VDP Backup for ESXI

[Skumar704]

Hi,

I am running two node cluster of esxi.Running around 10 vm in total with capacity ranging from 300GB to 750 GB.

Got a NAS box and thinking of attaching the backing up the vm on this storage.Can provision it as NFS or CIFS only.

Few questions;

1.Would like know does mean by the limit of .5TB,1TB or 2TB in VDP appliances?

2.Does .5TB is limit for CIFS,1TB for NFS and 2TB on VMFS store?Does this means destination store where I going to keep backup of VM?

3.As size of total VM/s in my case is around 3TB to 4TB does that mean I can't backup all my vm with one appliance or matter of fact with  2 appliance?

4. FAQ says one appliance per ESXI that means I have limit of 2 appliances in 2 host cluster?

Breg,

Sushil

[snekkalapudi]

Yes It is the destination storage capacity on which your backups are DE-DUPED and stored. VDP offers a ro-bust de-dupe technology. I have 1.5 TB of non-deduped data just occupying 300 GB on VDP destination. Of-course it depends on your data.

Considering your scenario, you have 3 TB to 4TB of data in VMs and I would still say a single 2TB appliance would do the job for you. You'll experience the magic of de-dupe here. At any time if you are running short of space on destination, you can always remove some older backups. Otherwise choose 2 appliances and spread your backups.

Hope this helps.

[bayupw]

Hi Sushil

1.Would like know does mean by the limit of .5TB,1TB or 2TB in VDP appliances?

As per FAQ: VMware KB: vSphere Data Protection (VDP) FAQ

.5TB, 1TB, and 2TB its the preconfigured VDP appliance on VDP 5.1.

In VDP 5.5, it only comes in one size so you do not need to choose which VDP size should you use.

Which version of vCenter & VDP are you planning to use?

2.Does .5TB is limit for CIFS,1TB for NFS and 2TB on VMFS store?Does this means destination store where I going to keep backup of VM?

No. Yes this is the destination datastore size as per KB/FAQ.

3.As size of total VM/s in my case is around 3TB to 4TB does that mean I can't backup all my vm with one appliance or matter of fact with  2 appliance?

Agree with sneakkalapudi, a single 2TB should be good for you.

2TB is the destination datastore after deduplicated.

There is a sample sizing guide in the VDP admin guide: Administration Guide

Below is the screenshot FYR.

[Skumar704]

Hi,

Thanks for your response.

Planning for vcenter 5.5.0 and VDP 5.5.5 appliance.

I gone through the admin guide and getting some clarity on it.Like i need to provision 3.02TB as dedupe store for 2TB appliance.

Few more doubts I am having;

1. While installing OVA where should I need to install it? Does it the destination dedupe store say 3.02TB as above and it can be any small LUN other than dedupe store.

2. In case if it is other than de-dupe store how will this is going to be added to ova appliance.

3. As NAS box for dedupe going to be present on production network and will be accessible via production  network only.Does it make any performance issue?

4. 1.5 TB data occupying only 300GB.Amazing.We would be running the mix of 2008R2 and 2012R2 and one 2003 server.Some data is file based.Some vm holds erp data.How does this work in case of a vm machine provisioned with 150 GB of total size and having a OS running having a partition of 80 GB and remaining D as 70 GB.Does it going to occupy the same space of 80+70=150GB or just C partition = 80 GB or just installed OS size say 40 GB or something else.If another machine having same OS,how does that going to make impact on storage being used.

I was reading the VDR as well and found CIFS was used.Does that means as NFS share or some other method to assign CIFS share for VDP purpose.

Breg,

Sushil

[snekkalapudi · Accepted solution]

1. While installing OVA where should I need to install it? Does it the destination dedupe store say 3.02TB as above and it can be any small LUN other than dedupe store.

It should be deployed within the vCenter (The vCenter in which the VMs to be protected exist). You can always start with Thin provisioning if you do not have 3.02 TB of space.

Refer this blog article for quick deployment & configuration - http://onevirtual.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/vdpvsphere-data-protection-5-5-deploy-configure-quick-sta...

2. In case if it is other than de-dupe store how will this is going to be added to ova appliance.

You have an option to choose multiple datastores while configuration - The above article should cover that information too.

3. As NAS box for dedupe going to be present on production network and will be accessible via production  network only.Does it make any performance issue?

Check if you can take advantage of hot-add  instead of backup over network.

[Skumar704]

Hi,

Thanks for your answer.

Looks good to me now.

One quick question do you suggest if I keep my VDP appliance on shared storage,if one host failure i always have the option to use this as HA.

Reg,

Sushil