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mrudloff
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VCB Physical machine vs. Virtual machine ? I am confused

I remember reading the documentation about VCB where it stated it requires a physical machine .. Now I read the guide and it states it can run on a virtual machine ?!?

Has this changed with a specific update ?

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NTurnbull
Expert
Expert

Hi, yes it has changed. I think the change came in on VC2.5 & ESX 3.5 but not 100%

Thanks,

Neil

Thanks, Neil
mrudloff
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Weird .. I did my VCP on 3.5 and I am certain they told us (hell I even have it in front of me) that it requires a physical machine Smiley Happy

Ah well I remember I did my VCP just after they introduced the VCP on 3.5 - I guess just one more example that you have to keep up with the documentation all the time ...

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Yattong
Expert
Expert

Hey,

There have been upgrades to VCB, so now you can use VCB inside a vm.

However, if you are backing up from a Fibre SAN you still need a physical VCB server

The additional functionality of having VCB in a vm is for backing up from an ISCSI SAN for example.

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



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mrudloff
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Ah cool .. we are indeed using iSCSI SANs to store our vms .. time for a test setup me thinks ...

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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

The biggest problem with using VCB within a VM is where will you send the data once you have a backup? If it is direct to tape, then a locally attached tape device has very poor write performance as opposed to a physical system. In addition, you can not vMotion the VM when it is attached to a tape device.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

SearchVMware Blog: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/

Blue Gears Blogs - http://www.itworld.com/ and http://www.networkworld.com/community/haletky

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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mrudloff
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The "problem" was that I had to explain vcb to my manager and I looked quite stupid when I told him it musn't be a virtual machine but the documentation says otherwise Smiley Happy

What we probably do for this particular client is a 4 U storage server (24TB local SAS storage) and using VCB to simply grab those files of the cluster and via a DIY script moving it to a different location (so the destination folder can be unmounted again) .

We were thinking about using Acronis, but we don't really need the additional step of imaging those files .. this would just add another step when it comes to the restore ..

So far I am quite happt with the result ..

Granted - we don't use VCB the optimal way - but we don't need to anyway

Command I am using at the moment : vcbMounter.exe -h 192.168.10.70 -m hotadd -u vcb -p vcb -a ipaddr:192.168.10.153 -r c:
mnt -t fullvm

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