VDP vs VDR

[brunomm]

Hi everybody,

i couldnt help myself starting this conversation.

i was very suprised for VDR being shutdown.

i knew VDR would be updated, but was not expectng so soon, since the latest 2.01 was released not so long ago.

i found out VDP was out when updating to vsphere 5.1 and there was no VDR plugin to vcenter.

Anyway i am really dissapointed in VDP, to say the least!

First it depends on SSO and the vmware web client. i couldnt believe: i had to use the slowest gui i have ever used, (not as slow as backup exec 2012 thought!) so much more complicated.

second, you cannot choose the partitions to backup! This is unbelievable! the use i gave VDR was to backup the boot partitions of windows vms!

the other partitions usually have data, that are daily backed up to tape.

so at this time with VDP i have to backup a vm with 700GB in disks, when with vdr i only backup up C: partition with 50GB! hilarious

third, i am obliged to choose between aplliances, that cannot be expanded. In VDR you could mount a partition with any size, anytime!

now i must choose the 2TB VPD appliance because i didnt want to risk not having enough storage in the future, and didnt want to bother having to install more VDP appliances ( they come configured with 4 CPU!)

fourth, it is way harder, not to say impossible, dont know for sure, to reuse a damaged VDP disks, to recover all previous backups.

in VDR all you need was to keep the data partition intact, run a new vdr appliance, mount the data partition from the previous VDR, check integrity and ready to go! VDR lets you use a external disk to store in a safe, using it like tapes!

fifth, minor issue: when backing up, VDP inserts VM costume field "com.vmware.vdr.is-protected" as true

But you know, its not vdr its VDP, and this field should only changed after the backup, not before! and if something goes wrong in the backup, if you try to delete the field, VDP automatically inserts it again.

for these reasons, i am forced to use backup exec, without the miracle of deduplication to backup only boot partitions.

i hope vmware solves these major issues very soon, dedup is precious, and VDR was just right.

thanks

[brunomm]

Ok,

there goes the sixth:

restore, well, it works, but has limited funcionality in comparison to VDR:

i can make an restore rehearsal, but i cannot stop the vm from starting, or choose whether not to connect NICs.

So if you make a vm restore to other location on the datastore, you end up having a clone of the original vm, booting and fully working, colliding with the original on the network!

[muxonarization]

theoretically you are able to exclude your VM's data disks by switching them to independent mode, which disables snapshotting for them.

i did that in the old days of vcb

[fveggerby]

Also, downloads are only available in 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 TB versions.

VDR was using 5GB

We use iSCSI disks for backup destinations, så having to make, minimum, a vApp of 0.5 TB is stupid.

Also I don't even have 0.5 TB free space.

I haven't tried it, maybe I'm wrong.

I can only hope.

[fveggerby]

Just checked out the Admin Guide.

It's possible to deploy with thin provisioned disks.

So my space issue is "solved"

[snekkalapudi]

Hey,

you can do thin provisioning.

Also once deployed, you can migrate your data disks to different datastore if required.

Data disk - starting from 2nd disk. Disk-1 is OS disk.

[uhybmartin]

I wholeheartedly agree.  I currently backup my system VMDKs with VDR and get my data with a dedicated backup solution.

Any word on when/if VDP will support selective virtual disk backups?

[LatinSuD]

fifth plus: If you edit a Backup Job and remove a VM, that VM will keep the "protected=true" tag...