Implementing Data Recovery

[vipes27]

We recently implemented vSphere Essentials Plus, which includes Data Recover but we don't have it installed yet. We're planning to get that going in the next few weeks and I'm trying to figure out the best way to use it. My understanding is your only option for backup is to a disk. I'm sure it depends on the VM, but is there a way to find out the size of what the backup file will be before we implement this? I was thinking of using a flash drive for each server, if possible, but maybe the backup will be much larger than the 16GB drives we have.

Thoughts?

[CRad14]

In gerenal, the size of the backup drive depends on a lot of factors

Two of which are

• Size of the VMs being backed up
• How often and how many backups are you going to keep

Other factors can include how similar the backups are to each other. For instance 2 Win2008 boxes will take up less room than a Win2003 and Win2008 box, just because some of the files can be deduplicated.

I would recommend checking out the VDR documentation

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vmware-data-recovery-administrators-gu...

[vipes27]

Does anyone know if it's even possible to backup the VMs to a flash drive using Data Recovery?

[CRad14]

I don't think so, it will only allow you to use datastores, so unless you can setup a flash drive as local storage, and use that, I don't think so...

I guess you could, but I am not sure how you would get it to work, and there is a good chance it wouldn't be supported by VMware, but don't quote me on that.

[vipes27]

This may be a lot of work, but could I back it up to a datastore and then copy it off of there onto a flash drive?

[CRad14]

Yes... but the vmdk file could be hundreds of GBs depending on how many VMs you have backed up to it.

[vipes27]

OK, so when you do a backup using Data Recovery, it puts them all in 1 file instead of 1 file for each server?

Thanks again for your help, I appreciate it.

[CRad14]

Correct it puts all the backups in one vmdk.

Please check the documentation for all the details, I am sure it explains it all better than I can.