What is the best disk-based backup appliance out there?

[yukondba]

Hello, everyone.

We are looking for a backup solution that can do disk-based, continuous and/or scheduled backup across the WAN, LAN.

What are the appliances that can do the job?

EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp. They seems way too expensive. Of course they have the low ends. Are they worth it? Can you please recommend some models?

We plan to spend 10-15K for such an appliance.

We are also looking at online backup solutions like Seagate Evault, IM LiveVault. Does anyone have any experience with these services?

Please give us some recommendation.

Thank you,

Ted

[osde_info]

We built a CentOS 4 (free libre open source) GNU/Linux server with a 2T NFS share on a dedicated 1G server console network and use vmbk.pl (free libre open source) to backup all our ESX 2.x & 3.x VMs

Total cost < $10,000

regards

clive

[Erik_Zandboer]

Hi,

What do you want to backup primarily: Full VMDKs (for disaster recovery), or primarily file level backups? If you are looking at filelevel backups, you might just decide to use robocopy (M$) as a very cheap solution. If you primarily want to backup VMDKs, take a look at esXpress (www.esXpress.com). Available for as little as.... free (limitations apply off course).

[mail_vijayar]

The best meathod would be to have all the vmdisks on the storage box (Netapp, EMC) and have a snapshot of it.

Regards,

Vijay

[osde_info]

Don't NetApp and EMC solutions start at $200,000 ? However if they can do a 2T solution for $10,000 get their sales reps to call me ASAP !

regards

clive

[Texiwill]

Hello,

There are really three basic ways to backup VMs and for different purposes. Which would you want to use depends on how much you want to spend.

Storage Level	Full VMDK	File Level
No disk queiscing VMDK is crash consistent	Can have Disk queiscing VMDK maybe crash consistent	Depends Individual files may be crash consistent
ESX has no idea this is happening Happens in the storage apparatus	ESX provides vcbMounter to do this from service console	Handled by the Guest OS
Tools dependent on Storage device	Several free tools available for SC VIBSU vmbk.pl	Free tools depend on Guest OS
No remote tools	Remote Tools include VCB vRanger esxExpress	Remote tools include VCB whatever the OS provides
Tape Libraries involved after storage Replication. Requires another ESX server to read mirror and then one of the other approaches.	Generall Disk to Disk then Tape	Generally direct to tape but can be Disk to Disk to tape
$$$$$$	Free to $$$	Free to $$$
No SCSI Reservations	Could be 1000s of Reservations	If using VCB, 1000s of reservations else none
ESX unaware it is happening	higher impact to ESX	low impact to ESX
Good for DR	Good for DR	Good for File level restoration
No snapshots required	Snapshot required	Generally no snapshot required

As you can see there are many ways to do this and everyone implements one way over another. There are some basic rules however:

• No matter what method you use, do not attach a tape device direct to an ESX server.

• Some form of Disk to Disk is best, with offloading the tape backup to a remote location.

• The longer the copy of the data takes the bigger the snapshot grows, if you do not ensure the snapshot is removed it could grow larger than the actual disk.

• Ensure only one backup per LUN is happening at any given time, too many backups per LUN can impact performance or create SCSI reservation conflicts.

• If you have multiple LUNs then multiple LUNs can be backed up simultaneously from different ESX servers or Storage Processors

Given the generalities decide the reason for the backup and then the method, just about any solution that works for you is the best one for you. If you are using vRanger or something like that they include a way to boost copy speeds and that is very useful, which lowers the impact quite a bit.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky, author of the forthcoming 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', publishing January 2008, (c) 2008 Pearson Education. Available on Rough Cuts at http://safari.informit.com/9780132302074

[osde_info]

excellent advice and very comprehensive i would just like to add you must you use REDO and REDO.REDO files to reduce backup stalling / offline / downtime to an absolute minimum

for example applying a 18G REDO file can take over 3hours of VM offline time to commit

regards

clive

[meistermn]

What about data domain?

You have although to think about the disk space for your backups.