Raw Device Mapping and Backups

[PhilEddies]

Hi,

We are currently running VMWare ESX 3.5 on 5 Hosts, we have a Hitachi SAN we have a sperate physical box with VCB and Backup exec all connected together by fibre

We are tring to create a Virtual File Server that has a 25Gb VMDK for it's C: drive and a 1TB Raw Device Mapping for is 😧 The D drive will store all of the user data for the fileserver.

I have set this up fine however I am confussed on how I should backup this 1TB RDM I first tried pointing this 1TB Lun at both our VMWare Hosts and at our Backup Exec server however when files are added to the RDM on the virtual file server they do not appear in the drive on our Backup Exec server? If it did then Backup Exec would just see it as a local drive and backup fine?

Is VCB the way to go? Can we get file level backups? Can you think of a better way to do this ?

Thanks

Phil

[PhilEddies]

I forgot to add the virtual file server is running Windows Server 2008 and the Backup Exec server is running Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2

[weinstein5]

I am not sure of VCB support for backing up Win2008 - it odes support file level backup for the other flavors of windows - the route is to install BackupExec agent in the VM and back it up like it were a physical machine -

[PhilEddies]

The agent would pull the files over the network (i think) and with a potential of 1TB to backup that is a lot of traffic

[amslife]

VCB enables wicked fast network-free backups and the BackupExec integration is good. To do a VCB-enabled backup of an RDM, remember that the RDM needs to be Virtual Mode and not Physical Mode. Anyway here's the sequence of events from

This is an example of how you can use Consolidated Backup to protect data in virtual machines:
1 The system administrator configures backup schedules and policies in the third‐party backup software. For example, the system administrator might instruct the backup software to back up D:\Data on vm37.company.com daily at 3:05 a.m.
2 The backup software schedules this backup job.
3 When the backup software launches this job, it calls into Consolidated Backup by using a pre‐backup script.bq. Consolidated Backup performs the following:
a Contacts a VirtualCenter instance or an ESX Server host, and sends a request to create a snapshot of the virtual machine to be backed up.
b Makes this snapshot available (mounted) on the backup proxy. This makes the data that needs to be backed up visible to the third‐party backup software.

4 The third‐party backup software performs the backup procedure of copying changed data to the backup media.

5 At the end of the backup job, the third‐party backup software calls into Consolidated Backup, using a post‐backup script.

Consolidated Backup does the following:
a Detaches (unmounts) the snapshot from the backup proxy.
b Requests VirtualCenter or the ESX Server host to remove the virtual machine snapshot.