Hello Pierre,

It depends on wether your ESX Server will be 2.x or 3.x.
The consolidated backup is for 2.x only. On ESX 3.x servers the way VM's
are deployed is completely changed and there is AFAIK no way to backup
the VMDK files.

Met vriendelijke groet, with kind regards,
 
Richard van Denzel.
-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
CAYE PIERRE
Sent: 29 August 2007 11:55
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] Backup on VMWARE ESX

Hello,

I am studying solutions for backup of a future installation of windows
guest on VMWARE ESX.

What are the best practices ?

Context :
1 VMWARE ESX Host
Up to 6 windows 2003 with up to 6 To
GigaEthernet
Some of the guests will manage large databases.

I saw that VMWARE consolidated backup can acces guests datas "online" or
something like but I heard about problems regarding this aproach.

The disk space for some of the guests, and kind of datas (Databases),
can obliged to study some LAN-free approach BUT guests didn't support FC
attachment.

An other point is that, as usual..., it will be difficult, if possible,
to shutdown the guest, so online backup will be required...

Any advices are appreciate

Regards,

Pierre