interface, in “Settings > Local User Management”, click New User:

Then complete the form before validating, remembering to check “Cluster Admin” in the “Roles” section:

Configuring the Data Services IP is also recommended. In “Settings > Cluster Details”, fill in the ISCSI Data Services IP field with a dedicated IP address (that is not yet assigned to other hardware):

You also need internet access and an available IP address for your HYCU virtual machine.

As for specific ports and other particularities, I will leave you the pleasure of going through the documentation: https://download.hycu.com/ec/v4.8.1/help/en/HYCU_UserGuide.pdf

Deploying the HYCU virtual machine

The deployment of HYCU is very simple and is divided into 4 steps:

To upload the image previously downloaded to your cluster, on Prism Element in “Settings > Image configuration”, click on “Upload Image”:

Fill in the form, making sure to name the image exactly like the .qcow2 file you downloaded (here, hycu-4.8.1-274), then click Save:

You now have to wait while the image downloads. As soon as it is finished, in the “VM” menu, in the Table display, click on “Create VM”:

Complete the form fields as follows:

In the “Disks” section, click “Add new disk”, select “Clone from Image Service” and find the previously downloaded image:

Then add a second 32Gb disk:

Finally, in the “Network Adapters (NIC)” section click on Add New NIC and select a VLAN to which to connect the VM network card:

Now click on “Save”, the VM is now created, start it then open a console on it. On the first screen, select “HYCU Backup Controller”

On the following screen, fill in the requested information:

The software then applies the configuration provided and proceeds to finalize the installation of the VM. This may take a few minutes and the system will notify you once the installation is complete.

Then enter the IP address that you entered during configuration in your browser like this: https://ip-du-serveur:8443

Log in using admin/admin credentials to access the administration console.

Your HYCU Backup Controller is now deployed. In a future article, we will see how to do the basic configuration (adding the cluster, defining a target, creating policies…).