VCB NFS NetApp Legato

[fletch00]

Hi, this is a VCB NFS NetApp Legato integration question - please forgive me if this is not the optimal group!

So our current backups are pulling data through the VMs with legato clients installed - OK, but definately not optimal in terms of network traffic flow (production network is very impacted)

New ideal backup scenario (tell me if this is possible):

1) Install VCB on same switch as the netapp cluster snapmirror destination (we do a consistent VMware/NetApp snapshot nightly) and replicate all VM snapshots to another datacenter

2) configure VCB to mount the vmdks from the NetApp via NFS (is this now supported?)

3) configure the Legato integration piece to backup all mounts on the VCB

Goals:

1) isolate as much as possible the backup traffic from the rest of the production network (done by having VCB and Legato server on same switch with Netapp VMDKs)

2) can we do vmdk level backups (for optimal throughput - avoiding walking wide/deep structures in the VMs) AND enjoy file level recoveries? (and how user friendly are the recoveries ? can they be done with the Legato client (via the integration piece) and present the restored files to the VM for the customer?)

thanks for any feedback - the docs I found look really old: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_301_201_vm_backup.pdf

I am looking for practical & tested ideas

[lamw]

You might want to take a look at the updated document, yes NFS is supported by VCB now.

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35/vi3_35_25_vm_backup.pdf

In terms of where you install your VCB Server, this is a windows base application that can either be installed on a Windows physical or virtual machine. Usually most people put this on the Virtual Center server, but it can be seperate. Tools are installed, and what happens is VCB will quiesce a VM create a snapshot and mount that snapshot as readonly and back that up either filelevel/fullimage for Windows Operating System or full image for all other operating system. This allievates the network from directly backing up from within the VM and taking a hit on your ESX Server and VM. This can be done via NFS to your datastore, iSCSI to your SAN or FC to your SAN, the point being it talks to your Storage directly vs going through the ESX/VM. It sounds like you already implement snapmirrors for your NFS filer for LUN replication to another site which is great, we do something simliar along with having backup policy for each VM. Though with VCB, you can see how much you can save with only need a single backup solution on your VCB Server to mount up the VMDK and either run a filelevel or image level backup, vs having thousand of backup agents running. There are custom scripts you can write to automate or schedule, it's best practice to only do 1 backup per LUN so that you don't affect other systems within that LUN.

I would definitely look at the new backup guide and release notes for the new VCB, new one just came out friday with the release of VI 3.5 Update 2 and VC Update 2.

[fletch00]

thanks for the link - a search for NFS returns the same text from the old doc:

"

NFS Backups

If your virtual machines are stored on external network attached storage (NAS) systems

using the NFS protocol, you can perform image‐level backups of the virtual machines.

See your storage vendor documentation for additional information."

I hope that is not the extent of NFS support from the new VCB!?

[fletch00]

Can anyone offer an opinion on this solution?

http://www.esxpress.com/esxpress3.php

thanks

[Gostev]

can we do vmdk level backups (for optimal throughput - avoiding walking wide/deep structures in the VMs) AND enjoy file level recoveries? (and how user friendly are the recoveries ?

This is possible with Veeam Backup, we do file level recovery directly from full image backups. The process is very user friendly, you simply select the VM state you want to restore the file from (latest state, or earlier states).Once you do that, you are presented with the file explorer window which lets you browse the VM file system inside backup file to find the required file(s), and just copy/paste or drag and drop the file(s) anywhere you want to extract it (your desktop, remote server etc.). Note that backup image is not actually expanded during the file level recovery process, rather the file is fetched directly from the backup file, so you can recover any file in a matter of seconds even from backup containing terabyte VMDK files.

And of course Veeam Backup supports VCB you are planning to leverage, but besides simply using the framework, Veeam Backup enhances it with features like support for incremental backups, on-the-fly processing (without requiring disk space to store the processed image on the VCB proxy) so the backup is faster than the framework provides by itself.

You can find more information about these and other Veeam Backup features following this link (btw, we just had the new major release yesterday).

Answering your question about esxpress, it does not support file-level recovery from full image backup, and it does not feature VCB integration.

Hope this helps.

[fletch00]

I am testing out the Veeam solution - I am getting a strange error on recovery - I emailed support.

I like the way you configure the ESX server or VC credentials, then you can browse the vmfs (including the Netapp .snapshots).

Now if there was a way to MOUNT/OPEN/BROWSE the .snapshot/vmachines/vmXYZ.vmdk I would be 99% of where I want to be!

Does there exist a VMDK mounter (cross OS (windows/Linux etc)) so the image can br browsed at the file level and individual files pulled out?

(I have done this manually by adding the snapshot VMDK as another disk to a running VM)

thanks

[fletch00]

This method is very close to what I am looking for:

http://blogs.netapp.com/storage_nuts_n_bolts/2008/07/file-level-reco.html

I'd prefer a solution that does not require different methods for different VM OSes - but I suppose if we are restoring files in Linux we need to assume a higher level of user ability anyway

thanks

[Gostev]

I am testing out the Veeam solution - I am getting a strange error on recovery - I emailed support.

I like the way you configure the ESX server or VC credentials, then you can browse the vmfs (including the Netapp .snapshots).

Now if there was a way to MOUNT/OPEN/BROWSE the .snapshot/vmachines/vmXYZ.vmdk I would be 99% of where I want to be!

Does there exist a VMDK mounter (cross OS (windows/Linux etc)) so the image can br browsed at the file level and individual files pulled out?

(I have done this manually by adding the snapshot VMDK as another disk to a running VM)

thanks

Sure, there are VMDK mounters available for both Linux and Windows - VMware provides those for you.

For Linux, you need to use vmware-mount.pl

This script requires 3 (not 0) mandatory argument(s).

Usage: /usr/bin/vmware-mount.pl

-p : Print the partition table

disk : Name of the Virtual Hard Disk file

or

disk : Name of the Virtual Hard Disk file

partition : Number of the partition

-t type : Partition type

-o options: Partition mount options(s)

mount-point : Directory where to mount the partition

For Windows, there is vmware-mount tool, you simply provide the drive letter and path to VMDK to mount it as a drive

vmware-mount F: "C:\VM\machine.vmdk"

[petedr]

Hey fletch00.

If you have any questions about esXpress, what currently do or future plans send me a private message or email me.

Pete@esXpress

[fletch00]

Well, turns out I may scratch the Legato, VCB parts

http://www.ufsexplorer.com/

is a great tool for what we want

I combined it with Windows SFU to get us cross VM OS - File level browsable recovers from Netapp snapshots - this has some important implications for planning how we backup VMs in the future

the windows SFU host NFS mounts the netapp snapshots vol as z: - then I "open" the snapshotted vmdk for dev-lamp-02 (a linux VM) - UFS Explorer does the magic here (its $70 to remove the file copy size restriction) - and I drag and drop the file out of the vmdk I want to recover..

nice

[Thomas_Rothen]

Hello,

I'm trying to configure a Windows Server to access a nfs share on a NetAPP Appliance with SFU.

I'm always getting the error 67 with mount or net use.

Have you any to for the SFU NFS client configuration?

Tabks a lot,

regards,

Olivier Girard