Anyone Using VMWare vStorage with TSM?

[DanGiles]

Lightyears:-? Wow, really:-? It must be moving pretty fast, as it will probably catch up by the new year:tongue:

You work with TSM every day and get to see the problems and you don't know of any problems with NBU. IBM is 100% transparant when it comes to documentation and APARs, while you have to have an actual customer number before you can see that information for other products.

By the time you ripped out TSM for NBU, TSM will have 'caught up' and passed them in some other area. Then what? You're going to rip NBU out for TSM?

 

[JeanSeb]

Jeff_Jeske: care to elaborate a little on your "PXE boot recoveries" method ?

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

Long story short PFM..... When a server crashes and is unable to boot to the normal C: drive.... you edit the bios to point towards an ISO image on a share drive. This allows the server to boot and view all disks. A quick config of the dsm.opt file provides tsm access to these disks. You can then restore system state or other file systems to the hardware with out needing a bootable clean OS.

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

Here are the steps we use for VM recovery:

TSM Restore VM using PE
1. Create empty VM with HD and NIC.
2. Power on VM to PXE Boot and select Windows PE.
3. Use Diskpart:
Select Disk 0
Create Partition Primary
Format quick
Active
4. Map Z - Net use z: /user:domain\username \\servername\tsmshare
5. Run tsmwinpe.cmd - This command adds path variable information necessary for the tsm client to function.
6. Edit DSM.opt file using notepad
change node to reflect new servername
change tcpserveraddr to proper backup server
7. Run DSMC query fi –asrmode=yes
8. Run at the prompt TSM> restore \\servername\c$\* c:\ -sub=yes –rep=all
Enter a username and password
9. Wait for restore of C drive to complete then go to step 10 to restore the system state.
10. Run DSMC rest “{servername\systemstate\null\systemstate\system state}\*” c:\
-sub=yes –rep=all
****** Wait for system state to finish

 

[GregE]

Good info Jeff.

It's been awhile since anyone asked so I'll resurrect this.............any new info on when IBM will have full VM backup in the TSM client???

With physical tape, handling hundreds of full VMs would be a pain. Full VM backup would be HUGE in a deduplicating virtual tape library. I'd bet a 50:1 dedupe ratio or better would not be uncommon.

 

[DanGiles]

Sure. Do you mean through vcenter? "backup vm"/"restore vm". You can dedup at the client (6.2) or the server (6.x).

Don't know when TSM will start using the vstorage APIs -- sometime early 2011 I would hope. That should give you a mess of new options.

 

[GregE]

Thanks Dan. I was referring to TSM client support for full VM, without VCB. I know we can do it thru vCenter and not use TSM for it.

TSM dedupe is out for me. We're not moving to version 6 anytime soon and our data center consolidation project is underway.

(Now if I can just get the final go-ahead to bring DataDomain into this place. :-| )

 

[DanGiles]

You mean doing a full vm backup from WITHIN a virtual machine? Never heard of any backup product doing that!

 

[GregE]

I guess I'm not asking the right way. Not a full VM backup of the same VM doing the backup. I'm asking if there is any new info around when TSM client will support full VM backup without VCB. How it would be done I don't know. The 6.2 client guide says this.......

- Full VM backup uses the VMware VCB support. Use the vmbackvcbtransport
option to control the transport mode for full VM backups.

- File-level backup uses the vStorage for Data Protection APIs, and determines the
best available transport. The vmbackvcbtransport option is not necessary for
file-level backups.

 

[DanGiles]

Ah, yes, but that's using the VCB framework, on VCenter. Sometime in the new year they'll move to the VStorage APIs, but that would still be through vcenter. I believe it would allow full vm backups with file-level restores onto the client from vcenter -- i.e. there would be no need to have the client on individual virtual hosts to do file-level restores.

P.S., I dropped you a private note.

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

Why would you want to fall back into old school mode of doing a full vm backup everyday? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the progressive backup?

 

[GregE]

I wouldn't do it everyday, but to have that available would be substantial, especially in a DR situation.. Restoring a full VM instead of massive numbers of small files.

 

[dynemix]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to TSM, i've never used any of this VCB or Vstorage API Before, and I Have some Questions Regarding to the VStorage API :

1. Is The Vstorage API included in TSM client V 6.2.1 , or is it included in the VMWare Package? When i installed the TSM Client V.6.2.1 , i have an option to install the VMWare backup tools, when i choose to install it, does it mean I install the Vstorage API ?

2. How does The Vstorage API work For File Level Backup? Does the backup run directly into the tape, or does it need a staging volume before the backup runs into the tape?

3. Is it possible to run the VStorage API from the TSM Server? (That means i install the V6.2.1 client and the Vstorage API inside the TSM Server, and run the VMWare backup from the TSM Server)

4. If i use one of my vm guest as the proxy node rather than using a new physical machine, and run the vmware backup using the vstorage API from that vm guest, will the backup give more loads to the ESX Server?

Thanks in advance

Warm Regards,

Eki Rahmadian
IT Technical Consultant