Consolidated Backup?

[ir1shm1ike]

Can someone explain Consolidated Backup to me a little more. I understand that I need a 3rd Party Backup Software, but I just watched the vi3demo Video...and now I am confused. Can I created a VM, and use it for Consolidated Backup without having 3rd Party Backup Software??

Thing is we are using Acronis Imaging Software right now to backup each individual VM right now with a Agent on each one.

So my question is can I use the Consolidated Backup to backup all the VM's...store them on that Consolidated Backup Server and then have Acronis come along and just backup that 1 Backup Server?

Maybe I am just not understanding it right.

[Jasemccarty]

Think of VCB, as a way to look at the .vmdk through the backend, and not through the VM itself, or the ESX's nic as the VM see's it.

Using VCB, you can "mount" a .vmdk, and backup (or simply copy) the files in it. You can also backup the .vmdk directly.

It is more of a "getting to the dining room through the kitchen" type thing than a "get to the dining room through the restaurant's entrance".

Sorry about the analogies... Just a guy on the Bayou (who has to explain his job often to the local folks).

[Illaire]

VMware Consolidated Backup, to put it simply:

1- Take a snapshot of a VM

2- Mount disks of that VM on a special directory on the VCB proxy

3- Make the backup software backup that directory (so it backups the VM disks)

4- Dismount the VM disks

5- Remove the snapshot.

You need a backup software for step 3. You could use whatever backup software you want. If you want to stay on a supported configuration, use one listed on VCB compatibility guide.

You could do what you suggest this way:

1- Backup to disk every VM with VCB. You need a supported backup software.

2- Backup the disk backup

However, it seems overkill to backup all VMs each day. You probably want to do incremental backups. That would eat less space, to start with.

[ir1shm1ike]

So theoretically, I could create a Consolidated Backup VM.....Backup my Vm's to disk....and then use my Acronis Imaging Software to take a backup of that disk where they are located. Incrementals I agree are something we would need to do. Does Consolidated Backup compress these??

[Jasemccarty]

The VCB box, has to be physical, as it has to have an HBA to talk directly to your SAN.

And you wouldn't back everything up to it, you only use it as a proxy.

[ir1shm1ike]

Ok. Now I am really confused. In the video I just watched he was using a VM for Consolidated Backup.

[ir1shm1ike]

I got it now. Thanks for the help.

[kix1979]

VMware Consolidated Backup, VCB for short, is an enabling technology. You should not think of VCB as a replacement for your current backup infrastructure, but rather as a means to get a more reliable and faster backup, not to mention have less impact on your VMs.

VCB is designed to offload the backup process from your ESX hosts. When running a backup job, regardless of location you use CPU for compression and scanning of files, Memory to run processes, Disk IO for reading files and Network for moving the files. ALL that can run on the VCB proxy host now, because it can access the VMFS volumes. So instead of impacting your production hosts, you can now use this proxy to run backups any time with virtually no impact to your ESX hosts.

Sounds great, right? It is, but there are caveats. You still need to have a backup solution that can leverage this transport. No enterprise in their right mind is going to use VCB alone, there is no compression, no scheduler, no intelligence, no catalog, no etc... So you still need to have something that can do all that, plus leverage the VCB technology either by direct integration or scripts.

Kix

[AustinPowers]

Two questions:

Will the VCB back up the VMDK files as images (much quicker than file-by-file if the VM's data volume has, for instance, 15 million small tiff files)?

Will Conslidated Backup work with an iSCSI SAN? I'm getting conflicting answers.

[AustinPowers]

OK, Three Questions:

Where do I find the VCB user documentation?

[kix1979]

Will the VCB back up the VMDK files as images (much quicker than file-by-file if

the VM's data volume has, for instance, 15 million small tiff files)?

Yes, you can do image level or mount the file system

Will Conslidated Backup work with an iSCSI SAN? I'm getting conflicting answers.

Yes it works, but NO it is not supported

OK, Three Questions:

Where do I find the VCB user documentation?

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_vm_backup.pdf

[mark_dormady]

Couple of questions on these steps:

VMware Consolidated Backup, to put it simply:

1- Take a snapshot of a VM

2- Mount disks of that VM on a special directory on the VCB proxy

3- Make the backup software backup that directory (so it backups the VM disks)

4- Dismount the VM disks

5- Remove the snapshot[/i].

***

1. The snapshot is in the same folders as the .vmdk files. Any other files created for the snapshot?

2. If I have a windows server that can see the LUNs of the HOST, do I just backup the snapshot file? Or , do I need to backup the .vmdk files as well. Since the .vmdk files can be large, the backup would take a long time. I guess I didnt understand number 2. Can you elaborate? Thanks,