Bacula-users

Re: [Bacula-users] Bacula on ESX 3.5 (somewhat OT)

2008-04-15 16:25:23
Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] Bacula on ESX 3.5 (somewhat OT)
From: Jeff Dickens <jeff AT m2.seamanpaper DOT com>
To: Robert LeBlanc <robert AT leblancnet DOT us>
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:25:24 -0400
I back up a number of virtual machines that are hosted on ESX.  I simply treat each one as a separate server.  My Bacula director runs in a virtual machine, as does an SD that back up 30 windows boxes.

Also, I have a script that exports the system disk of each virtual machine to a samba share using the vmkfstools command.  I run this manually once a month.  If you back up the virtual disk files without using consolidated backup or vmkfstools you may run into trouble.

So, if my ESX server were to be wiped all I would need to do is reinstall ESX on a virgin server and import my saved virtual machines.  It beats the bare-metal restore problem completely.  I've also carried virtual machines around on Rev disks from site to site or even on DVD-Rs since the export compresses them pretty well.  The script also handles shutting down the virtual machines and backing up the config files, etc so you can use vmware converter to re-import them.  It doesn't back up the "data" disks on the servers; I leave that to Bacula.  A nice site effect is that in a pinch you can boot your VMs up on vmware server, which I have running on the system that gets the backups.

Let me know if you're interested, and I'll mail it to you.


Robert LeBlanc wrote:

On 4/15/08 1:01 AM, "Arno Lehmann" <al AT its-lehmann DOT de> wrote:

  
Hi,

15.04.2008 01:11, Robert LeBlanc wrote:
    
  Ok,
  We¹ve messed with Consolidate Back-up for ESX and I don¹t like it, I
tried to NFS mount our VMFS volumes on the Bacula SD to back them up and
it seems as ESX can not export VMFS, so I¹m back to where I started many
months ago and getting Bacula working on ESX.
      
Great. I don't know VMWare ESX that well :-)

    
I am not a Red Hat person
by any means, we use Debain for everything. So I have a few questions.
First, I think that ESX 3.5 is using Red Hat Enterprise 3.x, would that
seems feasible?
      
I don't know. But if it does, there are rpms for RHEL3 available which
are used by at least one of my customers. Just point your browser to
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=50727&package_id=76408
and you'll find a bacula-client-2.2.8-1.el3.i386.rpm file, which would
be worth a try.
    
I feel like such an idiot, I made sure to check before putting noise on the
list. The package installed without a hitch. The last time, there were a few
libraries out of date.

  
It looks like it was originally released in 2003.
Second, what CentOS (I know that CentOS is a Œfree¹ version of Red Hat
Enterprise) version would I use?
      
None, as long as you can use the more specific rpms.

    
Third, are RPMs built for that version
of CentOS? I only seem to find RPMs for Fedora Core and SUSE. Fourthly,
if there is no pre-built RPMs, I see that there is general building
instructions in the Documentation, but is there a good (i.e. Easy)
resource for building RPM packages for Bacula?
      
Yes, just download and install the source rpm and run rpmbuild with
the appropriate command line switches. You'll need a full development
environment, though, which might not be on the VMWare server.
    
I would try to avoid building on the ESX host at all possible, hence the
build on CentOS and then copy the RPM to the ESX host. I guess I will need
to learn how to package Bacula in any case seeing how binaries won't be
released for the next version.

Thanks,
Robert

  
Arno

    
Thanks,
Robert
-- 
Robert LeBlanc
Life Sciences Computer Support
Brigham Young University
leblanc AT byu DOT edu
(801)422-1882


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