SAN-Level Backups

[TimothyGaray]

I am beginning to feel that our current virtual machine backup strategy (software unnamed) is just no longer good enough for our needs.  With 65 hosts and 780 VMs accross multiple locations, the simple vAPI program that makes snapshots then creates savepoints then some other app which takes those savepoint files and dumps them to tape is just not very enterprise-friendly.

We keep running into issues with VMs getting missed, VMs with independent disks are always giving us trouble and now we are deploying VMs with RDMs (Microsoft Clusters) which cannot be snapshot inside of VMware.

From what I've seen, now we should be growing into leveraging our SAN hardware for backups.  So, I replicate a VMFS datastore - now what do I do with it?  Sure, I can manually mount it to another ESX host and do something from there to back it up.

I'm trying to figure out what the "next step" is for automating the backup process.  Do I need to go to the SAN vendor or is there something from VMware that can automate this process of taking a replicated VMFS datastore and getting it to tape or at least some disk files that can then be picked up and sent to tape?

Right now, my focus is to be able to recover a virtual machine in the event of some failure.  I'm not looking for database data or anything like that.

Our SAN storage is a mixture of different HP products.  Does anyone have any experience with using the HP Data Protector software?  Does this effectively handle the storage-side and the VMware side?

Thanks for any ideas or comments.

-Tim

[habibalby]

Hello Tim,

I'm in the process of replacing Symantec Exec with Veeam B&R. With Symantec, I used to run the backup using file selection from VMs, Exchange, SQL, Oracle, File Servers etc etc... This takes ages for the windows job to finish and it doesn't provide me sort of faster RTO. With Veeam the backup windows has shrink and RTO increased.

My backup is initiated from DR SIte. I replicate all my VMs, Weekly Full and for 5 Days incremental to the DR Site. Once they are there successfully replicated using VSS, I backup them up at the DR Site using another Veeam Server. The Veeam Server at the DR Site has a LUN Target that accessible by the Backup Server and Veeam Server, Backups directly to the tape from the Backup Server where the VMs saved at DR Site.

This gives me an additional protection and increasing the RPO as RTO, replication will allow me to immediate power on of the VM at the DR Site, if data or files needed from longer period that 6 days, I bring them from Tapes, load them to Veeam Server, import the backup and Run the VM.

I used  HP Data Protector 6.0, which doesn't have VM Backup Module. I used it to backup files, DBs, exchange, etc..

If you want to treat your VMs the same way as physical servers, it means you want to run Backup Software to backup files from VMs and in the same time SnapShot Backup Software, then the best idea is to have Monthly Snapshot Backup on VMs to have latest configuration fo the VMs and daily,weekly, monthly backup using the filesystem backup software.

This will give you both options of restoration. You can do a LAN-Free Backup with DataProtector by having it on a seprate network domain, only one vmnic outbound to the Server for external connectivity, but inside of the VMs, have a private portgroup for Backup only. It means each of your VM will have two vNICs one for production connectivity and one for Backup connectivity to reach the Backup Server.

Hope it helps,

Cheers

[TimothyGaray]

Veeam B&R is one I just downloaded this morning to see if it is any better than the unnamed one we are currently using.

So that I understand what you are doing now, you use Veeam to replicate your quiesced (via VSS) VMs to your disaster site?  From there you back them up using the Veeam software?

I hadn't considered sharing the LUN between the VM backup software and the tape backup software.  What operating system are you using on both servers that share the LUN?  I tried that approach once when migrating from an old backup server to a new one.  One had Windows Server 2003 and the other was Windows Server 2008 R2.  They were constantly corrupting the file systems requiring check disk to be run.  I assumed it was because of the two different OSes not playing well together.

Right now, the only VMs that we have a backup agent installed on are file servers and database replication servers.  Those are also the same virtual machines that have the independent disks since we don't need to snapshot those data disks because they are being backed up (file-level) via the tape backup software.

We are also looking at using VMware's SRM for our DR project.  We've considered as part of that to do the backups at the DR site from the replicated LUNs.

We are having trouble with the length of time required to backup the VMs on top of the length of time required to transfer those backups to tape.  Then, we have a large number of VMs that cannot be backed up by our current VM backup software.  This is part of why we were looking into leveraging the SAN replication options.

-Tim

[habibalby]

Timothy Garay wrote:

So that I understand what you are doing now, you use Veeam to replicate your quiesced (via VSS) VMs to your disaster site?  From there you back them up using the Veeam software?

Yes, that's what I'm doing.

Timothy Garay wrote:

I hadn't considered sharing the LUN between the VM backup software and the tape backup software.  What operating system are you using on both servers that share the LUN?  I tried that approach once when migrating from an old backup server to a new one.  One had Windows Server 2003 and the other was Windows Server 2008 R2.  They were constantly corrupting the file systems requiring check disk to be run.  I assumed it was because of the two different OSes not playing well together.

I'm using Windows 2008 for both, Veeam Machine and the Physical backup Server. I share the LUN between them by adding iSCSI Initiator on both Machines, When the VMs being backed up, LUN mounted to the Veeam Machine and dismounted when it's used by the Backup Server, so the backup server can backup the VBK and VIB files of veeam to the tape.

Timothy Garay wrote:

We are having trouble with the length of time required to backup the VMs on top of the length of time required to transfer those backups to tape.  Then, we have a large number of VMs that cannot be backed up by our current VM backup software.  This is part of why we were looking into leveraging the SAN replication options.

-Tim

Then look for CDP by FalcoStor.com they have very good product can help you to get rid of the dilemma. With Falconstor solution, you can leverage by your existing hardware such SAN Storage..

http://www.falconstor.com/dmdocuments/BeijingCancerHospital_CDP_FS.pdf

http://www.falconstor.com/products/continuous-data-protector

http://www.falconstor.com/products/network-storage-server

Regards,

Hussain