VCB and NAS Storage

[leewynne]

Hi All,

Just a quicky as I can't find clarification on this one.

When using VCB (with a SAN obviously), can the VCB proxy mount and then write the images direct to NAS attached storage or can it only write to local disk (scsi, iscsi, san) before backing out to tape.

Regards,

Lee

[kucharski]

It can write to anything as long as the Windows VCB proxy server can see that extra storage as a drive letter and write too. I have never tried but it should work.

Michael

[leewynne]

Thank you for the swift reply.

That was my thinking, but I would like to be sure before it is purchased. It would see it as a drive letter but not a local drive.

Regards,

Lee

[AustinPowers]

I've done it with NAS and iSCSI. As long as it is an NTFS volume that the proxy can see, you're good to go.

[leewynne]

Excellent, thanks.

So you had the VCB proxy accessing the NAS as a mapped drive?

Regards,

lee

[AustinPowers · Accepted solution]

Right. We're using the VCBmounter to create the fullvm files on an NTFS

volume that the proxy sees as F:, then we use Backup Exec to back up the

files to tape. Backup Exec just screams doing this type of backup

versus traditional file-based backups. And you can leave the fullvm

files on the F: (if you have room) and use a nifty little disk mount

command to mount the full vm as a drive letter. Then you can restore a

single file from the image if needed.

[leewynne]

Excellent. I guess you also map the NAS share from within virtual center as storage point to make the restores easier too?

Thanks,

lee

[AustinPowers]

You could, but I don't know if it will decrease the copy time getting the datastore from the NTFS volume back into your VMFS volume. I don't think there's any advantage to doing it from the VC versus the proxy. There are different ways to do it, but it is still time consuming. WinSCP works, but is slow. VEEAM has a faster utility called FastSCP that's free.

[leewynne]

Thanks, what's your experience with the vcb plugin with virtual center like? You can now restore directly from VC is my understanding is correct.

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[AustinPowers]

I wasn't aware of it, and haven't used it yet. But I found a doc that explains how VC now can use Converter to move VCB images to VMFS. Thanks for the tip, Lee. I'll be trying this out today.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vcb_35_new.pdf

[leewynne]

No worries. Thanks for the postings

I forgot it was the converter plugin. I guess if you mount your NAS storage from Virtual Center you can restore easily. Let me know how the testing goes!

Regards,

Lee

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[AustinPowers]

Test results - one word: SCHWEET!

I did a VCBMounter backup of a 6GB Win2K3R2 test VM. Then I ran the Converter from VC to restore it to a new VM. Start to finish, including powering up the new VM, the restore took 6 minutes! This isn't sliced bread, but, damn!

[leewynne]

Schweet indeed.

Is that straight across the fibre into your production LUN? How can you see the backed up image on your VCB server from Virtual Center?

Regards,

Lee

Web - http://www.applicationdelivery.co.uk

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[AustinPowers]

The LUN is iSCSI, but it works the same way. We've been using VCB with iSCSI (even though it wasn't on the approved list) for over a year now, no problems.

You enter Proxy authentication info and the vmx file UNC path into Converter. Converter logs in to the proxy and then finds the vmx file. From there it is JFM (just f***ing magic).

So as long as VC and Proxy can see each other, it's good to go.