Is anyone backing up Writable Vols ?

[dgrinnell]

Does anyone backup writable vols?

If so how are you doing it ? Does it require the users to log off and have the writable disconnected?

have you had to restore the writable ?

Thanks

[Lakshman]

This blog might be helpful to you.

VMware App Volumes Backup Utility Fling: Instructions | VMware End-User Computing Blog

[dgrinnell]

Hey Lakshman,

I just set that utility up today and did go through that article and app stacks work pretty good, but writables seem to be a bit more challenging. Since it looks like you need to have the writable detached w/ the user logged off to back up, and if they logged in maybe stayed logged in from the day before let say during a nightly backup the backup wouldnt be able to backup that attached disk to the backup vm.

Are you currently using this?  Have you encountered an issue w/ having users logged in and not being able to back up the writeable?

thanks

[Ray_handels]

Yes we are and I have mentioned this in a few posts so I won't be going into all the details.

We now have a Server 2012 machine with an NFS client that attaches both NFS storages (you can off course do this with 1 storage as well) and copy the files from storage A to storage B using a powershell script. his script does all kinds of funky stuff like checking if the writable changed and otherwise doesn't copy it.

If you need to restore the writable it's a s simple as copying the file from storage A to storage B in it's original location and your good to go.

[dgrinnell]

Hey Ray,

That sounds awesome! Do you know if you guys detach the Writables during the backup process to the other site? Are you using NFS as you datastores and you just mount it on the 2012 server as well, and thats how your can setup the Site A and Site B sync?

Thanks !!

[Ray_handels]

Nope, we do not log off people before backup starts, it could off course be an option but for now users need to log off themselves to get a backup.

We run backups only during the weekend because looking at it from a physical point of view you do a full backup of their machine every weekend. Every day would take to long to backup. If you are able to get that much info from server to server it would be possible to do it more often. We do write in a log file if a writable was in use or wasn't in use.

Are you using NFS as you datastores and you just mount it on the 2012 server as well, and thats how your can setup the Site A and Site B sync?

Yes and yes .

You do need to have NFS storage off course, otherwise it won't work. And the NFS client on windows is not the best solution you will ever find but at least it does do the job.

[dgrinnell]

Ah interesting, ok so you have users log off prior to the weekend backup. I like that option, then your not telling users to log off daily just one Friday's potentially and you have a log that verifies if the writable waa detached or not. Yeah were using fiber shared storage and im starting to mess w/ the App Vol backup utility fling and we use EVault so i need to test all of that, but im thinking i mount the App Vol Writables to the Backup VM on Friday and then have users log off and then we run a backup lets say Friday night or early Saturday morning.

One hitch is the mounting the disk w/ the utility is a manual process, so we could keep them mounted to the backup vm, but any new writable vols need to be mounted to that vm and all writables need to be detached before backup.

Thanks for all the information.

Does anyone automate the backup utility disk mount to the backup VM upon app vol creation?

[Ray_handels]

To be honest I don't think the fling will do the job quite well. For me this is just an in between solution and it's just not what you need.

It seems to be more like, okay here's an option for you to backup writables...

We have over 2000 writables how would we ever do that. Even the reconfigure per machine for 2000 writable and initialization will take a large amount.

Basically you can open up 2 datastores on VSphere and just select your production writables on one and copy them to another datastore, it's that simple. It only takes quite a while . It will copy the file fully (so the entire 20GB will cross the line) but it will be saves Thin provisioned so you don't use to many space.

[dgrinnell]

Yeah i agree, i  think the app vol utility is nice, but if i want to schedule this process w/ automation thats not going to work at the momment.

So if i had a AVM datastore where is stored my app vols writables, i could clone the disks to another location being another datastore.

Do you guys use storage groups for you app vols?

thanks !

[Ray_handels]

If your storage supports that then yes. But mostly storage only supports VM's, not VMDK's.

Even copying something as easy as a folder on a datastore is quite complicated. Do keep in mind that if you copy the disk it could bloat it. We tried backup up with VEEAM (it does support VMDK backup) but it bloats all disks up to 20GB on storage. Most of our users use a max of 2 to 3 GB so this is not feasible storage wise.

Do you guys use storage groups for you app vols?

Yes, but only to sync appstacks from 1 storage to another. So all VDI machines have a "local storage" for their appstacks.

[dgrinnell]

OK yeah interesting, i think what im going to start looking into is powercli copy VMDK to a backup Datastore and test and then test restoring of the copied vmdk for writables and app stacks.

For the storage pools do you have multiple vCenters in your app vol manager under machine manager and thats how your pulling datastores from both sites?

thanks

[Ray_handels]

For the storage pools do you have multiple vCenters in your app vol manager under machine manager and thats how your pulling datastores from both sites?

Nope, we've got one vCenter that has 2 datastores attached. They are physically apart from each other but in the same virtual network segment.

I believe 6.5 does support something called copy VMDK as a PowerCLI but I believe that it doesn't work 100% correctly. Hoping that the new vSphere version does support something like this.

[danielmgrinnell]

OK cool, yeah that makes sense. I am considering creating a storage group w/ a cluster for my production environment.

I am working on some powercli now to test out "cloning" / "backing up" the writables and app stacks. The challenge being of course the the writable VMDK is locked while attached, but as of now i am

working with the copy-hardisk  ..

Biggest Drawback of the app vol backup utility (which is great btw) is that it really facilitates a on demand backup .. so i cant just automate a "app vol" attachment lets say nightly or weekly and then have my backup utility look for that backup vm and back it up, which i suppose i could just keep the Backup VM around and the Writables mounted, but from what i read in the instructions it sounds like this is a "create backup vm / mount app vols W or A and then backup and then unmount / delete backup vm", but im still working through the best options and am starting to write up some powercli for this.

Here is a quick example of what i am working on to tie this together

$hdd = Get-Datastore AVW_Datastore-0* | Get-HardDisk | where {$_.filename -eq "[AVW_Datastore-0*] cloudvolumes/writable/domain!5C!username.vmdk"}

copy-harddisk -HardDisk $hdd -DestinationPath "[BOS-AVW-BACKUPS]"

But i am getting the locked error :

copy-harddisk : 11/29/2017 7:56:13 AM    Copy-HardDisk        The operation for the entity "BOS-AVW-BACKUPS" failed with the following message: "Unable to access file

[AVW_Datastore-0*] cloudvolumes/writable/domain!5C!username.vmdk since it is locked"

Next i am going to validate the process w/ a detached writable and app stack, which im assuming will just copy and if that's the case i can setup a schedule for this.

Thanks