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chadwickking
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Don't throw Tivoli out yet... no wait..maybe so?

Hello Forums,

I think this will be last post here in the forums and yet another good discussion. There is probably already something out but wanted to get some feedback. It seems there are ALL KINDS of approaches to performing backups at a host level that is actually agent-less and pretty neat from what I have seen. Currently we have thousands of servers "VMs" and right now we use a mix of Tivoli and another solution called Ultrabac for running normal OS level backups. I am curious and what the undertaking would be to begin implementing a virtual backup solution. Currently we have a very large amount of backup tickets that come in that we work on a routine basis. All almost seem to be related to the ASR - system state - Image of the C: or system in this case. We never have problems with file level but find that if we could just do away with the image/asr then most of our problem tickets and support could be reduced greatly. If you think about all the things that involve our backup network would be shocked at the cost of it all. Currently we won't be doing a lot of TIER 1 application virtualizing until later next year and think that we could possibly start testing an alternate backup solution. Here are some of my concerns and feedback I would like:

1. What kind of backup solutions do you use?

2. If we use de-dupe type backups what is the average space you save? - How can you maximize this? We use NetAPP

3. Does the storage backup to tape or to other storage and what is usually the cost difference?

4. Performance wise what could we see on the host or expect?

5. What are the challenges and issues faced with VDR? We already have the licenses but it seems vendors bank on its diffeciencies..however I believe it is 90% based on implementation IMO. Although it could use some changes to how robust it is..

6. Anyone with large TSM environments have a cost savings approach?

I appreciate the feed back and I think this would help a lot of companies out. Thank you.






Cheers,

Chad King

VCP-410 | Server+

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

Cheers, Chad King VCP4 Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking | virtualnoob.wordpress.com If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful
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meistermn
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Did you look at netapp smvi

http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualization/2010/03/netapp-smvi-and-app-consistent-backup-recovery-of-sql...

We have dedup rates aboout 66 %.

IF you need a deeper solution than netapp smvi than ask the following company

http://www.icomasoft.com/index.php

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Josh26
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VDR just doesn't cut it for me. For several reasons:

There's no effective method of duplicating a VDR backup to tape or similar

VDR doesn't provide agents for many of the databases out there, such as Exchange, Active Directory or SQL Server

VDR just felt far less configurable to me. But that's just me.

We do use VDR. it has its place. There's a tonne of effectively stateless machines that it's great for.

Also, I'm suprised by your tickets. Since we moved past Windows 2000, it's become quite rare for me to need System State restores. The majority of mine are along the lines of "this employee quite seven months ago, and we just found out his cleared out his mailbox first. Can you please get it back". VDR would be useless for this.

In an Active Directory environment, you absolutely need an AD aware backup.

chadwickking
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I couldnt agree more. So far I have been seeing a lot of the issues happen with Windows 2000 to be exact. We are looking at Veeam currently. Do you have any other recommendations?

Cheers,

Chad King

VCP-410 | Server+

Twitter:

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

Cheers, Chad King VCP4 Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking | virtualnoob.wordpress.com If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful
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Texiwill
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Hello,

If you are using Tivoli, check out Pancetera as they have a vStorage product that integrates with Tivoli.... This is one possible solution that would most likely not require buying more licenses from TIvoli, etc.....


Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009, 2010

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meistermn
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Did you look at netapp smvi

http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualization/2010/03/netapp-smvi-and-app-consistent-backup-recovery-of-sql...

We have dedup rates aboout 66 %.

IF you need a deeper solution than netapp smvi than ask the following company

http://www.icomasoft.com/index.php

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chadwickking
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From what I have seen SMVI is block level replication? I am a little bit of a green horn when it comes to our NetAPP storage. The link you provided only goes to opvisor for icomasoft.






Cheers,

Chad King

VCP-410 | Server+

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

Cheers, Chad King VCP4 Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking | virtualnoob.wordpress.com If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful
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