We are users of EMC Networker, and have been for years.
With ESXi, until now, we use the client based backup approach (what EMC calls "Guest based").
Looking at the new features of recent versions of Networker, we also came to the NetWorker VMware Protection. As implementing NetWorker VMware Protection would mean a lot of investing (at least SW licences, but probably also data domain HW), we also came across the technically related VMWare vSphere Data Protection product, and were happy to learn that VMware recently changed its philosophy to make it a freely available product:
VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced is now part of VMware vSphere
Starting March 1, 2015, VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced will be consolidated into VMware vSphere Data Protection (available through vSphere Essentials Plus Kit or higher vSphere editions, all vSphere with Operations Management editions and all vCloud Suite editions) and will no longer require purchase of a separate license. All functionality available with vSphere Data Protection Advanced, previously available as a standalone product, is now included in VMware vSphere Data Protection 6.0.
It even has become Open Source, if I look at it correctly.
Now I did a test installation, and quickly learned some of its limitations, e.g.
- FLR (file level restore) has limitations, and can only be launched with a Flash based interface
- The FLR interface appears to be very sluggish
Doing test restores on Windows and Linux, I was disappointed to find out that the FLR will
- not ask before overwriting an existing file
and will
- not preserve the last modification time of the backed up file
Is VDP really so limited, that it cannot preserve the file modification time when doing a FLR?
Does anybody know if this would also be a limitation of NetWorker VMware Protection? AFAIK, both products base on the same AVAMAR technologies.
Thanks for sharing your experiences or opinions.
Thomas
