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Best single-hit, single-server VM backup solution?

R

Ronco

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I'm looking for an economical (and that means tapebased) VM backup solution for a server running off Hyper-V or Vmware. One that would back up all the VM's on one server to one tape or autoloader. I'm not sure if it exists even but this is the ideal situation for me - that I can do a one-hit backup of all the VM's on one physical machine and be able to restore one or all.

Acronis is one of my fave general families of backup products, but it seems like their use-appropriate solution only backs up one VM per tape.

As far as economy goes, I can tolerate a one-off hit of $3 - 5K for the software (and if necessary, additional hardware beyond the LTO drive) and as a separate cost, the tapes. If it gets down to non-tape solutions then things get more expensive and I'd want to avoid it, since I'm aiming for a daily backup for a month + monthly tapes.

Any recommendations? Thanks
 
I will ave to think about it, and get back to you. There's a couple of ideas that I have, but they all involve at the very least, a temporary holding pool on the machine with the LTO drive. Now, some questions:

How big are your VMs on a per machine, and number of machines basis?
what is your predicted backup policy looking like? (weekly full, 6 incrementals...keeping the weekly fulls for a month?)
what LTO generation are we talking about?
what is the interconnect between the VM server and the backup server?
do you need file level backup and restore, or just image level?
have you considered imaging to a NAS device as an option, or is there a specific need to go to tape (for off-site, for instance)?


doesn't Ronco make something for this? Hell, they make a Pocket Fisherman :D
 
3-4VM's, ~80Gb per VM. These are mainly utility servers, and they do store data but we're not talking about Exchange Servers or anything like that. SQL servers dealing with a few-gig databases, BES, disaster continuity syncers / pointers for Exchange, etc.

File-level not necessary. I'm working on the assumption that if anything does go wrong, it will be quicker given the backup window to just slap the VM back on.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/en/WF05a/12169-304612-3446236-3446236-3446236-3239093.html
I wasn't able to get a straight-up answer as to whether ODBR would be supported in a Hyper-V/VMware environment - and anyway, that would solely cover a all-restore.

The tape drive is currently slated to be installed on the server itself. There's nowhere else practically speaking that it could be installed, as the primary server would be busy backing itself up during the backup time window. But I'm open to suggestions.

Tape rotation will be a cartridge a day over the course of a month, with a separate month end tape. Imaging to NAS not an option, and neither is an Internet backup of everything - as the location will be on 2Mb SDSL.
 
VCB plus BackupExec 12.5. IMHO.

Acronis will work with VCB - you have to script more VMs in a manual VCB script, then back up a directory, but it's possible.
 
lopoetve said:
VCB plus BackupExec 12.5. IMHO.

Acronis will work with VCB - you have to script more VMs in a manual VCB script, then back up a directory, but it's possible.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... Not what I wanted to hear. I can see how it could be possible, but there is the time issue. The only time when backups can be done is during the night.

The idea for this particular setup is - or rather, possibly was - only to have two physical servers. First server will be running Win 2008 SBS, although 2003 SBS is an option - although really I want the enhanced features of SBS 2008. As I said, during the backup window (night) the SBS server will be busy backing up itself onto it's own built-in ultrium - and this will be a large backup every day, since it's Exchange and files. So it's unlikely, even if the main server were to be tasked with running VCB, that it would have the time window - and besides, the cartridge will have to be changed.

Does this mean I'll need three servers to get this done with a dedicated proxy Windows 2003 machine outfitted with the Ultrium instead (and BE 12.5) for VCB? Because that creates some issues.

And a related but supplementary question - VCB is included in the Essentials Plus bundle, isn't it?
 
Microsoft DPM. But its probably not affordable. great for hyperv backup/snapshots to disk and/or tapes.
 
4saken said:
Microsoft DPM. But its probably not affordable. great for hyperv backup/snapshots to disk and/or tapes.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. Hyper-V is still an option, but VSphere is looking a tad more attractive at the moment - so a H-V only solution is not super-attractive. I didn't really look into DPM though so thanks for the heads-up - I'll look it over.
 
definatly VCB, super easy to work with. I wrote my own powrrshell VCB backup script that's kicked off from a scheduled task. I do a LAN free backup (backup server has access to the VMFS LUNs on my NetApp filer) and store my backups on a promise DAS as a staging area.
I won't get into the backup software itself, haha, but backup exec is nice.
 
Here is a big question for everyone.

What would you LIKE to see in a solution for backing up VMs?
 
Nothing more than what VCB properly set up offers :)

The whole point is image level and file level backups both, which it gives you. SAN based, or vmkernel datamover based, so performance is good, and written by the people that wrote the api, so it cleans up nice.
 
I wrote that wrong. :)

I should have put it better as in how would you like it presented in a GUI form.
Is what Veeam is giving enough?


The way I understand it is the following:


What's needed:
VCB installed on the VMS server (works with ESX and vSpehere)
-> This installs the tools vcbMounter.exe and vcbVmName.exe

Parameters

Necessary
hostname: ESX(i)/VMS Hostname
User
Password
tempfolder: Temporary directory where the VM snapshot will be supplied for beeing backed up

Optional
backuptype: file/full: File backup or full (snapshot) backup?
fileset: If <file>
loglevel (optional): Verbosity

For selected VM
UUID: UUID of the VM to be backed up. This comes from the call of the vcbVmName.exe command.

Execution
What has to be called to list the machines, supply the VM for backup and remove the supplied machine.

#List of machines
vcbVmName.exe -h <hostname> -u <user> -p <password> -s Any

Result:
Found VM:
moref:vm-670
name:agu-winxp-vm
uuid:5020f969-b442-c170-9882-30a532533415
ipaddr:172.16.10.229
Found VM:
moref:vm-672
name:HFZ Build (W2K)
uuid:502880c8-dd1e-6358-5690-a7ed8a43ce84
ipaddr:172.16.10.235


#Pre (Mount)
1. vcbMounter.exe -h <hostname> -u <user> -p <password> -m nbd [-L <loglevel>] -a uuid:<UUID> -r <tempfolder> -t <backuptype>

#Backup
2. Full backup: Store content of <tempfolder>
2. File backup: Use given <fileset> to select the files to store. Drives and files where available in the <tempfolder>

#Post (Dismount)
3. vcbMounter.exe -h <hostname> -u <user> -p <password> [-L <loglevel>] -U <tempfolder>
 
The issue is time. I need to be able to back up directly to tape. NAS intermediaries, etc would take too much time. Surely a two-step solution can't be my only option?
 
-m nbd is only of you don't have an array connection.
uuid is a silly way to identify hte VM too - use IP or name. :)
you also forgot -Q (quiesce) :)
 
Ronco said:
The issue is time. I need to be able to back up directly to tape. NAS intermediaries, etc would take too much time.
Click to expand...

Not possible in one program unless copying from inside the guests, as far as I know.
 
Ronco said:
The issue is time. I need to be able to back up directly to tape. NAS intermediaries, etc would take too much time. Surely a two-step solution can't be my only option?
Click to expand...

If you stage it to the Proxy, then does it really matter how long it takes to get to tape as long as it is done by your next backup?
 
AceXsmurF said:
If you stage it to the Proxy, then does it really matter how long it takes to get to tape as long as it is done by your next backup?
Click to expand...

Well - if the backups stayed on site, perhaps. But the tapes have to be taken away every day.

Staging to a third physical server will take 5-6 hours for 4 ~80Gb VM's, plus another 6-8 hours for tape backup. Assuming we start the backup at 7pm, it could be late morning until the backup is complete. And typically the DPS courier will be coming in at lunchtime. That's cutting it awfully close. This is why I'm looking for a one-hit solution.
 
Ronco said:
Well - if it were a typical enthusiast setup and the backups stayed on side, perhaps. But the tapes have to be taken away every day.

Staging to a third physical server will take 5-6 hours for 4 ~80Gb VM's, plus another 6-8 hours for tape backup. Assuming we start the backup at 7pm, it could be late morning until the backup is complete. And typically the DPS courier will be coming in at lunchtime. That's cutting it awfully close.
Click to expand...

I do know of a backup program that you can load directly on the ESX(i) server OS and backup directly to tape..though it might bring the ESX(i) server to it's knees during the backup process. It is something that we don't suggest doing.
 
AceXsmurF said:
I do know of a backup program that you can load directly on the ESX(i) server OS and backup directly to tape..though it might bring the ESX(i) server to it's knees during the backup process. It is something that we don't suggest doing.
Click to expand...

Since the server won't be used during the night, as long as it doesn't affect the core stability of the server during the daytime I don't really care whether it's causing a heavy load during backup.
 
fwiw, installing anything in the esxi console is not supported. ESX sure, but not the busybox.
 
what is your opinion about esxpress vmware backup and how they do things?

It looks sorta interesting how they are doing their backups, though I have no idea how much it costs nor if it works very well at all
 
We use BE with the agent (of course using VCB). FC connected san. 500 GB lun for temp storage for backups (no VM exceeds 500GB). FC LTO4 tape library. All this runs on the vCenter server.

A windows VM with 80GB disk space (current usage is only maybe 6GB) takes about 1 minute and 30 seconds to backup. That includes making the snap, copying to temp, and temp to tape. Even if the VMDKs are full, that's 20 minutes max. In your case - 4 VMs would take less than an hour and a half with this setup.

Our VM environment is by far the fastest infractucture of ours to backup.

I would also be wary of any products that don't use VCB as their core for backups. Although you can copy a VM to and from a host using SCP, it won't be aligned when you copy it back. I'll let lopoetve comment about that one...
 
If I went that way, yeah I'm sure it can be quick. The issue is economics given the number of people involved, how much I'm willing to spend on this, etc. I'd like to keep the spending pretty minimal.

esxpress's beginning blurb is kind of the key point: You virtualised all this s**t, and you need even more s**t to make sure you can rely on the s**t as a whole. Three physical servers is the max I can go given the general budget and also the space they all have to be crammed into. However, I need three separate servers to start with, and possibly five at most. So basically virtualisation is the only answer.
 
SpaceHonkey said:
We use BE with the agent (of course using VCB). FC connected san. 500 GB lun for temp storage for backups (no VM exceeds 500GB). FC LTO4 tape library. All this runs on the vCenter server.

A windows VM with 80GB disk space (current usage is only maybe 6GB) takes about 1 minute and 30 seconds to backup. That includes making the snap, copying to temp, and temp to tape. Even if the VMDKs are full, that's 20 minutes max. In your case - 4 VMs would take less than an hour and a half with this setup.

Our VM environment is by far the fastest infractucture of ours to backup.

I would also be wary of any products that don't use VCB as their core for backups. Although you can copy a VM to and from a host using SCP, it won't be aligned when you copy it back. I'll let lopoetve comment about that one...
Click to expand...

Yep. SCP is good for getting things off, horrible for getting them back. Causes all sorts of performance issues. Not to mention that it'll be hard for the vmkernel to deal with it till you get the thing reconsolidated.
 
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