Tape Backup Integration with VMware Data Recovery (VDR) - How to guide

[Peter_Grant]

Hi all,

This is just a FYI as I've had quite a few people ask me about it.

Here is an article about how to backup to tape using VDR. It's actually very simple, there's no rocket science here but it might be useful to have it outlined again.

Tape Backup Integration with VMware Data Recovery (VDR)

http://xtravirt.com/xd10131

Pete

[admin]

Thanks Peter, can you post the whitepaper here?

[Peter_Grant]

It's a free download on the Xtravirt site but I'll see if I'm able to post the article directly in here...

[korym · Accepted solution]

FWIW, I used your excellent whitepaper today, Peter, with great success in testing VDR against third-party apps. Discovered VDR is actually much faster and easy to work with, especially for backing up to NAS devices. Thx for the link!

[AlbertWT]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for writing the artile in backing up to the tape using Powershell.

However, how to restore a certain VM from the tape backup then ?

cmiiw Do i have to dump all of the tape content and then open that directory using the VDR appliance ?

Kind Regards,

AWT

[Peter_Grant]

Yes your exactly right. You need to restore the backup repository from tape first then I recommend running an integrity check..basically as detailed at the end of the doc. You cannot restore directly from tape, it must be done by the VDR appliance.

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Peter Grant

Virtualization Consultant

Xtravirt.com

Please award points if you found this helpful

[AlbertWT]

Great, thank you for the response sir !

Kind Regards,

AWT

[egr]

Hi,

a posting of this article in here would be nice.

Thanks in advance

regards

/egr

[Mobashar]

Hi Peter,

i have been managing vmware vspher enterprise plus 30 hosts with around 300 VMs since long time recently i have implemented vmware VDR,

actually i have all storage from HP XP24K.

implemented 5 VDR appliances to backup my critical servers for VDR i have MSA 1500 integrated at existing SAN switches and from a management station i have formated disk chunks on raid 5 now these chunks are appear at my hosts and added to vdr's backup/restore is running fine

is there any possible solution that i can backup MSA 1500 chunks to tape .

[GregMeathead]

Is this document valid for vDR 1.2?

Thanks

[habibalby]

Hello,

i have tested on 1.2 and it works fine, but i found vDR writing to VMDK Thick disk is faster espacially if this VMDK is presented via local ESX datastore.

I have tested backing up VMs to take using NFS and iSCSI LUNs. vDR VMDK sets on them and when i want to back, i backup the VMDK from NFS and iSCSI while vDR switched off and not running any activity.

Best Regards,

Hussain Al Sayed

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[v1n2]

Is it still necessary (with VDR 1.2) to shut down the VDR appliance, while transfering the data to tape..?

[habibalby]

It's better, even if there is no activity running. Always safe to shutdown and backup your files

Best Regards,

Hussain Al Sayed

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[zibius]

That is what I was looking for, thanks

[slmpptc]

Pete,

Can you please post a copy of your document in this thread?

Thanks,

Sean

[kdon]

You can also throw the CLI commands into task scheduler within windows, without having to batch the files. Just straght CLI to power down, and power back up even. The tricky part is the schedule's of the integrity checks and backups running. Thus far this has been an extremely manual process for my colleagues and myself.

[methasamid]

sir

i havw one esxi server  i want make backup copy server any time one host server crash that time other server auto on what i do what proceese this