Hi Dave,

Thanks for the clarification, I was under the impression from some of the info that VCDR will be replacing VCB, perhaps that's not exactly the case. Hopefully the differences/simliarties between the two will be explicit when the product is out but thanks again for your input.

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William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

http://twitter.com/lamw

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The page 3 of the FAQ sheet from the beta forum says this:

"VMware Data Recovery is not the replacement product for VCB. Both products wil co-exist.":

Dave Convery

VMware vExpert 2009

http://www.dailyhypervisor.com

Careful. We don't want to learn from this.

Bill Watterson, "Calvin and Hobbes"

I for one will be very interested to hear about your results of that testing. We use NetBackup, and while the built-in integration with VCB makes it a lot easier than the old scripting methods, it also seems to scatter the log files a bit more and make it more difficult to find out what's causing problems when they come up. Deduped disk backups to a vAppliance, then backing that appliance up using 3rd party software to write to tape seems like the best of both worlds at this point. Who knows where we'll be in 6 months!

Please post back regarding your testing and any caveats you've found, if you don't mind!

Thanks in advance!

John

So here's some preliminary results on this.

Using CIFS to backup to a windows share, you technically do not even need VCB to backup the deduplicated data off to tape.  The speed, on our environment, did not change that much using CIFS, but all environments are different. 

I for one like this method of backup for the VMs.  Its integrated with vCenter.  Meaning my boss only goes to 1 interface to test the viability of a backup by performing a "restore rehearsal."

I do not like the fact that there are a few limitations on this method of backup.  I believe that this is on purpose, and VMware will possibly intend to package this as a separate and expensive add-on for vSphere.  Granted I could be wrong, but that is my opinion on the matter.  Either way, this is something that, once they work out most of the kinks and provide file-level restore capabilities that are built-in to vCenter, will probably put most methods of backing up virtual machines to shame.  The concept and methods are there.

Overall, happy with this.  Have not had any major issues so far.

Hey Folks,

I dont mean to bring up a dead conversation but how does this work with other applications like SQL and active directory.  I recall going through fast track they covered this.  I also think they called it something like quescing the VM to allow for a backup of databases and such.  Usually this is something that MS provides how to do.  I believe this prevents problems with possible data corruption due to the snap shot process. It sounds to me as well that they are getting away from file level but we still use this extensively in our environment.  I know one way to do a file level is just restore a snapshot of the VM to a backup VM and copy the file over.  Your input is appreciated!

Regards,

Chad King

VCP 4