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nxu
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Does VCB require disk staging?

Does VCB require a disk staging unit with Netbackup 6.5? Can ESX 3.5 and VCB backup directly to tape from the proxy server? It'd be a physical proxy server so all the ESX hosts doesn't have to get fiber to the tape drives.

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dmorgan
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Correct. Our VCB Proxy does not have enough local disk storage to house ALL VM's at once, but it does have more than enough space to house all of the .vmdk's for any single VM, thus we run seperate backup jobs for each machine, for fullvm backups, rather than one job for all. The file level backups are just a mount of the .vmdk's after a snapshot is taken. So, if your mount point is d:\mnt1 then for a file level backup the drives C, D, etc... would be mounted under d:\mnt1\machinename\c etc... You can then use whatever tape backup software to back up those directories to tape, with the proxy only acting as the connecting point. You still are backing up files located on the proxy server, at least according to the tape backup software, but those are really only links to the actual files on the datastore/SAN. Make sense?

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dmorgan
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VCB essentially IS disk staging. The proxy allows you do back up two different ways. First, fullvm backups. You can do a fullvm backup of any VM. The proxy REQUIRES enough disk space to copy the datastore files for whatever VM's you are backing up. These are first copied locally to the proxy server, and then are available for backup by whatever means you so choose. Second, for Windows VM's only, you can do file level VCB backps. This requires no disk space on the proxy server, as the .vmdk's are mounted read-only to a local mount point on the proxy server. These files can now be backed up, again, by any means you so desire. Thus, any disk staging you use is extraneous to the proxy server, VCB must do what it is going to do first. If you THEN decide to use disk staging via whatever tape backup software package you use, so be it, but you cannot circumvent how VCB works and go directly from datastore to tape without having the proxy touch the files first.

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nxu
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Essentially my VCB proxy server has to have enough disk storage for fullVM backups to hold all the disks in the biggest VM? If I wanted to do files level backups, I can just let the proxy server mount the vmdk and back it up directly to tape?

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dmorgan
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Correct. Our VCB Proxy does not have enough local disk storage to house ALL VM's at once, but it does have more than enough space to house all of the .vmdk's for any single VM, thus we run seperate backup jobs for each machine, for fullvm backups, rather than one job for all. The file level backups are just a mount of the .vmdk's after a snapshot is taken. So, if your mount point is d:\mnt1 then for a file level backup the drives C, D, etc... would be mounted under d:\mnt1\machinename\c etc... You can then use whatever tape backup software to back up those directories to tape, with the proxy only acting as the connecting point. You still are backing up files located on the proxy server, at least according to the tape backup software, but those are really only links to the actual files on the datastore/SAN. Make sense?

-D-

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nxu
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yep, sounds like VCB works kind of like Veritas or EMC's SAN clone/mount process. Thanks.

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