VMware snapshots and Backup Exec 20.1
We are a schoolhouse, so I'm sure that I am using Backup Exec and VMware differently than most organizations. With that said, I have over 2800 virtual machines to backup across 16 ESXi 6.5 servers. I...
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Colin -- thanks for the response -- that is pretty much what I thought was going on based on the research that I had done.
I do have a follow-up question:
Since there is an agent for VMware that is loaded, is there any thought to using that agent to allow backup of the VMFS file system? This would allow for backup of snapshots (since they are simply additional files on the file system).
We understand that we are doing things in a "not recommended" way, but even the VMware instructor we brought in couldn't recommend any other method that could get us what we need to accomplish in a timely manner. When a student makes a mistake in the VM environment, we don't have time to restore from tape. On the other hand, I have plenty of drive space on the ESXi servers, but not so much on the Backup Exec server -- is it possible for Backup Exec to use that space for disk-based backups? That would allow us to use instant recover and GRT, I believe.
Thanks for any thoughts you might have in this instance.
the agent for Vmware is just a name for the licesne that provides the ability to backup VMs using VMware's snapshot mechanism - it is not a specific program that you install on the VMware hosts
Technically VMware hosts run a form of Linux (but not a form supported by our RALUS agent to that won't help you)
Evene if we could somehow backup from VMFS, I would also have concerns about how we would backup the metadata that links all the snapshots together with the orignal VM disks images as this is likely to be way more complicated than just the files inside VMFS. Which is why I said you would need a DR product (if such a thing exists) for Vmware itself and to not be using any kind of backup product that is designed to protect VMs using snapshots. As such no we are not thinking of providing any method to directly backup the content of VMFS within Backup Exec (and I doubt any backup vendor whose VMware offerings use the in-built snapshot mechanism are considering such an idea either.)
You should perhaps bear in mind that it does not take very long to install a VMware host to the level that restores of all VMs can be performed using our current model. Meaning a DR requirement for the hosts itself has limited return of investment (both for us as developers and for prospective customers as a cost we would have to pass on as unique licensing.)
Unfortunately you cannot use disks provisioned for VMFS for Backup Exec as Backup Exec requires NTFS for such storage and if you zone your VMFS storage to windows and let NTFS disk signatures be written, then it will corrupt VMFS. You could of course open CIFS shares inside disks owned by a Windows VM , but that would be kind of self defeating and would also have performance issues.
I can understand why you are using snapshots with your students as that makse sense. I am not sure why you need backups for such setups - or is that something to do with how you reset between each intake of students instead of how you reset for a student making a mistake in the middle of a course?
