Using more than one VMWare Backup Recovery

[morpheus4711]

Hi all,

i am sitting here und think about following idea:

we have 10 Servers which have to be backuped. We are using VDR (VM Backup Recovery) for this . So it happens sometimes that the catalog is crashing and it needs neerly a day to repair this. while this time i can´t backup or recovery anything.

These backups are on the same SAN as my ESX maschines. So i have the big problem if everything is crashing (raid or more than 1 HDD) i have no chance to recover anything.

yes, i know this is not 100% optimal. by the way...we have no money to buy a second SAN!

the idea was to develope another VDR and connect it to a Terastation. The Speed is absolutly secundary. This VDR would backup the same machines like the first VDR.(not at the same time, for example SQL Server is backuped on VDR1 at 6:00 am, and on VDR2 on 9:00 am)

The big plus would be:

- if VDR 1 catalog is crashing, VDR2 is working and i can repair VDR1 without missing backups or recoveryoptions

- if my SAN ist crashing i can use my Terastation to repair everything (Speed is secundary)

What do you think about this idea?

bye

andy

[AntonVZhbankov]

Looks like in your case VDR is not a solution at all. Try 3rd party commercial solution - backup is not the thing you should save on.

Personally I recommend Veeam Backup, but take also a look at esXpress and vRanger.

---

MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[morpheus4711]

Hi Anton,

sure, 3rd Party Software could be a solution, but i think my idea is quiet a cool idea too to solve 2 problems at all. and doesn´t cost any bucks

what is your opinion about a solution with to VDR?

bye

Andy

[Paul11 · Accepted solution]

You can define 2 different Backup-locations in one appliance. So you can backup on monday to the first location and on tuesday to the second and so on. When an integrity check is running more than 24 hours, you have the second datastore-location for restore operations on the same appliance. If you have enough backup-time, you can also backup every VM twice on one day to two locations at different times. In the event of a desaster you will be lucky and maybe only lose one data-store location and have all your backups without waitiing for the completion of the integrity check or something else like a recatalog. Until now this is working very well in my environment with 5 appliances and 180 VM's. I don't use more than 30 VM's for one appliance, because than the integrity check is running to long.

[morpheus4711]

Hi Paul1,

if i understood your post it is nearly like my solution. And you are absolutly right.

The difference is that you are using only one VDR-Appliance and i am using two. My cause for using two is simple: in the past i did it same like you, one VDR and backing up to different stores (one vmdk and one NAS). But if the integrity-check is not going on or the catalog is damaged i have no access to the backups.

if i am right, one VDR is using one catalog for x datastores. So this was the problem at myVDR.

[Paul11]

I'm not sure if you are right. In my opinion every datastore has it's own catalog, but the appliance merges these catalogs in the Restore view. I prefere to see all my backups in one view, that's why I'm using only one appliance with two datastores. Maybe an expert can answer this question about the catalog.

[morpheus4711]

Thats an good idea to use one to view all backups in one view.

Maybe an expert can write down his opinion to these solutions. About problems and so on.