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Kev77
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Backup Strategy Questions

Hello,

We are trying to determine our backup strategy for the Guest OS. We are currently using vRangerPro to backup our Guest OS with a 14 day retention time with 2 good copies. I know this works and have tested this.

However, we also have Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery installed in each Guest OS and are doing Backups this way as well. I have restored the livestate image to a new Guest OS and it works, but does VMware support this? Is anyone else doing it this way as well? Is this overkill and I really only need to do vRangerPro Backups?

Please advise?

Thank you!

Kev77

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khughes
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Exactly. With some of the bulk backup companies like esxpress coming out with new versions, we might switch to their file level backup soon. We'll see though. Its nice to have both, one for a major disaster and the file level for small documents that stupid users delete.

  • Kyle

-- Kyle "RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "

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khughes
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Overkill is different for every person and every setup. We have a simular setup with esXpress and BackupExec, where we run a full backup every weekend and every night we do a full file level tape backup, and we also offsite our bulk backup files incase of a disaster. It all depends on your needs and timeframe to get your systems back up and running or files restored.

  • Kyle

-- Kyle "RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "
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Kev77
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Thanks for the information. So you have an agent that runs inside the Guest OS and does a file level backup with Backup Exec? as well as run the esXpress backup to get all the VMDK files?

Thanks!

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khughes
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Exactly. With some of the bulk backup companies like esxpress coming out with new versions, we might switch to their file level backup soon. We'll see though. Its nice to have both, one for a major disaster and the file level for small documents that stupid users delete.

  • Kyle

-- Kyle "RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "
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Kev77
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This is good info. Yea, vRangerPro has a file level restore and it works pretty good. However, you can't do a file level restore over a UNC path so we had to either copy all the files over to the local drive or map the UNC as a drive. Either way, it works awesome! So in turn, we are doing 3 things, vRangerpro backups, LiveState Backups and ArcServe backups. Might be over kill, but I'd rather tell my boss I have the data then not have it, especially in todays economy.

Thanks!

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khughes
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I'm sure you know the golden rule in IT, lose your data, lose your job

Something to always keep in mind when someone says the backups are overkill (except if its affecting performance)

  • Kyle

-- Kyle "RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "
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habibalby
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Hello,

I do agree entirely with Kyle. Doing an Image Backup as well as File-Level Backup is totaly secure. We are doing the same with vRangerPro and HP DataProtector 6.6. vRangerPro takes the Backup to our Backup Server where it has a SAN LUN presented to this server and the VMs Images are dumped over there every week. The File-Level Backup of the VMs are running on every night as a full backup a LUN on the Backup Server and from there, we are taking both LUNs to a Tapes via Tape Library.

So, one LUN for VMs Images and one LUN for VMs Files. And every week, we delete the last week backup from the LUNs after making sure that the data has been written on the Tapes, just to conserve a space. In case we want to restore, we can directly restore the files to the VMs from the LUN, or from the Tape to the LUNs and from the LUNs to the VMs.

Best Regards,

Hussain Al Sayed

Best Regards, Hussain Al Sayed Consider awarding points for "correct" or "helpful".
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