Local disk? On Host being backed-up, Host hosting VDR, or any datastore managed by VCenter?

[nbourass]

In January I will be installing 3 proliants DL380G7 running ESXi 4.1 Essential Plus. We do not have a SAN. We would like to use data recovery to backup Host#1 onto Host#2 (which would run VDR and VCenter) and restore to Host#3 for DR purposes. Host#2 would also run our tape backup jobs.

Does this scenario sound plausible? Could select to backup directly from Host#1 to a datastore located on Host#3 using VDR?

Thanks

[DSTAVERT]

If you don't have lots of virtual machines to host I would fill one server with storage and share it with the other 2. You can get the HP Lefthand storage software appliance to do the share. You will need some form of storage that can be seen by multiple hosts for the vDR appliance.

You can't backup from one host to the other directly without shared storage.

[nbourass]

You are probably refering to the HP P4000 virtual SAN? I did take a look at it but I didn't want to spend ±5,000$ CND for this two license package. I would prefer to invest more money down the road but on a physical SAN instead.

In the mean time I thought that I could do it as discribed previously. Since the VDR will be running as an appliance on Host#2 it will be able to use a datastore on that host as a backup destination won't it? All three ESXi hosts will have 8 x 600Gb SAS drives RAID5.

[admin]

You can have more than one instance of VDR you know - so you could have 1 to 2, 2 to 3 and 3 to 1, or send all to a windows box with loads of disk then to tape, Acronis is a sweet product for this - and no I don't work for them.....the VSA will backup straight to tape - AWSOME and cheap - remember this is a business continuity option not DR - so ask the boss how important is the data to the business if lost if more than the cost of licences, its a winner  and can be used when you go to SAN NAS Solution next budget year.

[DSTAVERT]

There is no notion of a SHARE in ESX(i) like there is in Windows or Linux.

vDR needs to see the destination storage. Unless you use something to expose the storage to the other hosts you will not be able to use the vDR appliance to use an alternate host as storage. You can add an NFS or iSCSI appliance to one or more hosts share with the other hosts. FreeNAS, Openfiler, Open-E, etc will work.

[nbourass]

Two things.

I beleive that you can add a disk drive to VDR as anyother VM. Make it the size you need and use it as a backup destination!

[DSTAVERT]

All the advantages of vCenter and vDR, HA, vMotion are lost without shared storage. Shared storage can be as simple as a DL180/185 full of drives and a Linux install to provide an NFS server. Down the road after you have added a SAN you have a backup destination. Leave the drives out of the ESXi hosts entirely. Get the embedded version of ESXi from HP or add the internal SD card for ESXi and install there.

[DSTAVERT]

nbourass wrote:

Two things.

I beleive that you can add a disk drive to VDR as anyother VM. Make it the size you need and use it as a backup destination!

But unless the disk is visible on the host with the vDR appliance it can't be used. Again it is possible if you use an NFS or iSCSI virtual appliance on a host other than the one hosting the vDR appliance.

[nbourass]

Thanks. I will look at acronis.

Back to my scenario. Since Host#2 runs both VBR and VCenter it can see both Host#1 & Host#3. Why would you need to run another instance of VBR to accomplish what I described?

[DSTAVERT]

The storage is local and is not visible on the opposite host. You could do what you want but you would need to do a virtual appliance to share to the opposite host on both host one and two or three??. You would also need to run 2 vDR appliances one on each host.

[DSTAVERT]

Back to my scenario. Since Host#2 runs both VBR and VCenter it can see both Host#1 & Host#3. Why would you need to run another instance of VBR to accomplish what I described?

Remember there is no notion of a Windows or Linux SHARE.

[nbourass]

You are 100% correct about the advantages of shared storage such as a SAN and I know that I will not be able to exploit options such as VMotion but shared storage does not solve my need for redundancy. If the shared storage is destroyed then you're dead. I will go to a SAN possibly in 2012 but until then I would like to get this to work with local datastores. Notice that my scenario offers redundancy.

[DSTAVERT · Accepted solution]

Unless you add 2 SANs you won't have redundancy either. Like I said you can do what you want to do but you will need to do shared storage to have a datastore visible on the other hosts. You can do this with virtual appliances or physical shareable storage iSCSI or NFS. If you do virtual appliances you will need to have one on each host that has virtual machines you want to protect. The VM will present the storage to the local host and to the other hosts. You will need a vDR appliance on each host with VMs you want to protect. You will also need to have enough storage local storage available to restore those VMs in the event you have a problem.

[DSTAVERT]

In your scenario unless the storage on the third host was visible to the other two you would not have a recovery destination on that host for the vDR.

[DSTAVERT]

I forget about Windows shares as a vDR destination since I don't use them but you can create a Windows VM and create a share. Create your Windows VM on the third host and you can use that as a destination. Or an NFS or iSCSI VM on the third host as a destination.

[nbourass]

I must be missing something here. I don't have the data recovery appliance to test with so there are notions that I can only imagine.

I've looked at videos and did some reading and form what I understand the VDR appliance uses VCenter to discover the ESXi hosts to backup.

If both the VDR and VCenter are on the sane Host#2 then that means that because of VCenter the data recovery appliance will see (discover) all 3 ESXi hosts.

Now, a local storage is added to the data recovery appliance and it will become the backup destination for Host#1 and Host#3.

We don't care about Host#2, it will never be backed up.

Unless you tell me that you cannot restore a backup other than to the host from which it came from then I don't see why you can't restore the backup from host#1 to host#3. It's not the hosts that need to see the storage it's the VDR and it should.  It's its own storage! No?

[DSTAVERT]

nbourass wrote:

I must be missing something here. I don't have the data recovery appliance to test with so there are notions that I can only imagine.

I've looked at videos and did some reading and form what I understand the VDR appliance uses VCenter to discover the ESXi hosts to backup.

If both the VDR and VCenter are on the sane Host#2 then that means that because of VCenter the data recovery appliance will see (discover) all 3 ESXi hosts.

Now, a local storage is added to the data recovery appliance and it will become the backup destination for Host#1 and Host#3.

We don't care about Host#2, it will never be backed up.

Unless you tell me that you cannot restore a backup other than to the host from which it came from then I don't see why you can't restore the backup from host#1 to host#3. It's not the hosts that need to see the storage it's the VDR and it should.  It's its own storage! No?

Yes you are missing something. Just because something is visible on the network doesn't mean the storage is available on the opposite host. The datastore is just a container for the virtual disk images. Those containers are not shared across the network Unless there is some mechanism like NFS, iSCSI or a Windows share you will not see a storage destination on another host.

Most videos etc. will assume shared storage. If I use local storage for the vDR appliance and it's backup virtual disk I will only be able to restore it to local unless there is shared storage that is visible to the vDR appliance and the destination host.

[DSTAVERT]

Unless you tell me that you cannot restore a backup other than to the host from which it came from then I don't see why you can't restore the backup from host#1 to host#3. It's not the hosts that need to see the storage it's the VDR and it should.  It's its own storage! No?

You are thinking Windows network shares and it doesn't exist in ESX(i).

[DSTAVERT]

Before you even order your HP machines I would get a copy of VMware Workstation. If you have a Desktop available with 8GB or better yet more. You can install ESX(i) as virtual guests and start to understand ESXi and how storage works. Unfortunately the vDR appliance is 64bit and can't be installed inside the virtual ESXi host. If you have enough RAM you can set up a reasonable test environment.

[nbourass]

If I understand you correctly, if using local storage only, then there's no point of installing VDR on a Host other than the own you wish to backup?