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prisoner881
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Definitive answer to backing up live VM's

This question has been asked before in different forms but I've yet to see a definitive answer to this thorny subject: is there a free method to backing up live VM's hosted on ESXi that doesn't have a huge downside? And if there isn't a free option, what's the cheapest commercial option? And what is the best option if price isn't an overriding concern?

What we have now is one WIndows 2003 R2 x64 server running VMWare Server 2.0. This box hosts ten VM's. We have Seagate Backup Exec 12.5. We're able to get live backups of running VM's using the VMWare VSS Writer service. Obviously we have no such option under ESX, yet we'd like to move to ESXi if possible for better performance.

According to Seagate's product literature, "the new release of Backup Exec 12.5...will allow users to back up an unlimited number of guest machines within a VMware ESX or Microsoft Hyper-V host environment to disk or tape from a single agent." There is no mention of ESXi, but I'm assuming the great similarity between ESX and ESXi might mean this is still supported. Has anyone tried it? What all is involved?

Last, others have suggested that we just continue to back up our guest OS's the same way we did when they were physical boxes. While this would work it defeats a lot of the convenience of disaster recovery. Backing up the guest OS means a lot of work to restore (reinstall OS, reinstall apps, restore data, etc.) when we could just restore the entire VM image and get the same -- but faster and easier -- results. I'd like to avoid the former backup situation in favor of the latter one.

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ericsl
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Dave,

Correct, Veeam Backup needs VCB for ESXi, hence my suggestion to use VI 3 Foundation and ESX. In my mind ESXi, in it's current iteration, is crippleware.

Prisoner,

So you hardware is a little beefier, but that doesn't affect the cost of ESX, which was your primary issue? It's still $995 for ESX with includes VCB. FYI, various Intel 5000 series motherboards are on the HCL...

Eric

prisoner881
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Dave,

Correct, Veeam Backup needs VCB for ESXi, hence my suggestion to use VI 3 Foundation and ESX. In my mind ESXi, in it's current iteration, is crippleware.

Prisoner,

So you hardware is a little beefier, but that doesn't affect the cost of ESX, which was your primary issue? It's still $995 for ESX with includes VCB. FYI, various Intel 5000 series motherboards are on the HCL...

Eric

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the primary issue is our current hardware isn't on the HCL. In order to run ESX I need HCL-listed hardware, otherwise I can forget about any kind of support. Hence the $20K-$30K cost to junk our existing hardware and get new stuff that's equivalent hardware-wise.

And I'm starting to agree with your assertion that ESXi is crippleware. Right now it's neither fish nor fowl. I get more flexibility, less performance, and zero cost with VMWare Server 2.0. I get more flexibility, more performance, and more cost with ESX. If absolute performance isn't a must, I'm finding it hard to justify moving to ESXi right now unless I'm missing something.

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prisoner881
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Just a couple of things to note:

1) Veeam Backup 2.0 does support ESXi, but it does use VCB which is not licensed as part of ESXi free. VCB with ESXi requires a VI foundation license. Now VCB still appears to work with ESXi free, but I wouldn't count on that for the long term.

2) Likewise with the RCLI and any thing like the appliance mentioned earlier that uses the RCLI or the VI Toolkit, both those items are meant to be read-only with ESXi free. Now the RCLI doesn't seem restricted from my tests, but the documentation says it should be. I brought it up with the ESXi product manager last week and there is the possibility that parts of the RCLI that deal with VMs (i.e. to start / stop / create snapshots) could be read/write for ESXi free. However, at this point I would not rely on the RCLI as the retriction to be read only could be introduced in the future. If you (and I mean you as in anyone reading this) would like to see the RCLI to have less restrictions with ESXi free then it would be good to add a post here explaining what you would like to do with ESXi free and the RCLI - http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/suggest/product.

3) The console is intended for support only and while I'm one of the first to show people how to access it, I don't recommend it for long term / production use. The intent with the RCLI was that it would be a back door for support as you could not do everything with the RCLI or other tools. But in general long term access to the console is not gauranteed. Also, a mistake in the console could toast your install.

4) ESXi is not based on Linux and rsync is not available in the console.

So ESXi and VCB play well to do backups, and VCB can only be had by purchasing a VI3 Foundation license for $995. Is there anything else of value VI3 Foundation license comes with that still works with ESXi? Or would VI3 Foundation include the full-blown ESX that would let me use my BE 12.5 agents?

I'm just wary of spending a thousand dollars on a piece of software I can't call for support on (since my hardware is non-HCL). Lack of support for a free product is no big deal, but that changes once I start plunking down money.

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Dave_Mishchenko
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If your hardware will run ESXi then it will likely be fine as well on ESX. In both cases it is best to stick with the HCL for hardware, but both do run fine on whiteboxes.

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ericsl
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You said: Correct me if I'm wrong, but the primary issue is our current hardware isn't on the HCL. In order to run ESX I need HCL-listed hardware, otherwise I can forget about any kind of support. Hence the $20K-$30K cost to junk our existing hardware and get new stuff that's equivalent hardware-wise.

Ah, so there we are, you cost is primarily hardware related, not VMware software.

Eric

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Dave_Mishchenko
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When you purchase a VI Foundation / Standard or Enterprise license, you have the option to install either ESXi or ESX. The license allows for either.

The below PDF will let you know what you can run with each edition, but not that some features do require a VirtualCenter (or VC Foundation) license.

Licensed features - page 61 - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3i_i/r35/vi3_35_25_3i_i_setup.pdf

As noted above there are Intel MBs on the HCL so you may find that you can still get a supported system on your budget.

prisoner881
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If your hardware will run ESXi then it will likely be fine as well on ESX. In both cases it is best to stick with the HCL for hardware, but both do run fine on whiteboxes.

Yes, but what happens if I have to call VMWare for a support issue? Will they help at all? Or will it be the typical tech support angle of "we won't even talk to you because you're stuff isn't on the list"? I'm understandably gun shy about the latter as it's been an issue with other vendors in the past.

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prisoner881
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When you purchase a VI Foundation / Standard or Enterprise license, you have the option to install either ESXi or ESX. The license allows for either.

The below PDF will let you know what you can run with each edition, but not that some features do require a VirtualCenter (or VC Foundation) license.

Licensed features - page 61 -

As noted above there are Intel MBs on the HCL so you may find that you can still get a supported system on your budget.

Thanks for the info on the HCL, but I'm not interested in junking $600 in motherboards, $2,000 in RAM, and $3,000 in CPU's just to get Intel gear. These Opterons are screamers under VMWare Server 2.0. Equivalent Intel Xeon's would be twice the cost, and I'd have to buy FB-DIMM's which are a good deal more expensive than DDR2 right now.

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khughes
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Eric- I would venture to say that most companies do not buy white box hardware especially to run ESX in a production environment. Thats great that your company saved money on hardware by going that route but I know my company doesn't buy any hardware that is going into production w/o it being on the HCL of whatever it'll be running and has to have hardware support. Also even though that amount of cash needs to be spent to purchase ESX in your eyes isn't that much money, to other small companies, asking for any money is hard especially in the current market status. On a side job I have a hard time justifying a 500$ purchase...

Prisoner- After reading this thread for the past day and your concerns with the possible migration, if I was in your shoes I would put a hold on a move to ESXi. I'm not 100% sure if support will turn you away for not using HCL hardware, but my educated guess would be that they wouldn't. The HCL is mainly there to have a list of hardware that is tested and known compatiable with that version. If it installs and runs on your currect setup which it sounds like they're pretty beefy, vendor'd servers (ie: IBM/HP/Dell?) they should work. The majority of my support calls into VMware are software related and they never look at the hardware. If you ran into a situtation where they think there is a hardware issue with your host, then you might run into the whole HCL bag of worms.

Also waiting a few months will allow all the other vendors besides Veeam (even though you can't restore to an ESXi box) to develope a strong ESXi backup solution. I know that a lot of companies are getting close to announcing their support for ESXi in their upcoming releases. Symantec was at VMworld this year but I didn't pay too much attention to what they were offereing with 12.5 and their bulk backup solution, mainly because I'm completely happy with my current setup. I hope to see BackupExec put out a good product to backup VM's because its definatly the direction now, but I would trust the people out there that have been providing this type of solution for a couple years now over them.

Kyle

-- Kyle "RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "
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prisoner881
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After reading this thread for the past day and your concerns with the possible migration, if I was in your shoes I would put a hold on a move to ESXi.

Kyle

This is pretty much the conclusion I'm coming to as well. ESXi may be a perfectly viable setup for us in 6-12 months if vendor support steps up, and I fully expect it will. My main goal here was to make sure I wasn't missing some obvious solution to the backup/DR issue that I identified. I see now I'm far from alone my assessment of ESXi's limitations.

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s1xth
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I have also been watching/reading this thread for the past two days, and I am just wodering why no one has looked into Acronis's VM offerings? They have a product called True Image for Virtual Servers, basically its the same thing as the regular TIE, just has a different licensing structure. I have been using this for my VM's for the past 2 months since ESXi was made available with no issues, now granted its NOT REPLICATION, but in my environment and the servers I am running I can rely on a nightly backup of the servers. Most of my high-end production servers will always remain physical boxes, but the VM's that I do have (4 ESXi hosts on PE2950s w/ 32 total VM's) are all backed up this way. The VM's are mostly either file shares, programming development servers, print servers etc. They have always been this way, so replication for those are not critical. Now one day I do hope to replicate the running VM's offsite to our DR site but right now with budgets getting tight that will be pushed off.

I am sure someone will come out with a replication solution for the VM's, its only a matter of time. I am running Microsofts Data Protection Manager to replicate my important data shares off my VM's. In a disaster/hardware failure I can restore my nightly backup to a new VM, and copy the data from either a local replication or DR site location, (with universal restore i can even restore to a physical box if need-be). Again, I would love to have a replicated copy of the running server somewhere, but the cost of ESX + hardware + current economic times + bidget constraints = unable to JUSTIFY AT THIS TIME a move to ESX.

If I had the budget I would move to ESX, but my company is in the growing stages, and maybe once our markets turn around and things take off I can revisit all of that good stuff :-). Hopefully!

http://www.virtualizationimpact.com http://www.handsonvirtualization.com Twitter: @jfranconi
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ericsl
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Kyle,

You said: Eric- I would venture to say that most companies do not buy white box hardware especially to run ESX in a production environment. Thats great that your company saved money on hardware by going that route but I know my company doesn't buy any hardware that is going into production w/o it being on the HCL of whatever it'll be running and has to have hardware support. Also even though that amount of cash needs to be spent to purchase ESX in your eyes isn't that much money, to other small companies, asking for any money is hard especially in the current market status. On a side job I have a hard time justifying a 500$ purchase...

I say: "Most companies", probably large Enterprises, but I am sure many small companies run "white boxes". The Intel hardware and storage cards we use are on the HCL so I don't see what the issue would be there. And yes, I believe that is Foundation is relatively inexpensive for the value received, regardless of size of company. In prisoners case they sound like they have made a considerable investment in their hardware already so another $2000 for Foundation so they can run ESX and create a disaster recovery infrastructure should, in my opinion, not be an issue.

Eric

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devzero
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Just a couple of things to note:

4) ESXi is not based on Linux and rsync is not available in the console.

so, why does a statically compiled rsync linux binary run inside the ESXi console then ?

i just compiled it on another box and copied it over to the ESXi box - runs fine.

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