VCB: Backing up/Duplicating Virtual Machines to iSCSI/NFS store

[mcsooper]

My boss and coworkers expressed concern with storing all of our Virtual Machines on one SAN, so I have been tasked with getting a relatively low cost standby solution in place.

We currently have an Fiber SAN in place, and I'd like to put an iSCSI SAN in place and have the Virtual Machines images backed up to it on a weekly basis and have those images be able to go live when needed and then apply a snightly incrimental backup that are already currently being excecuted. Is this possible with VCB? Does it support doing a copy-style back up to another VMFS store or to a NFS store? If not, is there a 3rd party package that can do that?

Thanks,

Michael

[Tooms]

I do backup from one store to another by using this script that i have made

the script is just using the build in VCB backup function.

[mcsooper]

Nice script! After the backup has been done are the files able to be opened as a normal VM or would I have to do a restore? In other words does it just do a straight copy while the VM is still running?

[Tooms]

it is using VCB to make a "export" version of the running VM, so it is only using the disk space that there is used in the VM and not the full size.

Because it is a "export" version of the VM, you have to do a restore of it, but look at my link there is a sample of how todo it.

[ctfoster]

You could also consider something like ESXReplicator, although it may not meet the 'low cost' requirement.

We're are planning to do something similar but in our case it's iSCSI to local store.

[petedr]

Hey mcsooper.

My company's backup product esXpress may be a solution for you. As a straight backup product we can create Hot Delta VM image backups and send them to you iSCSI SAN. However also included in the licensed versions of our backup product we include something called simple replication. This is more then just sending a VM backup to disk but will automatically restore then on the replicated esx host. Normally this is done with 2 hosts and a backup target in between where the backups are sent to the target and then the replicated host looks on that target and automatically restores the backups ( Full or Delta ). However I think esxpress can be configured to do the replication using your single host and the iSCSI SAN.

Pete@esxpress

[mcsooper]

Thanks for the help, but there seems to be some confusion of what I'm looking to do.

We currently have 3 ESX Servers using VM's that are stored on a Fiber SAN for HA and DRS. So host storage is not available to us. I would like to do full copy-level backups to an iSCSI SAN (or NFS if need be) without powering down the VM's.

[ctfoster]

Neither ESXReplicator or the esXpress products <require> local storage - it's just where the copies are going in my solution. I'm sure both

products are capable of giving you a FC - iSCSI/NFS hot copy solution using VM's placed in Snapshot mode.

[petedr]

mcsooper,

With esXpress that is not an issue, it doesn't require local storage for its Hot VM image backups ( Full and Delta ) nor for using Simple Replication. These are the places we can send backups to, network targets ( ftp/ssh/smb ) and also to vmfs. The vmfs can be on your iSCSI SAN but must be defined as a vmfs.

Good luck with your evaluations, one thing I always recommend is to evaluate a couple of different alternatives to determine what is the best solution for your environment.

Pete@esxpress

[Roman_Romano]

Have you had a look at VISBU - Virtual Infrastructure Scripted Backup Utility?

Hope that helps you somewhat.

Regards