which is the best tool for backup/restore for VMware?

[nareshunik]

which is the best tool for backup/restore for VMware?

is it VDR or VCB?

[mail2ibrahim21]

Data Recovery (or VDR) is the name of VMware’s new backup and recovery application. Contrary to the name, 50% of Data Recovery’s job is the backup of virtual machines (and 50% is “recovery”). Still, Data Recovery does a lot more than just backup and restore of virtual machines. Let’s look at a feature list:

A real backup application with a GUI interface (unlike VCB)

Integrated into vCenter

Disk based backup and restore of VMware ESX virtual guest machines

Easy deployment with initial setup wizard

Restore of individual files from a guest VM or the entire image of a guest VM

Wizard with workflow to create and schedule backup jobs

Multiple restore points are displayed for each VM for easy restore

Understands when VM guests are moved from one ESX host to another because of DRS, VMotion, or VMHA

Full or incremental backups of guest VMs

De-duplication so that only changed data is actually backed up (not duplicate data). This way, you are able to maintain full point in time backups of each VM but only a fraction of the disk space, that would normally be required, is used

Compatible with any storage that ESX supports- Fibre, iSCSI, NAS, or local

Data Recovery is built on VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) and, with vSphere, there is no more VCB, only Data Recovery

But what does Data Recovery NOT do? It does not have the ability to send backed-up data to tape, like a traditional backup application would. Data Recovery is a disk-based backup application. Still, when compared to the other virtualization-specific backup applications out there (vRanger, esXpress and Veeam Backup), Data Recovery is the same as they are because they don’t send data to tape either.

Keep in mind that Data Recovery is not going to backup anything BUT your virtual machines. It is not going to backup your physical servers.

[kac2]

if you are going to use a solution from VMware, use vDR, do not use VCB. My favorite 3rd party backup is Veeam by far. No matter what any other vendor tells you, everyone is playing catchup to Veeam.

[FrostyatCBM]

+1 for Veeam ... I'm using v4.1 now ... new v5 due out in the next couple of months is well worth a look.

[RobertPRAG]

Hi there,

I think that there is another way of looking at this. VCB was the original product before VMware had designed the vStorage API which allowed 3rd party developers access to the VMware system to carry out backups. VCB is free so if you don't have any budget it is a great tool although command line driven.

In the future VMware are supposedily going to end support for VCB so you will then be forced to use a backup mechanism that utilises the vStorage API.

VMware have their own product which you can purchase or there are third party products available.

I use Backup Exec 2010 with the VMware agent and it works brilliantly. I have enabled GRT so I can restore individual files from a VM backup or restore the whole VM. I opted for Backup Exec as we already run it and I didn't want to implement other backup software. Backup Exec can connect to vCenter and will pickup any new VM's that are created on any of your hosts automatically which makes the job of an admin easier.

My VMware backups are sent to disk (B2D) and then this job is duplicated to tape so I have offsite disaster recovery as well.

Hope that helps

Thanks

Rob