VStorage API w/ EqualLogic Auto Snapshot Manager VMware Edition - Win2K

[sbrumley401]

Hope this is the best forum to get insight on this. I am evaluating the use of EqualLogic's Auto Snapshot Manager / VMware Edition (ASM/VE) for protection of my VM environment.

As I understand the ASM/VE process...

1. ASM/VE tells Virtual Center Server to take a VMware snapshot of the VM.

2. When the snapshot is complete, ASM/VE tells the EQL to take a SAN snapshot of the iSCSI volume that the VM is on.

3. ASM/VE then tells VCenter to remove the vmware snapshot.

Now I am also evaluating Veeam, and have read a lot (too much?) on VMware tools snapshot limitations, and know that VMware cannot create an "application consistent" quiesced snapshot of a Windows 2000 server. Even worse, in my experiments with VMware Data Recovery, taking a vmware tools quiesced snapshot of Win2K can cause problems - I have an Oracle database on a windows 2000 server, and about one time in three, the snapshot process causes the database service to stop, for whatever reason. I have to manually restart it.

So that is unacceptable.

So my question is...Is the snapshot EQL directs VCenter to take of VM's is identical to the snapshot VDR is taking (and thus will cause a problem with Windows 2000). I assume it is but not have found a definitive answer anywhere. Since ASM/VE claims to "integrate with the VStorage API" then that seems likely.

If so, I am really back to Veeam as my only "do-it-all" solution for backup and recovery because the Veeam agent can take an application consistent snapshot of Windows 2000.

Thanks

Steven

[sbrumley401]

I am sorry to reply to myself, but I realize I misstated Veeam's capabilities...

The Veeam Windows 2000 snapshot is not "application consistent" it is merely "crash consistent" - because it does not even try to quiesce - I can configure it to not use VMWare Tools quiesce. Still, it does not crash Oracle on the Win2K server, so that is why it is much preferable to the VMware/VDR snapshot. I think with Windows 2000, that is about as good as you can do?

I guess if I could figure out how to disable the attempt to quiesce when vmware takes a snapshot, I could achieve the same thing with VDR (and by extension ASM/VE). I know how to do that when I manually take a snapshot, but not sure how to affect it when using VDR.

Steven

[jkopp]

This may be a little off-topic, but I had issues VMWare quiesced snapshots behaving baldly on my Win2K servers. I found I could disable the quiescing (making the VM snapshots crash consistent only) by disabling the Sync Driver.

Go into Device Manager

View -- Show Hidden devices.

You'll find the Sync Driver under the "Non-Plug and Play Drivers"

Gook Luck,

Jason