Re: [Veritas-bu] VMware vStorage NetBackup 7 design help

You can use SAN if you wish. You can use it if the client is setup to use FT, or if using VCB/VADP you can select the SAN Transfer Type option, or it *should* automatically select it if available when All Types is selected.

Rusty Major, MCSE, BCFP, VCS ▪ Sr. Storage Engineer ▪ SunGard Availability Services ▪ 757 N. Eldridge Suite 200, Houston TX 77079 ▪ 281-584-4693
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Brendan Clover <Brendan.Clover AT unisa.edu DOT au>
Sent by: <veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu>

07/29/2010 11:26 PM

To	"Chapman, Scott" <Scott.Chapman AT icbc DOT com>, Veritas <veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu>
cc
Subject	Re: [Veritas-bu] VMware vStorage NetBackup 7 design help

Hi Scott,

As you have mentioned, the two ways to back up virtual servers are to use VAPD (or VCB for ESX 3.x) and have a Windows media server, or, to treat each VM like you would a physical server, install a NB client on each server and run a normal backup on it. The second option is how we currently backup or VMs.

I don’t believe it is possible to use the SAN Client for backup as a VM does not have an awareness of the underlying storage fabric, I maybe wrong and I’m sure someone will correct me if I am but we certainly don’t use the SAN Client.

As always there are positives and negatives for each solution, from our point of view it is significantly cheaper to implement 2 new Windows media servers and utilise VAPD than it is to install the Symantec BESR imaging software (that we currently use to be able to do bare metal restores) and a NB client on each of our 120+ virtual servers.

Consequently we will be looking to implement this solution once our migration to vSphere 4 is complete, unfortunately for us this will also require an upgrade of our NB infrastructure to NB 7.

Regards,

Brendan Clover
Information Technologist
Systems Infrastructure
University of South Australia
Phone: +61 8 830 23641
Fax: +61 8 830 25800

Log your own service calls here: http://www.unisa.edu.au/helpdesk
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From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Chapman, Scott
Sent: Friday, 30 July 2010 3:51 AM
To: Veritas
Subject: [Veritas-bu] VMware vStorage NetBackup 7 design help

Hello everyone, I'm looking for some design help rather than specific technical help.

We currently run our NetBackup Master/Media server on a SUN M5000 with Solaris 10 and NBU 7. Our Windows team is looking to upgrade the VMware environment to the latest version and we would like to start using the vStorage API.

Now my issue is that to backup with the vStorage API I need a Windows "backup host" which is defined as:
"NetBackup for VMware uses a special Windows server that is called a backup host (formerly called the VMware backup proxy server). The backup host is a NetBackup client that performs backups on behalf of the virtual machines. The backup host can also be configured as a NetBackup master or media server. The backup host is the only host on which NetBackup client software is installed. No NetBackup client software is required on the VMware virtual machines.

Note that the backup host is referred to as the recovery host when it performs a restore. "

I'm trying to understand my options for this windows machine.
1) I could install media server binaries on it and attach a couple of tape drives, issues with this would be
a) one more netbackup media server to administer ie upgrade, patch etc
b) a windows server that would need windows patches thus impacting the netbackup environment
c) licensing costs associated with a media server

Do I have any other options for getting the VMware backups off to tape?

Is it possible to use a SAN client or something and attach tape drives to that... then at least it's just a NetBackup client rather than a NetBackup server. My concern with this would be that I can't directly attach the tape drives and I'd have to install the fiber transport stuff onto my Solaris master server and have it run the backups to tape.

I would like to hear what other people are doing or planning.

Thanks!

Scott Chapman
Senior Technical Specialist
Storage and Database Administration
ICBC - Victoria
Ph: 250.414.7650 Cell: 250.213.9295

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