VMware Backup - ESX or vCenter
Hello,
when I configure backups for VMware VMs over the vCenter Server - where does the BE-Server connect to? To the vCenter Server oder directly to the ESX(i)-Server on which the VM is running?
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Before getting into the Backup speed, let me explain you the process:
This is the Backup process:
- Backup Exec backup job starts
- Backup Exec tells VMware to create a snapshot of VMDK through vCenter
- vCenter creates and mounts the snapshot to the datacenter and it now becomes the "active" snapshot (virtual machine is now running from that snaphsot)
- Backup Exec then gets the ESX host and guest virtual machine information from vCenter it needs to access or backup
- Backup Exec opens a connection with the ESX to ask for the virtual machine metadata
- Using vStorage APIs, Backup Exec then opens a direct data connection to the “unknown” SAN volumes and the virtual machine data is offloaded directly to the media server for backup
- “Extracting the Backup Data from the Target Virtual Machine”
- “Deleting the Temporary Snapshot”
- Once the backup completes, Backup Exec disconnects from the ESX host and vCenter
- Backup Exec runs a verify (by default) of the data backed up
- Backup job completes.
The backup performance is determined by the Transport mode in which the backup takes place. If you go the Job properties and choose Vmware, there are 4 different transport modes. (SAN, NBD, HOTADD & NBDSSL). Once the job begins, If Backup exec server has accesss to the SAN, then the job runs through SAN transport. Otherwise it runs through NBD. NBD will be relatively slow when compared to SAN. However SAN transport is not possible if BE is also installed on a VM.
This article may be helpfull to get some idea about the options available for Vmware backup: http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO12794
Hope this helps.
Regards,
John
