Backup & Recovery

Hello,

My current scenario is that,

I have 42 virtual servers in my environment and a VDR appliance. i took these vm's backup, scheduled on different times because VDR only takes 8 vm backup simultaneously. I have 5 backup volumes  in which 2 are 1.4 TB each and 2 are 850 GB and 1 is 550 GB volumes.

When i attached 2 volumes with VDR appliance as a local disk attached with VDR (i.e 1.4 TB volume), disks easily attached but when i attached the third disk i.e 850 GB volume VDR shows the following error "VDR only support two destination volume". I am very embarace how i attached the remaining volumes with VDR appliance.

Any help regarding this will be very appriciated.

Regards,

Mohsin

Hi

There are some limitations on VDR you should be aware of.

From the Admin Guide page 16

- Up to two deduplication stores per backup appliance.
- VMDK or RDM based deduplication stores of up to 1TB or CIFS based deduplication stores of up to 500GB
- Ten Data Recovery backup appliances for each vCenter Server instance.

Which means you can only have 2 disks for VDR and a maximum of 1TB each.

So you will have to create a second VDR appliance if your backups will go over the 2TB limit.

But start with one and see if you run out of space, you'd be amazed by the amount of deduplication VDR does :smileywink:

Please don't forget to award points for correct/helpful answers :smileycool:

so its means that i need three VDR appliances and the disk attached settings are,

VDR 1 = 1.4 TB volume and 550 GB volume

VDR 2 = 1.4 TB

VDR 3 = 850 GB and 850 GB volumes

am i right?

Regards,

Mohsin

Remember the recommendation is no deduplication store bigger than 1TB

So you would have to resize your backup volumes / VMDKs.

I would start with 2 VDR Appliances

VDR1 = 1TB and 1TB volume

VDR2 = 1TB and 1TB volume

Please award points for helpful/correct answers :smileywink:

ok,

is this limitation for VDR 1.2 version also.

Regards,

mohsin

Hi Moshin

Yes it is exactly the same

See http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vdr_12_admin.pdf page 16

Please award points for helpful/correct responses :smileywink:

Advice,

If you are running a production environment, and you want to have a restorable VMs, don't rely on VDR.

Thanks pieter,

I have already created 1.4 TB volume LUN in production environment, is there is any possibility to go with the same 1.4 TB volume.

Regards,

Mohsin

If using VDR you must also be careful that your backup datastore free space doesn't get below 10% free or if you get a message DISKFULL you might lose your complete datastore. start to get 2241 errors with no recoverable option but to reformat and start again. I have lost 11 datastores.

What is your ratio of VM's to backup to the size of the datastores.  I was using 520GB to a 380GB datastore. Which I was happy with because I only wanted 3 restore points / server. VDR doesn't worry about the retension policy until disk free is below a certain level. I think its about 10%-20%. Because my ratio of VM's to storage space is very high I hit the 2241 errors in about 30-45 days.  I dont trust VDR and I have moved to another product because of this problem.