VDR, VDP, VCB - Demystifying Backup Options

[AGDave]

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently evaluating backup options for our VMware estate, and diving into the options is causing a few headaches.

Bit of background info - about 10 ESX 4.1 hosts, VCenter Server 4.1, 100+ VM's, Fibre Channel SAN Storage.

I've found the following options:

VMware Data Recovery - As far as I know, this has been superseded by VMware Data Protection?

VMware Data Protection - Similar to VMWare Data Recovery in terms of technology and operation.

VMware Consolidated Backups - After reading several contradicting articles, I'm struggling to see where this fits in. Some people say it VCB doesn't *actually* back up anything.

So, I think based on my environment and version of vCenter and ESX, my primary choices will be:

VMware Data Protection

Veeam

Can someone briefly summarise the differences with the three listed products and how they fit in with a Virtualised backup strategy please?

Thanks,

David

[snekkalapudi]

VDP can be an option as it is free with essentials+ & above or the evalution copy can be given a try.

unlike VDR, VDP is built on proven Avamar de-dupe technology. You see much better de-dupe ration in VDP than VDR.

Once properly deployed, VDP is a good solution for VM backup & recovery

[AGDave]

Hi Snekkalapudi,

Thanks for your reply.

So, is the main difference between VDR and VDP is the deduplication technologies that are employed? What about VCB?

[ldelloca · Accepted solution]

VCB is an old technology from the pre-vsphere 4.0 era, now substituted by vStorage API. Basically every backup software, including VDR, VDP or Veeam, rely on this technology.

Another thing to keep in mind: you have a 4.1 cluster, so you cannot use VDP if you do not upgrade to vSphere 5.1. In 4.1 you can use only VDR.

About Veeam, is a 3rd party commercial product, so is not included in VMware bundles. Apart from this, in my opinion it still has many advantages even over the new VDP. To name a few:

- no limits on backup repository size

- orchestration between multi-appliance deployment

- instant vm recovery

- surebackup

you can have a look at what these features do at Veeam website.

Luca.