[THIN] Re: OT: VMWare backups

Joe,

Indeed, thats why I do not snapshot the files system if db's (ao) or db disks are involved, then I still use the combination of snapshotting the

OS & applications , the datafiles of the application are not snapshotted. But you are right, Microsoft Hyper V and

XenServer too, will quiesce the OS and applications, which makes the solution all the more flexible !

Regards,

 

Stefan

2008/10/8 Joe Shonk <joe.shonk@gmail.com>

The only problem with this method is it does not quiesce the OS and it's applications before taking the snapshot.  However, now with Hyper-V Microsoft has VSS support from the Parent Partition down the Application Level inside the Virtual Machine.

 

Joe

 

From: thin-bounce@freelists.org [mailto:thin-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Stefan Timmermans
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 1:41 PM
To: thin@freelists.org

Subject: [THIN] Re: OT: VMWare backups

 

Another alternative is to create a REDO log using the esx shell command (vmkfstools & vmware-cmd on ESX2.5.X) , make an tradional tapebackup of the vmdk

on the ESX host, you can choose between veritas netbackup, TSM (Tivoli storage manager) or even other file backup systems (see on the Vmware compatibility list) if  you open the firewal with esxcfg (on ESX3) , and after the backup  commit your redo (log) file to the main vmdk file. You don't need any special license or program , just use what ESX offers you ! Never had any incident in 3 years doing so and even had one planned disaster recovery  exercise on this completed succesfully.

Ususally I do it as follows: the C:\ or system drive is done like I explained to quickly recover your OS and applications. for data recovery you choose

for backups inside the Virtual machine like there are SQLbackupagents, Notesbackupagents , ....

 

Regards,

 

 

Stefan

 

2008/10/8 <jstrowe@rochester.rr.com>

Esxpress is a good product.  We just had to do a server restore from a corrupted database and the incrementals worked just fine to roll us back 4 days.

The best method of backup is a combination, i.e. traditional agent inside the virtual machine and a product like esxpress to grab the vmdk files et al at the linux level.

Both methods provide a pretty decent level of coverage.




Msg: #3 in digest
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:18:05 -0400
From: Tom Diroff <tdiroff@umich.edu>
Subject: [THIN] Re: OT: VMWare backups

 Hi
We use Esxpress ( esxpress.com) and have been pretty happy with it.

Good Luck

Tom Diroff
University of Michigan

Steve Snyder wrote: so how are ya'll backing up your virtuals?   Right now
we're backing up each virtual at their OS level, looking a vRanger to do a
back-end snapshot backup. Of course BUE 12.5 was just released which is
supposed to support vmware (and hyper-v) too.


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