how to backup vm's straight to tape

[pauliew1978]

Dear all,

I am looking to redesign my backup strategy for the virtual infrastructure. I am running ESX version 4 at the moment and use backup exec with the vmware module however due to the two step process for backup it has simply been impossible for me to backup the vm's within the backup window. We currently have two LTO tape drives to write all our data to tape every night. I really don't like using incremental backups in my backup methodology as the recovery time involved in a DR situation is longer and gives further opportunity for issues to occur.

I am currently thinking about the idea of going to disk backups rather than tape but I fear that this maybe considered a little controversial by some. I have been looking at using Veeam in combination with the idealstor sata hot swap backup units. My plan would be to purchase at least 40 2tb sata disks and the idealstore unit plus caddies and cases for the hard drives. Correct disks would be brought on site everyday and swapped out for the previous nights. I can think of many reasons why ditching tape is great (like I can restore files to multiple servers (if doing a standard backup) at the same time AND I no longer have to catalog the tapes

What do you all think of this solution? Essentially I think I can get a little bit of a budget for this project so I would like to hear of any alternatives as well. I dont know anything about VTL (virtual tape libraries) or if there is actually any way to write vm's straight to tape (no matter what the price) if anyone knows if this is possible It would be great to hear how they have done it.

Many thanks for any input

Paul

[pauliew1978]

Well I did some more digging around and I am beginning to think along the lines of the following:

buy a disk array (something with about 3tb) in + veam backup

then

write my sql .bak files and file server files to tape every night + backup my vm images every night to disk using veeam

then every friday write the images to tape. In the advent of a disaster I can either restore last weeks images to san and then restore lastnights tape backups for .bak files OR

restore lastnights images from disk to san

Does that sound like a good solution?

My only issue is that when i am at the DR location I could be in a situation where I have to restore the veam backups from tape to disk and THEN use veeam to restore to San. Is there any easier way to do this?

[bulletprooffool]

Paulie,

That would work fine, though I would test the backup speeds and verify that the consistencvy of backups is to the standard you'd expect (ie, VMs restore fine and so on)

Remember, live, running machines are editing vmdks while the backup runs, so it will create snapshots as you go and back them up.

Get evals of both Veeam and VCB, test them for speed, ease of use, scriptability and recovery time.

Lastly, what storage are your VMs currently on? Most / Many SAN systems have in built snapshot ability - this can help you with your short term recovery, especially if you are already replictniog this data to another location.