VM Backups

Sin_Chase

Sin_Chase

Sin_Chase

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13 Jan 2004
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I've read the VMWare white papers and seen some solutions but just wanted to see if anyone had any advice/input on backing up VMware machines.

I am looking for Full Machine based backups as opposed to file level backups from within the VM itself.

Small client so cost is a concern.

Have considered Powered Down backups of the VM files. Portability is a must - E.g. Disaster recovery on another VM Host.
 
We started out doing the power down/Export at night routine but found sometimes the VM's would get locked out and not restart correctly.

We now use Veeam to backup all VM's to hard drive then write them to tape using NT backup.

IIRC Veeam was £600 (ish) for a two Socket (2xCPU) license, they do have a free trial http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup.html which I suggest you try out.
 
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Do they have VI licenses?

If so the new data recovery will take care of it nicely by the looks of things
 
You sure its 100Mb? The most i've ever seen on a 100Mb line is ~13Mbps on a good day. I only used it briefly (veeam that is). I was discussing it today with someone actually.

NB: Its worth noting in this thread (as an FYI) VMWare does NOT support USB Hard Disks (crap i know), you cannot pass through USB disks even using Raw Device Mappings or even mapping the usb ports through to the VM. I have had a few heated debates with VM on this as i dont see any reason why it cannot be done.
 
I dont really see any reason why you would want to use a small scale/home storage solution (usb disks) on an enterprise virtualisation platform...
 
Sin_Chase said:
I've read the VMWare white papers and seen some solutions but just wanted to see if anyone had any advice/input on backing up VMware machines.

I am looking for Full Machine based backups as opposed to file level backups from within the VM itself.

Small client so cost is a concern.

Have considered Powered Down backups of the VM files. Portability is a must - E.g. Disaster recovery on another VM Host.
Click to expand...

Check if VCB supports whatever backup software you already are comfortable with / are licenced for. Might be the cheapest option, and may not mean replacing what they already have.
 
We are running a couple of small vmware servers but soon we shall be migrating onto a cluster of dell servers with SAN . What is the best way to be backing up the current vmware server install? Literally copying the VM files? 100% system disk copy to backup machine? Using additional 3rd party software? The goal would be to be able to bring the system back up as fast as possible in event of failure.
 
SMN said:
You sure its 100Mb? The most i've ever seen on a 100Mb line is ~13Mbps on a good day. I only used it briefly (veeam that is). I was discussing it today with someone actually.
Click to expand...

The VM server nic is a Gbit but the NAS is only 100mb so yes its 100mb, there is only one switch between them so I guess that could be helping but its still on the normal user segment of our network, it does all run at night though when the network is doing bugger all.

There is also an option in Veeam called something like console option (it's been a while since I set this up) which does increase the speed by quite a bit, I don't know if this is something that was added in the latest version but the backup speed does double or there abouts. :)

Anyway, seeing as you can try it for free why not at least give it a go in your test environment (OP).
 
whitecrook said:
We are running a couple of small vmware servers but soon we shall be migrating onto a cluster of dell servers with SAN . What is the best way to be backing up the current vmware server install? Literally copying the VM files? 100% system disk copy to backup machine? Using additional 3rd party software? The goal would be to be able to bring the system back up as fast as possible in event of failure.
Click to expand...

If you're moving to a SAN then VCB is the "correct" way of doing it.

However, if you upgrade to vsphere (VI4) then you can use the new VMware data protection feature that is much more streamlined. Full integration with virtualcenter, image level backups to an SMB share that are deduplicated and compressed. Then you can recover individual files if you wish

http://www.vmware.com/solutions/continuity/dataprotection.html
 
We use VrangerPro for doing VM backups.
Will back em up while online and gives you option of where to back them up to.
Licensed per CPU on the VM server.
You can also take a backed up VM and mount the disk on a running VM to restore an individual file. Havent tried that out yet.
 
Shoei said:
We use VrangerPro for doing VM backups.
Will back em up while online and gives you option of where to back them up to.
Licensed per CPU on the VM server.
You can also take a backed up VM and mount the disk on a running VM to restore an individual file. Havent tried that out yet.
Click to expand...

We use this as well. Its very simple to use and pretty quick.

Andy
 
J.T said:
The VM server nic is a Gbit but the NAS is only 100mb so yes its 100mb, there is only one switch between them so I guess that could be helping but its still on the normal user segment of our network, it does all run at night though when the network is doing bugger all.

There is also an option in Veeam called something like console option (it's been a while since I set this up) which does increase the speed by quite a bit, I don't know if this is something that was added in the latest version but the backup speed does double or there abouts. :)

Anyway, seeing as you can try it for free why not at least give it a go in your test environment (OP).
Click to expand...

The fact of the matter is 10/100 can only support just a smidgen over 12MB/s - so anything higher means one of two things:

1. The software is giving a 'comparison' speed, that is, it's telling you how fast it's going but including what it's managed to shave off via compression. Rsync does this...
2. Your gigabit device is flooding the NAS with data that it can't process and thw switch doesn't have flow control configured, causing the buffers on your switch to become flooded, and eventually the switch will dump its buffers and start again - leading to really slow transfer times. (Though the method used will differ depending on the quality of the switch)

Something to check on anyway! :)
 
It's option 1, after I posted I went and did a bit of digging around. ;)

From what I can tell it's the Console option thingy, it compresses the data as it transfers it, or somthing along those lines anyway. :)

We are still happy with it though (does the job), would be a hell of a lot faster on a SAN though.
 
Our current method is.... suspend VM > make local copy > rsync to local storage server > rsync to remote backup server. It does this every night.
 
I went with Veeam in the end after trailling vRanger and esXpress.

Veeam replication is dog slow but the backup product achieved near-wire-speed over gigabit LAN which is plenty for me. Worth installing the trial at least!
 
DRZ said:
I went with Veeam in the end after trailling vRanger and esXpress.

Veeam replication is dog slow but the backup product achieved near-wire-speed over gigabit LAN which is plenty for me. Worth installing the trial at least!
Click to expand...

How much did that set you back? We're thinking about moving to such a product but money's always a problem =/
 
slylittlefox said:
How much did that set you back? We're thinking about moving to such a product but money's always a problem =/
Click to expand...

Its licenced per CPU so in my case it was 4 licences required (Two dual quad core servers). Off the top of my head its about £400 per CPU.

At the moment, if you can demonstrate that you are moving to Veeam from another backup product they will give you a discount of 50%, which is obviously a plus!
 
Has anyone tried VMware data recovery yet?

I'm in the process of moving to vSphere and it's one of the driving factors - looks like it might be the answer to my prayers :)

Only just got to the stage of migrating to vCenter 4.0 so far though...
 
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