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nathans77
Contributor
Contributor

Would like some guidance

I'm new to Data Recovery and have inherited it, and would like ideas on how to backup these VMs with what we have. We have vSphere 4.1 with VMware Data Recovery 2.0.3.4089 build 1580266. We have 27 VMs that weigh in around 2.2TB. The heaviest is 340GB. We have a NAS with enough space we'd like to backup to. I've read the admin guide, but it doesn't seem to click for me. Any ideas?

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rcporto
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Leadership

This blog post may helps you: http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vmware-esx-and-vsphere-articles/backup-recover...

But remember that VDR has some limitations, including 1TB of deduplication data, but you can have more than one VDR per vCenter.

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Richardson Porto
Senior Infrastructure Specialist
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/richardsonporto
vfk
Expert
Expert

Generally, you should never ever have your backup data and production vm data server from the same san/nas.  You have small environment, consider upgrading to later version of your current, there are tons of improvements and management is a lot easier and better integration across the stack and vSphere 4.1 is close to end-of-life.  And golden rule of backup is test test test your restore.

The alternative is to look other software like veeam.  Are you having any particular difficulty?  Get yourself small lab and play with the software without worrying breaking the production environment.  You can everything inside VMware workstation.

--- If you found this or any other answer helpful, please consider the use of the Helpful or Correct buttons to award points. vfk Systems Manager / Technical Architect VCP5-DCV, VCAP5-DCA, vExpert, ITILv3, CCNA, MCP
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nathans77
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Thanks Richardson. I've added the NAS via "Add Network Share...". The free space is over 3TB. Whatever (single) share is added needs to be at or under 1TB? (Because this is also the place that deduplication happens, right?)

vfk, I wish we could upgrade from 4.1 and/or use Veeam, but financially (yea yea yea) the company can't. I'm mainly trying to wrap my head around virtual backups.

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rcporto
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You can add two deduplication stores per backup appliance, each of 1TB.

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Richardson Porto
Senior Infrastructure Specialist
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/richardsonporto
nathans77
Contributor
Contributor

Will put that to use and go from there. Thanks again!

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