ESX vm guest backup.

[JeanSeb]

ESX vmware guests, how are you backing them up ?

I'm tempted to just set up TSM client in each VM, any real world experience you guys would like to share ? I'm especially worried about load on the ESX servers.

I know a separate proxy using VCBMount is the preferred method, but I'd rather stay with what i know best (regular schedules with separates client) as I am not convinced of the advantages of the proxy node method.

Also, what is the status of LANFREE in vm, Is it working ?

 

[moon-buddy]

We backup all VM ESX guest OS individually, meaning a client is installed on each instance.

One thing to remember that the PVU (for licenses) only counts at the base processor level and NOT at the individual client level. Thus you can have 10 client instances on one ESX environment but pay only for 4 or 8 cores as the case maybe.

As for LAN free, I won't go there if you are backing up many small files. It does work but very slow for many small files.

 

[JeanSeb]

Moon-Buddy,

And you did not encounter any problem with the load climbing up too much on the ESX?
Can you share how much clients you are backing up, and maybe your randomization setting ?

Thanks for the PVU tips, I will definitely be looking into this.

 

[moon-buddy]

Moon-Buddy,

And you did not encounter any problem with the load climbing up too much on the ESX?
Can you share how much clients you are backing up, and maybe your randomization setting ?

Thanks for the PVU tips, I will definitely be looking into this.

We haven't seen any load issues. We have 8 to 10 guest "nodes" and randomized within a +/- 3 hour window.

By the way, there is a new feature in TSM 6.1 that can backup WM Ware environments from the host OS.

 

[JeanSeb]

I like your solution mikeymac,

Taking daily snapshots of vmdks would allow me to quickly restore a copy of a VM. I could also expire them after 8 days so it would not take too much tapes.

My only concerns is that i have one ESX with 80 VM, and the other one with 80 VM. I'm not sure peoples that have a baclient on each VM have that many VM on each ESX.

 

[mikeatkc]

We backup all VM ESX guest OS individually, meaning a client is installed on each instance.

One thing to remember that the PVU (for licenses) only counts at the base processor level and NOT at the individual client level. Thus you can have 10 client instances on one ESX environment but pay only for 4 or 8 cores as the case maybe.

Yup, this is what we're doing as well and due to the PVU licensing. In our environment, we're mainly concerns with individual system's configuration as generating a VM is simple/quick enough.

 

[etchingsj]

We are looking to implement VCB w/ lanfree and also leave the existing node based backup as well.

 

[steagu]

What we do is VMDK backup every night using the VCB backup (40 VM's; approx 1.5 TB). Our TSM server is also the VCB proxy so the VMDK's get mounted to it, via a fiber connection to the SAN, and then we send them to the tape drive. There isn't enough space on the TSM Server/VCB proxy to mount all of our VM's so I send them off in groups using a windows scheduled task which runs a batch file.

 

[Mikolaj]

steagu - Does you VCB backup work on VMs that have a snapshot, if not, how do you handle these? How long does it take to perform your nightly VM backups?

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

We have about 500 VMs.... about 40 per ESX host. We backup each VM as if it were a physical box. VMWare is constantly vmotio'ing nodes over to other hosts so we don't worry about possible backup scheduling conflicts.

Our only concern is the rapid P2V movement that hasn't allowed us to architect our SAN infrastructure to better suit the VM environment. We are starting to see read/write times impacted by large VM farms located on the edge. We may end up moving the farm to the core. This is expected considering we are moving from a distributed design to a consolidated design.

 

[JeanSeb]

Just to do a follow up,

As we have around 100 VM per ESX host, what I ended up doing is implementing the baclient on each node, treating it as a regular physical box like you all. I've set randomization to 40%, and splitted the schedules in 2 hours windows. I have also implemented journaling on some nodes. Everything seem fine so far.

Of course our production servers are not used by our clients outside regular business hours so load is not really an issue when the backups take place. YMMV.

 

[flexing]

Hi,

We use vRanger Pro for most backups, but also use a TSM agents at the DB level .....

Flex

 

[hile]

Yup, this is what we're doing as well and due to the PVU licensing. In our environment, we're mainly concerns with individual system's configuration as generating a VM is simple/quick enough.

From what I could see, the BA client is licensed via "client device", rather than PVUs. Is each physical ESX host considered a "client device", or is each VM instance where you have the BA client installed considered a "client device"?

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

We consider each VM server (not host) a client. If we have 40 clients on a host we use 40 baclient licenses. We do not calculate PVU's for VM servers.

 

[hile]

Thank you, Jeff.

Is that official IBM policy? I have seen comments about PVU licensing for ESX boxes, but I don't see the BAClient listed with PVUs, unless I'm missing something.

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

I believe some people are backing up the raw disk files (even without shutting them down) from the ESX host (as a linux baclient) maybe that is where the PVU's come into play.

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

Did some additional digging on this. Called IBM twice and got two different answers. The first answer was you can license just the PVU's of the physical hardware and install as many clients as you want without additional charges. The second response was "it depends" if you are moving VMs from one hardware platform (VMOTION) to another you need to license each individual VM by vCPU. This way the count is always correct. This may be the more expensive approach but its the most accurate. We have install ITLM on each virtual node and not at the host level.

I read someplace else that IBM with charge you the lesser of the combination. I guess it all depends on how ITLM calculates the number. One this is for sure.... its all PVU based but at the virtual level it depends how you decide to count the PVUs.