Re: [Veritas-bu] VMware vStorage NetBackup 7 design help

Your VM backup host CAN be just a client, which pushes the backup data over the LAN to your Solaris media server. But it does have to be a Windows box.

As an aside, we have just started doing vStorage backups (the backup host is a media server). We are seeing really bad backup speeds to tape (5-6 MB/sec) but good speeds writing to a disk storage unit (50-60 MB/sec). Still trying to work out why the backups to tape are so slow. "Normal" backups (ie - standard NBU client over Gigabit LAN) to tape on the same media server seem to run at a reasonable speed.

-
Dean

On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 4:20 AM, Chapman, Scott <Scott.Chapman AT icbc DOT com> wrote:

Hello everyone, I'm looking for some design help rather than specific technical help.

We currently run our NetBackup Master/Media server on a SUN M5000 with Solaris 10 and NBU 7. Our Windows team is looking to upgrade the VMware environment to the latest version and we would like to start using the vStorage API.

Now my issue is that to backup with the vStorage API I need a Windows "backup host" which is defined as:

"NetBackup for VMware uses a special Windows server that is called a backup host (formerly called the VMware backup proxy server). The backup host is a NetBackup client that performs backups on behalf of the virtual machines. The backup host can also be configured as a NetBackup master or media server. The backup host is the only host on which NetBackup client software is installed. No NetBackup client software is required on the VMware virtual machines.

Note that the backup host is referred to as the recovery host when it performs a restore. "

I'm trying to understand my options for this windows machine.

1) I could install media server binaries on it and attach a couple of tape drives, issues with this would be

            a) one more netbackup media server to administer ie upgrade, patch etc

            b) a windows server that would need windows patches thus impacting the netbackup environment

            c) licensing costs associated with a media server

Do I have any other options for getting the VMware backups off to tape?

Is it possible to use a SAN client or something and attach tape drives to that... then at least it's just a NetBackup client rather than a NetBackup server. My concern with this would be that I can't directly attach the tape drives and I'd have to install the fiber transport stuff onto my Solaris master server and have it run the backups to tape.

I would like to hear what other people are doing or planning.

Thanks!

Scott Chapman

Senior Technical Specialist

Storage and Database Administration

ICBC - Victoria

Ph: 250.414.7650 Cell: 250.213.9295

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