Re: [Veritas-bu] vStorage Backups - Possible loss of VMFS?

I have done this on two different NBU Domains and on each domain the VMware backup host was a 2008 64bit Media Server. When presenting the LUNs, Windows did not try to mount them or write signatures. They come up as Healthy but showing as Offline, which is how you want them. I made no changes using diskpart. In fact, I didn't do anything other than zone the LUNs to the Windows server and rescan disks.

I will admit that this method of backing up VMs scares me because it wouldn't be very hard for someone to come along and accidentally try to Online/Initialize the LUNs. I would like to see VMware come up with some additional security for these disks on the Windows backup host to prevent this from happening. Since I'm on my wish-list soapbox, I would like to be able to utilize Unix servers in the future for a VM backup host.

Rusty Major, MCSE, BCFP, VCS ▪ Sr. Storage Engineer ▪ SunGard Availability Services ▪ 757 N. Eldridge Suite 200, Houston TX 77079 ▪ 281-584-4693
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Jorge Fábregas <jorge.fabregas AT gmail DOT com>
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01/29/2011 10:12 AM

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Subject	[Veritas-bu] vStorage Backups - Possible loss of VMFS?

Hello everyone, We've been doing some vStorage VMware backups thru the SAN for our test environment. We haven't started that on the production environment yet... As you may know, in order to start doing SAN backups using the vStorage API, your backup host needs access to all the LUNs (VMFS volumes) that all your hypervisors use. I've been reading a couple of posts - on the symantec forums- regarding possible VMFS corruption while you present these to your Windows media-server (backup host). Something along the line like "Windows will try to automount them and eventually corrupt the VMFS volume" and that in order to avoid this you must first run diskpart and run: automount disable automount scrub Our backup-host is a Windows 2003 server and I indeed presented all the test LUNs to the Windows server and I had no problems with the LUNs (without running any of the above commands). Have any of you run into a problem like this? Is this an OS' specific issue (perhaps with Win2008?)? Thanks in advance, Jorge _______________________________________________ Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT eduhttp://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

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