Storware Integration with PCD

Integrate Storware Backup and Recovery with Platform9 Private Cloud Director to protect virtual machine workloads with agentless, policy-driven backup and recovery.

Storware Backup and Recovery is a software-defined data protection solution that provides agentless backup, snapshot management, and disaster recovery for virtual machines running in Private Cloud Director (PCD).

This guide explains how to deploy Storware, connect it to your PCD environment so it can discover and protect your VMs, run backup and restore operations, and enable tag-based policy assignment.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you meet the following criteria.

Storware Backup and Recovery

• Storware Backup and Recovery 7.5 or later, with the Storware Server and at least one Storware Node installed and running.

• Administrative privileges in the Storware web console.

PCD environment

• PCD version 2025.10 or later.

• Administrator access to create users and assign roles.

• Access to run pcdctl commands.

Network requirements

• The Storware Node can reach the PCD Identity, Compute, Block Storage, Image library, and Networking service API endpoints over HTTPS (port 443).

Constraints

The following limitations apply to Storware 7.5 with PCD:

• Instant restore is not supported.

• Restoring VMs to non-DHCP networks is not supported.

• The Download image from Glance option in the Storware OpenStack settings does not apply to PCD. The setting can be left at its default value because it does not affect functionality.

Supported backup methods

Storware supports three backup strategies for OpenStack environments. PCD supports only one of them.

Backup strategy	Supported with PCD	Notes
Disk attachment with generic incremental	Yes (recommended)	Storware snapshots each Storage volume, clones it to a temporary volume, and hot-attaches the temporary volume to a proxy VM. Incremental backups work on any storage backend by using block-level checksum comparison.
Disk attachment	No
Libvirt strategy (SSH transfer)	No

For more information about each strategy, see the Storware OpenStack documentation.

Deploy Storware Backup and Recovery

Before you integrate Storware with PCD, install and start the Storware Server and Storware Node by following the Storware deployment documentation.

Storware installs under /opt/vprotect and uses /vprotect_data as a staging space by default. Do not change these paths.

NOTE

To enable tag-based SLA policy auto-assignment after the integration is complete, additional configuration is required. See Enable tag-based policy assignment.

Configure PCD user for Storware

Storware requires a dedicated PCD user with system-scoped admin privileges. System-scoped privileges enable Storware to discover and manage VMs across all tenants and domains, without being restricted to a single project.

Create the Storware user

1. Create a dedicated user for Storware in PCD:

   # Example user: [e-mail]
   # Replace with your actual domain

2. Assign system-scoped admin privileges to the user:

   pcdctl role add --user '[e-mail]' --user-domain default --system all admin

3. Verify the role assignment:

   pcdctl role assignment list --user '[e-mail]'

Confirm the output includes:

• The user exists in the list.

• An assignment row where the System column shows all.

Test the connection

Before configuring Storware, verify that the user can authenticate with the system scope:

1. Set environment variables for the Storware user:

   export OS_USERNAME=[e-mail]
   export OS_PASSWORD=<your-password>
   export OS_AUTH_URL=https://<DU-FQDN>/keystone/v3
   export OS_IDENTITY_API_VERSION=3
   export OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME=Default
   export OS_SYSTEM_SCOPE=system

2. Test authentication:

   pcdctl token issue

If successful, you will see token details. If this fails, verify the user credentials and role assignment before proceeding.

Connect Storware to PCD

After configuring the PCD user, add your PCD environment as a virtualization provider in Storware so that Storware can discover and protect your VMs.

Add PCD as a virtualization provider

1. In the Storware web UI, navigate to Virtual Environments > Virtualization Providers.

2. Select Create, then select OpenStack at the top of the form.

   
3. On the General tab, enter the following:

   1. A name for the provider.

   2. The node configuration that points to your Storware Node VM.

   3. The URL of your PCD Auth endpoint, formed by appending /keystone/v3 to your PCD FQDN. For example: https://<DU-FQDN>/keystone/v3.

   4. Import/Export Mode: select Disk attachment with generic incremental.

4. On the OpenStack Settings tab, set Endpoint Interface Type to Public.

   
5. On the Authentication Domain tab, enter the following:

   • Domain name: Default.

   • Username and Password: the credentials of the Storware user you created in Configure PCD user for Storware.

6. Select Save.

Run the first inventory sync

After Storware saves the provider, it discovers hypervisors and begins initial VM discovery.

1. In the Virtualization Providers list, locate your PCD provider.

2. Select Inventory Synchronization.

   The Workflow Executions Console at the bottom of the page shows the synchronization progress.

   

Verify inventory discovery

After the sync completes, confirm that Storware can see your PCD workloads.

1. Navigate to Virtual Environments > Virtual Machines.

2. Confirm that all expected PCD instances appear in the list.

If VMs do not appear, verify the following:

• Network connectivity from the Storware Node to the PCD Identity, Compute, Block Storage, Image library, and Networking service endpoints.

• The Storware user credentials and system-scoped admin role assignment.

Backup and restore VMs

After inventory discovery completes, you can configure backup policies and run restore operations from the Storware web console.

• To configure backup schedules, retention, and on-demand backups, see Storware documentation on creating and scheduling backups.

• To run full restore, file-level recovery, or cross-environment restore, see Storware documentation on restoring virtual machines.

Enable tag-based policy assignment

By default, Storware does not read OpenStack VM tags, so it cannot auto-assign SLA policies based on tags. To enable tag-based policy assignment, explicitly set the Compute API microversion on each Storware Node. Tag scanning requires Compute API version 2.26 or later.

Complete the following steps on every Storware Node.

1. Open the node properties file:

   vi /opt/vprotect/node/node.properties

2. Find and uncomment the following line:

   openstack.nova.api.version=2.26

3. Restart the Storware Node service:

   systemctl restart vprotect-node

After the service restarts, Storware reads OpenStack VM tags and assigns matching VMs to the corresponding SLA policies.

Instant restore

Instant restore is a Storware feature that boots a VM directly from backup storage while data restores in the background. Instant restore is not supported with PCD as of Storware 7.5.