I'll tackle the easy part of your question first, i.e. backing up the ESX host.
Most VM admins I know (and I use to do that a bit myself) don't bother backing
up the host. Supposedly it's feasible, but the pain usually doesn't justify
the reward. There is *almost* no unique data on each host, and what there is,
e.g. virtual ethernet switch definitions, is very easy and quick to put back in
place manually, and I suspect it would be vary hard to restore. In our
experience it was much, MUCH quicker to just reinstall ESX, in fact the head
admin wrote a very nifty script that automated the install so that it took
about 15 min to run.
If your folks really want some recovery options for the host, a much simpler
approach would be to build the host to boot from SAN and then keep a clone of
the LUN lying around. The hosts don't consume much space for the kernel, so
it's generally not a big burden.
As for the tougher bit, the VMWare consolidated backup, I'd strongly recommend
you read the VMWare documentation first. I've never looked at the Networker
implementation because the 7.3 version had a bad reputation, but supposedly
it's better in 7.4 - I can't vouch personally for either, so please take that
with a grain of salt. We did look strongly at the vRanger (by vizioncore)
implementation of VCB and strongly considered combining that with Networker, a
la vRanger would perform the VCB portion and fetch flat file backups of the
VM's and place them on to a Networker storage node, which would get them to
tape. If you DO play with the Networker implementation of VCB, you might
consider setting up the VCB proxy server as a storage node (if you haven't
already thought of this), so that the backup traffic avoids the ethernet
network completely. We ended up rejecting the VCB route to go with Avamar for
a variety of other reasons however....
HTH
-brerrabbit
stan wrote:
> Greetings everyone:
>
> A colleague who has a Vmware ESX server and I are trying to figure out how
> to back it up and the VMs it hosts (and their storage out on our SAN). I
> have been searching PowerLink for help, this list's web site, and Vmware's
> web site, but I don't see anything that actually tells me how to do this.
>
> The closest I can find is page 77 on the NetWorker Administrator's Guide. I
> am using NetWorker 7.4.1 on Solaris 10 to backup a Vmware server that's
> hosted on a Windows 2003 box.
>
> On page 77, it references a VMware proxy server, but there is no explanation
> as to what that is. Could someone please explain? I am assuming its my
> NetWorker server, but maybe not.
>
> I am also confused as to what I put into the saveset field? I have tried
> numerous strings, but nothing works. My colleague who set up this Vmware
> server also installed the Consolidated Backup framework on it, and it seems
> to bring with it the NetWorker Remote Service, which is running. Do I also
> need to install the NetWorker base client?
>
> When I try doing a backup, I get something like the following save group
> report:
>
> NetWorker savegroup: (alert) test7 completed, Total 1 client(s), 1 Failed.
> Please see group completion details for more information.
>
> Failed: vmanage2.temple
>
> Start time: Fri Oct 3 11:05:04 2008
> End time: Fri Oct 3 11:05:05 2008
>
>
> --- Unsuccessful Save Sets ---
>
> * vmanage2.temple:c\:*ALLVMFS* 1 retry attempted
> * vmanage2.temple:c\:*ALLVMFS* save_vcb.bat: Command not found
> See the file /nsr/tmp/sg/test7/sso.vmanage2.temple.MraivL for details. This
> file may be removed after Fri Oct 10 11:05:04 2008.
>
> I put in that save_vcb.bat command in the applications field and I even put
> in a path to it in the executable path field, but I still get the same
> results.
>
> What am I doing wrong? Is there actually any documentation that has some
> specific examples of how to set this up? If so, where can I download it
> from?
>
>
> via RSS at http://listserv.temple.edu/cgi-bin/wa?RSS&L=NETWORKER
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