Backup to where?!

[Useless1]

Hi,

I am in a bit of a dilemma at the moment...

Currently we have a small VMware cluster which is linked into our SAN. We are then using esXpress to backup via FTP to a physical server which has a LUN from the same SAN allocated to it, and a tape drive. We then use Backup Exec to back this SAN LUN up to tape.

We have other new sites (VMware cluster with single SAN) that are currently just backing up using esXpress to a VMFS datastore which is again hosted on the same SAN as the VMware kit.

I am wondering how or if others are doing this, (Or is there a backup server with a large amount of DAS instead etc)... and if so, how is this working out for them in case of a site disaster...

We are interested in DR as well as speed of recoverability and have been looking at removing esXpress and using NetBackup and Puredisk instead. We would then at each site have a NetBackup server performing the backup and Puredisk would then replicate the backup after dedupe to another site. The obvious benefits of this, is that backups are made and store both locally and offsite.

This is an expensive solution however, and it has limitations as well as positives.. (Such as still potentially backing up the same SAN as the original data). so I was wondering if anyone had 2 SAN's at their sites, or do people think I am being overkill with this approach. The issue I have here is that our existing SAN was not cheap so I could not have another exact same model (HP). I was thinking of buying a cheaper Equallogic or NetApp with SATA disks. So essentially in each site I would have a Tier 1 SAN for production, and a Tier 2 SAN for backup/archival.

The advantage of this would be that if the Tier 1 SAN were to fail or need an outage (Firmware etc), there would be another SAN locally available for running any VM's which need to run locally. Also the backups would be away from the Tier 1 production SAN, so an outage of Tier 1 would not mean local loss of access to backups.. I would then utilise the replicational features in the Equallogic or NetApp, to replicate this to another site so that if the whole site were destroyed, another site could restore the VM's... This would also allow us to have single tape location to archive all site data off to tape (Using the signicantly cheaper Backup Exec) at regular intervals...

Do people think I am overthinking/overspending/overworking this?

[akops]

Hello,

I had the same dilemma as you where i work, when we bought our first SAN 6 months ago. We used to take backups using our backup server local disks, but after the new SAN this was not possibly as our need in space growed.

So we decided to use of course the new SAN for production, and for backups to convert the previous production storarge (dell server with a MD1000 DAS and sata disks) το NAS by installing a free linux nas software (openfiler).

With this setup if our main SAN goes dead, it is possible in an acceptable amount of time, to go online again with the openfiler storage( of course with lower performance).

Also by using cheap hardware(PC with SATA disks), with have setup another one openfiler NAS located in a different building in our campus, and in weekly basis we replicate the most important backups.

[malaysiavm]

you can sonsider disk to disk to tape

disk to tape directly

or disk to VTL to tape

Craig

vExpert 2009 & 2010

Malaysia VMware Communities -

[habibalby]

Hello,

I think the Backup dilemma is eveywhere in the IT field.

What I'm currently doing for my development datacenter with vDR. Two VMDK attached as a Backup destination from two source. One is iSCSI which is hosted on StarWind and the other VMDK from NFS hosted on Windows 2003 Server.

I backup those VMDK via hp Data Protector Agent installed on both servers NFS and StarWinds, I shutdown the vDR and start backing up the both VMDK for off-site Tape Backup.

For our production, I'm currently evaluating FalconStor "FDS, CDP and VTL" those products can backup both Physical and Virtual. The Physical can be restored as a VM, file level restoration and can backup VMs. FalconStor, is doing the replication for you so no need for VMWare SRM, but at the DR you have to resignature your LUNs. Or otherwise, use VMWare SRM along with FalconStor or if your SAN Storage can replicate you can use it's method along with SRM.

Best Regards,

Hussain Al Sayed

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[JroscoPHD]

Hi,

There are quite a few storage options you can use for esXpress backups.

Two devices we use in house are

Their NAS device.. if Unix then use NFS and if Windows use as SMB

They provide off site backups

Create you own solution with openfiler and storage.. recommendation is to use hardware Raid and not software. More disk the better.

Examples - If your requirement is 2TB. Don't buy a single drive..

Buy a configuration of 3 x 1TB drives or even better 5 x 500G Drives in an array

RPM speed is also important…

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of PHD Virtual Backup for VMware, formerly esXpress