Backup Scenarios

[prutter]

Hello All,

I would just like to get an idea what most are doing for backup jobs with VCB and Backup Exec. I would like to get a better setup than the one that i currently have. I am currently running File level backups to the tape adn this is taking too long. What i would like to do is this.

1. - Full backup of all VM's to tape on Sunday's

2. - Differeential or Incrimental backups of all VM's during the week.

I would like to hear what everyone else is doing with this setup. Any comments or suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance.

Perry

[ejward]

We're using VCB with Vizioncore's vRanger to do image level backups of all our VMs. About 100 VMs

[beckhamk]

We are now using Veeam Backup v2.0, this works very well and is extreamly easy to use compared to vRanger or BackupExec. We just left BackupExec, and had tried vRanger before hand.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Check out http://vmprofessional.com/index.php?content=esx3backups for information on backups. I will soon be testing Veeam 2.0 for the document. At the moment I am waiting for a system mainboard.... Almost all for sale packages will provide incremental backup capabilities.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[azn2kew]

Frankly, there are several backup solutions out there you can compare such as VCB, esXpress, vRanger and Veeam Backup as well as VISBU freebies from Xtravirt which works really well, depends how your budget looks like those freebies like VCB, esXpress and VISBU works great but depends how much bandwidth or VMs you're looking to backup/restore. If you're already have NetBackup 6.5 in place, you could use VCB as it's free and use NB 6.5 integration module for it. I've used and tested all of these products and found to be very easy using Veeam Backup solution and it does what you need. Check out Edward's comparision charts for details as well and you make the call. I suggest you test out all the solutions and decide from yourself.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[prutter]

Thanks for the input. What i was kind of searching for was how admins were setting up their jobs to do FULL and INCREMENTALs. Since FULL vs FILE level is a tatllly different job i was curious how most had their jobs setup. Currently i have way too many jobs setup in BE and i was trying to minimize teh number of jobs that run. Not only do i have all the VM's but i also have all the SHARES on the SAN. I'm just looking to streamiline things and really don't knopw where to start. Thanks again for all the input!!

[azn2kew]

I've attached the NetBackup for VMware Best Practices from Symantec and that should give you good details how to run things correctly and hope that helps.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant