Thanks everybody for your advices !

The purpose is to backup virtual machine with large disk space and databases.
The backup window is very short (when there is backup window) ; some virtual 
machine will be running on 24/7 basis.

First I thought, classicly, to install nodes, tdp and so on virtual machine 
level then to do LAN-free backup as usual.
But it is not possible to have any HBA on virtual machine level ! VMWARE can't 
do that. So no LAN-Free !

An other solution is to backup vmdk but :
- I had advices that vmdk backup with online machine isn't very reliable
- I didn't know if, on esx level, it is possible to have HBA ?

I need to install :
- a baclient, which can work on Lan (Gigaethernet)
- tdp which need to work with large bandwidth network

A solution can be to build a dedicated network, with large bandwidth (trunking 
of Gigaethernet if possible) between those Virtual machine and an external 
machine with HBA and a storage agent so that I can make LAN-free using this 
storage agent.

An other solution can be to snapshot vmdk, mount it on esx console (disk 
expensive) then to back it up with the appropriate client on esx console level.

Did you make backup of vmdk with virtual machine online ? Paused ? Or offline ?
Did anyone has experience of vmdk backup of online virtual machines ?

Pierre

> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] De 
> la part de Stef Coene
> Envoyé : mercredi 29 août 2007 14:10
> À : ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Objet : Re: [ADSM-L] Backup on VMWARE ESX
> 
> On Wednesday 29 August 2007, Wojtek Pięcek wrote:
> > > For backup of the vmdk files, I adapted my custom script 
> for ESC 2.x 
> > > to 3.x (in stead of redo logs you have to snapshot) so I 
> can online 
> > > backup the vmdk files.  Works flawless.
> > > For a all-in-one backup script, google for vmbk.
> >
> > Why not use client at virtual machine level? It have better 
> gradiation 
> > (single file). Yes, restoring all machine is very complicated for 
> > client level backup.
> We do weekly backups of the vmdk files.  We also backup the 
> server it self with the TSM client.
> 
> It takes 30 minutes to restore a running server from a vmdk backup.
> So the vmdk file backup is for quick DR restores and the TSM 
> client is used for single file/directory restores.
> We once tried to extend the C: disk: 50% chance that this 
> went wrong and we had to restore the C: disk.  But since it 
> took only 30 min to restore the server, we dould try untill it worked.
> 
> 
> Stef
>