We don't back up the guest OS on the VM's. We just back up the ESX servers
themselves and get the vmdk's etc. Our VM storage is also on the SAN though so
performance hit is nearly undetectable (we use the backups from the SAN rather
than the ESX servers, that way all we back up on the ESX servers is the ESX OS
itself).
But our VM strategy is also a little different than some. We only virtualize
the "minor" servers. Things like WSUS that can be rebuilt and any data loss is
of little consequence. We do also have a few DFS servers virtualized but
again, those are easily rebuilt. Their storage is a LUN on our SAN. This
makes it almost useless/pointless to run NBU on the guest OS. We have done it
before but and there is a noticeable performance hit for that VM (which can
affect the whole thing if your ESX server is not properly set up for such
activities) so we just don't do it. We have had issues virtualizing servers
that have high disk I/O (like major file servers, e-mail servers, etc). Disk
I/O being the bottle neck of most any system, this is kind of understandable.
Thus we don't virtualize anything like that. Which is another performance
factor with backing up the guest OS. Because of the disk I/O problem alone, I
would be very careful with backing up guest OS's making sure not to multi
stream from too many VM's on the same ESX server.
And we always do it "hot". Our VM's run 24x7. The only exceptions are for
scheduled maintenance which doesn't happen here near as much as it should.
We run NBU 6 MP2 from a Win 2K Server, BTW.
I would also review the linked PDF if I were you.
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/ESXBackup.pdf#search=%22How%20to%20backup%20VMWare%20ESX%22
Phil Koster
Network Administrator
City of Grand Rapids
Direct: 616-456-3136
Helpdesk: 456-3999
-----Original Message-----
From: Oleg Ivanov [mailto:o.ivanov at verizon.net]
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 9:05 AM
To: veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] NBU and VMWare
Hello Everyone!
For those who have NBU 5.x/6.x and ESX VMWare server, I was wondering if you
would share your backup and recovery strategy for the ESX server. Especially,
what is your plan to recover the ESX server in the event of total loss? How do
you backup virtual instances/partitions, cold/hot? What is your performance
experience when you have a NBU agent installed on virtual partition? Any other
tips and suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!!
Kind regards,
Oleg Ivanov
646-296-0002
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