VCB and Full VM Backup

[jchiver]

Can someone explain why VCB is happy to mount the hard drives of a VM so you can back up the individule files from the SAN but its not happy for you to backup an enitre VMDK file without copying it to the VCB server?

and whilst we are on the subject any suggestion on what software can?

Thanks.

[DigitalVoodoo]

Many of the third-party VM backup utilities (i.e. Vizioncore's vRanger Pro) can redirect the VCB backup to be stored on a location of your choosing. Additionally, if your traditional backup utility of choice (i.e. NetBackup, TSM, etc) support VCB integration, you may be able to redirect the VCB backup directly to tape or other disk storage.

[jchiver]

I am using BackupExec but i cant see any option to backup straight to tape.

a 3rd party option seems to be the only answer.

[kharbin]

VCB is a proxy based backup method, so its copies the files locally, then you can determine what to do with them form there.

There are easier, faster and more reliable methods available. Since I work for one of them, I will shamelessly plug our product, esXpress. Makes file level backups and image level backups of your VMs and does this simultaneously (unlike other methods which make you run the backup twice). You can backup over the SAN or over the wire, or again, do both simultaneously for on-site and off-site storage of your VMs (unlike other methods which make you run the backup twice). I could go on, but there is a full feature comparison chart on the web site.

Also, you can download and try for free.

Ken Harbin

www.esXpress.com

[DigitalVoodoo]

I'm not a BackupExec user, so unfortunately I'm not much help there, although there are likely others here on the forums who may have found options or workarounds for it. I use vRanger Pro, and an additional benefit it offers is compression of your VCB backups - my 20GB VM backup files are ~3GB in size. I also like the third-party approach as I can take these same compressed backups, copy critical ones to an external hard drive, and then take them anywhere in the world for DR and be able to restore them using only the external drive and my laptop with the vRanger software installed (without having to wait for our enterprise backup system, TSM, to be restored and tapes loaded to get to the backed-up VM files).

[Rodos]

You must remember that VCB is not really a backup to but a proxy or utility. It relies on other systems to do the backup.

So for file based backups it just presents it for the backups software and for the full it dumps it for the backup software.

Third party production like vRangerPro from can take over the VCB incoming stream and manipulate/redirect it.

[jchiver]

I have tried both vRanger and esXpress and found limitations with them both. the major item would be the way they shut the machines down before the backup i.e. a dirty shutdown.

[DigitalVoodoo]

By "dirty shutdown" do you mean that they do what is called crash-consistent backups? Anything using VCB to do a full VM backup will be like that as VCB uses snapshots to do full VM backups, and the snapshot by definition can only provide a crash-consistent backup as it's a point-in-time picture. Some of the third-party tools are beginning to incorporate additional VSS support for Windows VMs, to provide additional filesystem quiescing to help make the resulting backups more robust, and may be worth checking out.

[jchiver]

i had not realised that.

i think the best option is to use the file level backups with VCB which i am assuming can be restored in a similar way as you back them up.

[kharbin]

You say:

"the major item would be the way they shut the machines down before the backup i.e. a dirty shutdown."

By default, neither esXpress nor vRanger shut the VMs down before backup, and neither just powers them off uncleanly.

"i think the best option is to use the file level backups with VCB which

i am assuming can be restored in a similar way as you back them up"

Restoring an image of a VM and turning it on is about 300 times faster than building a VM from scratch, patching, loading applications, then restoring the file level backups. Might as well just use agent inside VM. And no, you cannot put the files back the same way unless you shut the VM down. If you add a snap to a VM to relase the lock on the VMDK, then push the file level backups back onto the VMDK, then commit the snap, your VM will be toast.

Resore files into the VM by browsing the datastore when the files are stored, from the VM you want ot restore to, then drag and drop them in place.

As for you first complaint about unclean backups. If you can withstand 2 minutes of downtime, esXpress can backup your VMs in a powered off, completly consistant state. It is an option, ,just not enabled by default.

2 more cents

Ken Harbin

www.esXpress.com

[khughes]

I have tried both vRanger and esXpress and found limitations with them both. the major item would be the way they shut the machines down before the backup i.e. a dirty shutdown.

I'm not sure when you have used esXpress last but we currently have it as our bulk backup option in addition to our backupexec file level backups and it does no such thing shutting down the servers. The only problems I have had with esXpress was with a database server, and I would say 90% of the problem was our own fault in scheduling and trying to run it during the sql backup process on a really slow SAN.

You should really sit down and think about how you want to backup your machines, and what type(s) of backups you want to do. In our case we have esXpress as a bulk backup for total system failure ie: DR but we continue to run our BackupExec file level backups for the occasional "oops i accidently deleted my really important file" users. I would suggest talking with vRanger and esXpress, but I can tell you from experiance esXpress's support is probably the best support I've run into in reguards to time, correct solutions provided and recommendations for making your product run better.

[Rodos]

>Anything using VCB to do a full VM backup will be like that as VCB uses snapshots to do full VM backups, and the snapshot by definition can only provide a crash-consistent backup as it's a point-in-time picture.

Sort of.

1. Without VMware tools VCB will use a snap and you will have crash consistent.

2. With VMware tools VCB will quiesce the file system first and you will have disk consistent.

3. 3rd Party tools that integrate with VSS (and hopefully VCB down the track) also quiesce supported application data (Exchange,SQL) and you have application consistent too.

People decide which level they are comfortable with.

Of course this is talking about the full VM backup space. You then have the whole agent in the VM space (off topic).