Greetings

I'm trying to re-design the way we do backups for our vm's and would appreciate 
any feedback.  Currently we use the vRanger product to do LAN backups of about 
100 vm's, which are then copied to our NAS, where Networker grabs them and 
backs them up to tape.

This system works, and I love vRanger, but the overall process is slow, kludgy, 
and will not scale well.  Scalabilty is important as we are expecting a lot of 
growth in the number of vm's next year, approx 100 more or so.

Despite the fact that I have less than 6 months exposure to Networker (and 
haven't had a class yet grumblegrumble) I'm contemplating the following:

1) Reconfigure our vRanger machine (a Win2k3 sp2 server) to attach to our SAN 
and configure it as a VCB proxy.
2) Additionally install Networker and configure it as a storage node.  We're at 
v 7.3.3 and our NW Server is also a Win 2k3 sp2 server fwiw.
3) Use the vRanger software and VCB to backup the vm's via FC
4) Use Networker to backup the vRanger flatfile backups to VTL via FC.  Our 
VTL's are configured to clone to tape for long-term-ish retention.

What I like about this is that it a) avoids backup traffic over the LAN, b) 
will scale better without the NAS/NDMP steps, and c) should be much faster.

I think that this would capture the strengths of vRanger, VCB, and Networker, 
but I don't want to miss any potential potholes.  All feedback is appreciated.
Thanks!

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