Networker

Re: [Networker] backing up vmware (esx3) from Legato, guests, hosts, does it work best practices?

2007-04-02 18:29:02
Subject: Re: [Networker] backing up vmware (esx3) from Legato, guests, hosts, does it work best practices?
From: Siobhán Ellis <siobhanellis AT HOTMAIL DOT COM>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2007 08:24:29 +1000
There a re a few choices.

Backup at the ESX console level. This will enable you to take snapshots of
each machine and export them, using Vcbmounter (A Vmware CLI tool), to
another file system and then backup that export. This means you are doing
full backups every time, use more disk space, and potentially put stress on
the ESX server. I've done this, and wrote a script to integrate with
NetWorker for a customer. It took about 4 days of effort from scratch
including finding info on Vcbmounter.

Install a NetWorker client on each VM. This backs up as normal. NetWorker is
not CPU intensive but it is IO intensive - obviously. So, you need to
consider the impact. I often see people talk about over stressing the Vmware
server, but backups are usually done at quiet times anyway. The other
advantage is that if the VM runs applications, you can still do application
level backups.

Use VCB (Vmware Consolidated Backup). This enables you to snapshot machines
and mount the datastores on a windows proxy system. It does not take too
much extra disk space, but does require another box. You have to be careful
with this windows box as you have the potential ability to really screw up
your ESX VMFS volumes. Issues are that it is a file level backup only of
Windows systems only. There is no application backup, and no backup of
SYSTEM STATE, etc. Linux, Solaris, etc systems have to be backed up as a
complete machines. There are issues with restores too, just not too easy to
restore single files back to a VM, there are also restrictions that will hit
larger implementations. Basically, I think VCB is a good V1.0, but needs
more work.

Siobhan Ellis
IDATA Integrity Pty Ltd
Sydney


On 3/4/07 12:24 AM, "Ken Gehring" <ken.gehring AT GMAIL DOT COM> wrote:

> I've learned a bit and am learning more.
> 0) Legato (as of ESX 3.0) no longer supports backing up the ESX vmfs file
> system
> 1) You can back up individual instances as networker clients
> (expensive in terms of client licenses)
> 2) You can take snapshots of clients and back up the snapshots
> (expensive in terms of disk space)
> 3) You can use Vmware Consolidated Backup (we are still investigating
> this but it is probably expensive in terms of both disk space and
> additional server(s)).
> 
> So far, that seems to be your choices
> 
> 
> On 4/2/07, Scott Clous <Scott.Clous AT ccci DOT org> wrote:
>> backing up vmware (esx3) from Legato, guests, hosts, does it work best
>> practices?
>> 
>> 1. We are adding VMware servers ESX, into our network.  We are taking
>> physical machines, and turning them into VMs.
>> 2. We want to back up the clients (guests) running on them.  (it would be
>> nice to be able to leave them up 24/7)
>> a. I could just install the Legato client on each... plan not to back them up
>> all at the same time and cause stress to the ESX server...
>> ...or...
>> b. Do something more tricky.
>> c. is it possible without downing the client/guest to make a backup of a Live
>> machine?
>> 
>> 3. I'd like to backup the Host/physical machines, per the Vmware guy this is
>> something Vmware Marketing talked about being possible with Networker, but I
>> don't know the details.
>> 
>> What have you all learned?
>> 
>> [You know that you've been on the forums too long when names begin to be very
>> familiar :) ]
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I'm pulling the below  from
>> http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=55440&sid=891ac519955253c
>> 4f529b59219652f43
>> 
>> 
>> Well, it appears that contrary to the VMWare documentation, you can
>> not back up a vmware esx3 vmfs file system with any version of
>> networker. According to all of the literature from EMC on this you
>> should be able to do it. In reality, you can't and according to VMWare
>> support it is not supported. The case has been closed on the VMWare
>> side and if there is anything on the Networker front, I'll let you
>> know.
>> 
>> Ken
>> 
>> On 3/16/07, Ken Gehring <ken.gehring AT gmail DOT com> wrote:
>> 
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> 


Siobhán

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