Grigori.

1. VCB is still officially the "right" way for backing up VM's from
VMware's (and IBM's) perspective and TSM 6.2 has some nice enhancements
to get this done.  Unfortunately VCB will be discontinued
<http://app.connect.vmware.com/e/es.aspx?s=524&e=12880125> after ESX 4.x

2. vDR is the new kid on the block but lacks flexibility and has many
limiting factors (ie. Scheduling, capacity, disktargets) and no TDP-like
functionality.

3. TSM and vDR cannot officially interface; to get TSM to backup a vDR
datastore it needs to reside on CIFS or other shareable resource or you
have to try and install tsm client withing the appliance(currently
CentOS if I'm not mistaken)

vDR limitations (some of them)
- VSS support for Windows guests but "crash-consistent" for all other OS'es
- 2 disk targets/dedupe-stores max
- 500GB CIFS dedupe-store size limit
- 1 TB size limit on disk target ie. VMDK or Raw Lun Mapping
- Grandfather-father-son type scheduling
- non-specific backup timing - window-size is only scheduling method
- 100 VM's max clients per vDR appliance(10 appliances max per vCenter)
- 1 vDR appliance per  VMware server
- 8 streams/sessions max
- MS-clusters not supported (using shared SCSI bus)
- no email notification system

So we are in a quandary as VCB is dying and vDR is not mature enough, we
can but hope that IBM will start coding furiously on integrating the new
VADP
<http://www.vmware.com/products/vstorage-apis-for-data-protection/features.html>
which will become the Official interface for backups of VMware VM's

Regards
Louw
"Keep the faith but don't drink the Kool-Aid"

On 22-Jun-10 10:39, Grigori Solonovitch wrote:

Louw,

If VCB has no future with ESXi, maybe VMware Data Recovery for image backups 
with global de-duplication for all guests + FLR on guests to restore files is 
the best solution now?

For me is not clear, what is the relationship between TSM and VDR backup 
appliance?

I hope it is possible to backup de-duplicated VDR images by normal TSM Client?

Kindest regards,



Grigori G. Solonovitch



Senior Technical Architect



Information Technology  Ahli United Bank Kuwait http://www.ahliunited.com.kw



Phone: (+965) 2231-2274  Mobile: (+965) 99798073  E-Mail: Grigori.Solonovitch 
AT ahliunited DOT com



Please consider the environment before printing this Email





-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
louw pretorius
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2010 11:03 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] ESXi and ESX



Grigori,.



As I understand it VMware is moving away from the VCB framework method

of backups and is starting to develop their own backup appliance called

VMware Data Recovery - currently at v1.2 - which is a simplistic

disk-to-disk only in-line deduped solution for VMware free with VMware

Advanced licenses and up.



  From VMware version ~4 backing up from the Console is network limited

so this is becoming a future-less option.



VMware does provide Storage API's but I assume TSM is still assimilating

them for future features.



So after all is said and done VCB is your best option - clunky as it is

- and backing up from the console is not recommended.



Regards

Louw



On 21-Jun-10 11:19, Grigori Solonovitch wrote:

I will deeply appreciate any answers on the next quiestions:

What are the current problems with backup/restore in case of using ESXi instead 
of ESX?

Which version of TSM Client supports ESXi completely?

What kind of additional software is required to backup/restore ESXi virtual 
machines?

Grigori G. Solonovitch

Senior Technical Architect

Information Technology  Ahli United Bank Kuwait http://www.ahliunited.com.kw

Phone: (+965) 2231-2274  Mobile: (+965) 99798073  E-Mail: Grigori.Solonovitch AT 
ahliunited DOT com<mailto:Grigori.Solonovitch AT ahliunited DOT com>

Please consider the environment before printing this Email

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