On 8/7/06, William Boyer <bjdboyer AT comcast DOT net> wrote:

Yes it is, but if you quiesce or stop the VM using that VMFS, you can back it 
up as a normal file from the ESX server using the
5.2.4 Linux TSM client. There are several papers on the TSM site about backing 
up Vmware ESX server and links from that over to
Vmware's site.

Backing up virtual machine by backing up their file system is (not
only in my opinion) generally dangerous - data is not consistent.

We use tivoli client on ESX server (by the way - still 2.5.3p1) AND
tivoli clients on each virtual machine. This guarantee REAL
consistence of data in virtualization machine  (ESX) and in virtual
environment.

We do this weekly for our ESX servers...quiesce the VM's one at a time and 
backup the VMDK files. We have successfully recovered
these VM's at our disaster recovery site.

This generaly depend on type of virtual machine - if machine is for
example SQL server, probability of successfully recovering machine is
very, very small. Machine which generally do something and wait for
another request (www server, for example) can be backed up using
tivoli client on ESX server.

And, of course, this is only our and our integrator (ibm) experience,
maybe in another environment (we have for now 4 ESX machine with
aprox. 25 virtual machine, most of them are linux)

Bill Boyer
DSS, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
Wojtek Piecek
Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2006 7:12 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: VMFS3 filespace......

Hi,

VMFS and especially VMFS3 is special file system with implemented only
some functions of   classic FS, so probably backup using tivoli will
never work, or never work correctly.

Try vmware tools (integrated backup or something like) for tivoli, maybe this 
help.

On 8/1/06, Nielsen, Bo <Bo.Nielsen AT coop DOT dk> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is there someone who is using TSM to backup VMFS3 filespace on a ESX
> server 3.0???
> Which TSM Client is using, and how is *.VMDK file backed up???
>
>         aOaRegards
>         Bo Nielsen
>                * +45 4386 4671
>         Coop Norden IT           * (Internt postcenter): 6244
>         Data & Storage Center * mailto:bo.nielsen AT coop DOT dk Remember, a
> dead fish can float downstream, But it takes a live one to svim
> upstream. - W.C. Fields.
>


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