VCB / VDR / Netbackup / Netapp

[CSTyson20111014]

I'm confused over which product I should be using for backup / restore within our environment. Out requirement is to be able to restore a single whole VM (not individual files from within a VM)

We have :

ESXi 4.1 Advanced

Netbackup Enterprise 6.5

NetApp SAN ( With the NetApp Virtual Storage Console snapin for vSphere )

The datastores reside as LUNS's on the SAN, connected via iSCSI.

Netbackup is currently backing up the whole datastore LUN via NDMP and would require the whole LUN restoring to a temporary location if we needed to restore a single VM from that datastore.

The NetApp Virtual Storage Console uses NetApp snapshots for backups and allows single VM/file restores but only appears to be for short term backups.

Netbackup requires the "VCB framework" installing, but it appears VM Ware is dropping VCB in favour of VDR and it also requires agents on each vm, however we've been told no agents should be required within a NetApp environment.

Any pointers / suggestions appreciated.

Regards

Chris

[vmroyale]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

Netbackup requires the "VCB framework" installing, but it appears VM  Ware is dropping VCB in favour of VDR and it also requires agents on  each vm, however we've been told no agents should be required within a  NetApp environment.

NetBackup 6.5.x will require the VCB framework to be installed to get image-level backups of entire VMs.  VCB is end of life, but it is still currently supported on vSphere 4.1.  It will not be supported beyond vSphere 4.1, as detailed in kb 1026945.  Bottom line, you can continue to use NetBackup 6.5.x with VCB 1.5 U2 without issue, until you need to move beyond vSphere 4.1.

VCB is being dropped in favor of the VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection, which VDR uses.  VDR does not require agents on each VM.  NetBackup 7 also uses the VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection and would allow you to leave VCB behind.  Moving to NetBackup 7, VDR or anything that uses the VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection would be the absolute best long-term strategy to use here.  This would cover you now and into the next release of vSphere.

Good Luck!

[sugadada]

PHD Virtual has backup solutions for ESXi. They have free trials available  here: http://www.phdvirtual.com/phd-vb-51-vmware-vsphere

[AndreTheGiant]

Check if you have the upgrade to NetBackup 7.x that fully support new VMware API.

Andre