Guidance on VCB and BackupExec

[Fulcrum72]

Sorry for the newbie-ish post on VCB.

I'm embarking down the path of VCB. Our backup software in house is Backup Exec 11d (and yes, I've heard all the bad press regarding its speed issue -- much booing and hissing).

The questions that I have are basically:

1. Can I install the VCB software on the the BackupExec Server? Or is this a really bad idea?

2. My backup exec server -- in fact, all my servers that are SAN attached -- is a boot-from-SAN server; will this cause problems when trying to back up my Virtual Machines?

[davidbarclay]

1) That's fine, in fact it simplifies the process. So longs as VC is not on that server.

2) That's fine too. What does matter is that the VMFS LUNs are presented in the same order, with the same LUN numbers to your ESX servers and your VCB server. If not, you need to fix that before it will work.

Dave

[Fulcrum72]

Could you elaborate a bit on point #2? I'm not a SAN guy, nor do I have access to manage the SAN. When I need space, I go to the SAN guy with hat in hand and ask politely.

How would I phrase the question or request such that it leave no ambiguity about what I need to get done?

Reading through the VCB notes, it also says that I need to run diskpart and disable automounts. Will that mess up the LUNS that are already mapped to the backup server?

[g-mac]

Fulcrum,

On #2, that's not really a question for your SAN guy but for the server guy. Your LUN numbers on the vcb proxy server must match the LUN numbers on your ESX server for each volume. In other words, LUN 2 on your ESX server must be LUN 2 on the proxy server.

[davidbarclay · Accepted solution]

>How would I phrase the question or request such that it leave no ambiguity

>about what I need to get done?

Gmac is spot on.

>Reading through the VCB notes, it also says that I need to run diskpart and

>disable automounts. Will that mess up the LUNS that are already mapped to

>the backup server?

It definately needs to be done to protect the VMFS LUNs from being overwritten by windows disk init.

No it won't mess up other LUNs, it just stops windows trying to automatically do things to new disks!

Dave

[Jeff1981]

1) That's fine, in fact it simplifies the process. So

longs as VC is not on that server.

David, why wouldn't you want VC and VCB on the same server?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

There's been some problems with VC and VCB on the same server

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=2297

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=59646&tstart=0

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=488277&#488277

[davidbarclay]

I really really do want it - believe me!

It breaks the templating functions of VC

Dave

[Jeff1981]

Well.... actually, I took over this infrastructure not too long ago, and VC and VCB were already installed on the same server. No problems here as far as I'm concerned. We're creating templates, cloning XP machines and customizing them without a problem. Perhaps I'm missing the point where the problem really lies?

[davidbarclay]

Are you sure? Windows guest customisations?

If so, can you post exact versions of VCB/VC/Windows etc so I can try it?

It would suprise me as these forums are littered with hundreds of people not able to get it working and VMware themself have said "it doesn't work, don't do it".

Dave

[Jeff1981]

Well, as I said, could be that I'm misinterpreting something here

This is what we do:

From a previously created template: Deploy VM

We give it a name and assign it to a cluster

Put it in a resource pool and assign a LUN to the Datastore

Customize using existing customization specification

Clicking Finish and we've got ourselves a working machine

If there's any difference in my actions and the ones that lead to the problem, please describe them and I will test them out

[hornsteb]

I have it functioning here as well just fine. I have VCB 1.0 and VirtualCenter 3.0.1. One issue I had though was every once a while when a machine created a snapshot through VCB it would shutdown. I discovered this was an issue with the HP VMM agents. I removed them and everything has been working great.