Hey everyone,  I would like to know what your experiences have been with 
VCB and Networker 7.4.x.  

I did my first VCB implentation about 18 months ago at a customer site with 
Networker 7.4.  Off the top of my head I can't rememeber the VCB version 
but after much trial and error I was able to get it to work by using the 
Proxy Host (storage node) and defining the savesets as VM:guestname:backup 
type in the saveset field, plus defining save_vcb.bat in the backup command 
field.  Of course, we had the normal issues that made EMC change their 
method of backing up VM's in 7.4.1 but at least it backed up.

Later I installed VCB with Networker 7.4.1 at some other sites and had to 
figure out the new method of creating a client for each Guest and using the 
VCB option on the client definition.  This was better although the customer 
was upset because now it required a client license.  In any case it backed 
up.

Recently I have been contracted to implement VCB with Networker again.  The 
Networker server is 7.4.2 on AIX and we have 7.4.4 on the Proxy Host.  For 
some reason when we define the Guest as a Networker client and set all of 
the parameters the backup part fails.  It will create the snapshot, copy 
the vmdk's to the proxy host, but as soon as the copy finishes, the copy 
directory gets deleted and then the snapshot gets cleaned up.

If I define the guest the old way (as a saveset on the proxy host) then it 
backs up.

My first guess was the Networker 7.4.2 vs. 7.4.4 compatibility issue.  We 
had a DR Networker server running 7.4.4 so I tried testing it there and got 
the same results.

My second guess was that the Networker server was running AIX.  Of the 17 
years I've been running Networker, I only know two company's running it as 
a server on AIX.  So I created a Networker 7.4.4 server on a Windows 
system.  Got the same results.

What is strange is I can install Networker server on the Proxy host and 
everything works as expected.  All methods of VCB backups work.

I have other toughts on what the issue may be (such as they run Netware 
Directory Services for authentication) that may be the culprit, but I 
wanted to run it by you guys to see if you've experienced anything like 
this.

Just so you know, we are just going to backup the image level.  They also 
backup at the file level using Networker client.  We will just backup the 
images one a week or month.  Should a system crash or we need to do a DR, 
we will restore the image and then just do a file level restore to bring 
the system up to date.

Thanks in advance for any hepful responses.

Sincerely,

John Chaney

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