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Network Backup Server - VM or Not

P

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Gawd
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Mar 15, 2002
Messages
782
Just wondering if you guys virtualize your network backup server such as Arcserve, BackupExec and etc?

I've thrown around the idea for quite sometime but have never really took it any further. If you do virtualize your backup server what software are you using?
 
we can't, since a VM cannot access the tape library.
 
Working at a software company that makes backup software. The answer is yes and no. :)

Does your backup server need physical access to what you are backing up to, such as tape? Then VM is a no go.

Does your backup server do a lot of processing/CPU/disk intensive things? Then VM is sort of a maybe.

Does your backup server just tell the backup agents where to send the data and just acts mainly like a management console? Heck, sure VM the machine.

In summary, like with any other thing you are looking to virtualize, look to see what the machine needs to do and then decided.
 
Yes we use Arcserve here at our locations. A friend of mine setup an ESXi box with a Win2003 VM and then installed Arcserve on that VM. He was able to add the Dell Powervault to the VM by adding the SCSI controller to that VM and it worked. However after about two weeks of running the database engine would no longer start on Arcserve so he ditched the setup. This same senario was repeated a couple of times with the same end result. Probably an Arcserve bug. The hardware was a Dell PE2950 III and a Dell PV 124T.

This is mainly why I posed the question. It seems it can be done even with a tape drive being used but as with the Arcserve testing it seems it may be a bit buggy running on a VM and I was curious if this was the norm with other vendors too. Then you also get into the whole debate of whether it is even feasible to virtualize your backup server or not. For my particular situation the datastores on the VMware server are local, no SAN.
 
Vm should be fine, just pass through the controller so it can see the tape device natively. You should be able to do that with Xen/KVM and a few others just fine. It's just as Scsi device, right?
 
we use networker with datadomain, and edl. tape is still available if needed. we will vm all our server/storage nodes in next few weeks. we will be 99% vm soon.
 
We did it a few times at my previous job, but it was always a major pain in the ass dealing with SCSI passthrough to a VM. It worked, but I swear we had 10x the tape drive problems we'd normally have. And we all know how much tape drives like to error out when you look at them wrong, so they'd don't need any more excuses.

And frankly, having your backup box completely separate from your production hardware just makes sense. A complete host recovery is faster, since you don't have to mess with rebuilding the backup box first. Also means you can do whatever the hell you want with the backup server and it won't affect anything in production. Give it a few cheap TB drives, and you can stage to disk during off hours and duplicate to tape during the day, and there's no hit on production systems at all.
 
We use a physical server as it needs access to iSCSI. I suppose a VM could technically still be used but you'd have to dedicate a nic on the physical server. when you have to start dedicating hardware it's sometimes easier to just use a real hardware machine.
 
I agree with Red Squirrel all the way. For storage, best to dedicate a physical machine to do the job.
 
I would not chance anything with your backups, as it is essential to your business (etc..)
Keep it on a dedicated machine and be done with it. Like I said I wouldn't want to chance anything with my backups.
 
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