Vmware...

[Stephan]

Questions questions about vmware esx 3 and TSM...

Presently, i back up the virtual clients with the typical TSM Client, which is fine.

But what about the vmware esx server itself?

I've installed TSM 5.4 on it and configured the dsm.sys with the typical config + the following:

virtualmountpoint /vmfs

largecom yes
txnbytelimit 25600
tcpnodelay yes
tcpbuffsize 32
tcpwin 64

exclude /vmfs/.../*.vswp
exclude /vmfs/.../*.REDO

Now, if i start a backup of this, it takes foreever and never seems to complete...

Can i back up the /vmfs at all? Should we? What do you guys do?

thanks.

 

[moon-buddy]

What is the platform on which the VMWare server is running on?

Thanks.

 

[Stephan]

Hi Moon-Buddy.

the esx server is running on a Blade Server (xSeries) from IBM and the /vmfs is on a SAN (ds4700). linux kernel is a 2.4.21-47, Redhat EL.

 

[moon-buddy]

I have VMWare installed on Windows and Linux alike and I have not encountered any problem backing up the VMWare files.

Try backing up the VMWare files manually and see if everything works.

 

[Stephan]

So my setup should be allright? Similar to what you use? You do not run anything special on the esx side for the backups, except a plain tsm incr with the dsm.sys modified as i have?

I'll try a single file to see how it goes...

thanks.

 

[Stephan]

Hummm.

Should this be excluded?

03/03/2008 06:55:34 ANS4037E Object '/vmfs/devices/disks/vml.0200000000600508e000000000e34ec02627286f014c6f67696361' changed during processing. Object skipped.

I am trying to back the esx server while the clients are running...

 

[moon-buddy]

Stephan,

To be honest, I don't put any exclusions especially on the Linux box. Everything works without errors.

As for Windows, it is a different story. You need to have exclusions.

Also, aside from a host FS backup, I do Client side backups - TSM client installed on the VMWare clients, and backed up daily.

 

[Stephan]

As for Windows, it is a different story. You need to have exclusions.

Ah? What do i need to insert in the dsm.opt of the Windows clients? It is different than a standard Windows client?

What is your server and client version that you are using on the esx server?

Thanks.

 

[moon-buddy]

For the VMWare Windows backup, you may need to have exclusions since Windows TSM backups cannot process Open files or files in use. These may cause the backup to fail altogether.

One example is the file /vmfs/devices/disks/vml.0200000000600508e000000000e34ec02627286f014c6f 67696361 you mentioned above.

 

[nezih]

stephan you need to configure vmware consolidated backup framework in a new windows box (not virtual) and this box must be connected to san switch for read only accessing your vmware lun's and configured as backup proxy, check the tsm 5.5 client documentation for vmware backup...
vmware doesn't recommend the running backups on virtual machines when it's esx (not a vmware server or workstation)

 

[Stephan]

stephan you need to configure vmware consolidated backup framework in a new windows box (not virtual) and this box must be connected to san switch for read only accessing your vmware lun's and configured as backup proxy, check the tsm 5.5 client documentation for vmware backup...
vmware doesn't recommend the running backups on virtual machines when it's esx (not a vmware server or workstation)

Thanks Nezih for the input.

that is the only 'supported' way?! In order to backup a vmware ESX server, i need to get ANOTHER server, running windows, to run an application, connected to my SAN to back this cr@p up?! Is this VCB a 'paying' option? Do i need to buy a license for that?

Thanks.

 

[BBB]

Stephan, Nezih's way with VCB is recommended for doing backups from outside of the vm guest. Don't backup running guests from ESX itself.

If you don't want to use VCB you can still backup ESX guests by installing the TSM client inside the guest as if they were a perfectly normal host (tsm won't know the difference and this is officially supported). However using VCB gives you much easier bare metal recovery/server image type backups (as well as normal file level backups if you really want).

 

[Stephan]

Ahhhhh. Ok. So from all this back and forth between us all, i am starting to understand, that for mostly everyone, a backup of the guest with a TSM installation on the guest is perfectly acceptable. A backup of the esx server itself is not done by all? And if i wanted to, i'd have to use VCB?

 

[BBB]

Basically... yes.

The VCB backups are more to backup the guests though rather than the ESX server itself. To be honest its so easy to rebuild an ESX server it hardly worth backing it up, and much of the config can come across from virtualcenter.

But I have simplified things a bit. In reality you can backup guests externally from the ESX server without VCB but you need to use snapshots etc to ensure you get a consistent image.

Have a read of this
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_backup_wp.pdf

 

[Stephan]

Basically... yes.

The VCB backups are more to backup the guests though rather than the ESX server itself. To be honest its so easy to rebuild an ESX server it hardly worth backing it up, and much of the config can come across from virtualcenter.

But I have simplified things a bit. In reality you can backup guests externally from the ESX server without VCB but you need to use snapshots etc to ensure you get a consistent image.

Have a read of this
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_backup_wp.pdf

Thanks alot guys for all the info. It is a bit clearer now in my head...!

 

[nezih]

and lanfree is supported on vmware backups stephan

 

[tmcquaig]

I'm currently using VCB 1.1.0 with TSM 5.5 and it is working great. Also if you have centralized storage with multiple paths, emc power path is supported but undocumented.

 

[sthoppay]

If you don't want to use the proxy server, then you can take backup of VMs from the ESX itself. You need to run the command vcbMounter as presched command. That will take snapshot of the VM & mount to a directory and you can configure to take backup of that mount point.

Search for vcbMounter on google.