Forum Discussion

Nithya1's avatar
Nithya1
Level 3
7 years ago

To know the feasibility of snapshot level backup of virtual machines on RHEV

Hello All,

As far as backing up a VM hosted on ESXi host in VMware is concerned netbackup we will be able to backup and recover a complete VM via SAN by configuring in the VMWare policy type.

Likewise, We have our RHEV environment where multiple VM's are hosted. I would like to know if snapshot level backup via SAN is possible for the VM hosted in RHEV?

Can someone help me with this at the earliest possible?

Thanks in advance.
  • Backing up VMware using SAN snapshot is a quickest way to get a pile of rubbish. The backup of VMware must be taken through VADP (NBU supports it) and then can be read from SAN, but it's not a SAN-level snapshot. Restoring VMware VMs through SAN is usually slower, unless you are restoring a thick-provisioned VM due to the way VMFS works.

    Conversely, RHEV backup and restore API is not supported by NBU and there is no way to snap a running RHEV VM in a supported way using NBU alone. There are third-party tools certified by Red Hat, such as vProtect which can integrate with NBU for a consistent backup of RHEV VMs, however it won't be a SAN snapshot either.

  • The good new is that RHEV is on the roadmap for NBU snapshot level backup.
    Bad news is that there is not yet indication of when this will happen.

    You need to reach out to Product Management via your local Veritas office.
    The more requests that are officially brought to PM, the more chances you have that it will receive a higher priority.

    In the meantime, you can have a look at Statement of Support for NetBackup 7.x and 8.x in a Virtual Environment:    http://www.veritas.com/docs/000006177

    Extract: 
    Support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization NetBackup can be used to protect virtual machines within Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) deployments and the RHEV Manager. For more information, see the following Red Hat Reference Architecture document: https://access.redhat.com/articles/340293

    The Redhat docs are old, but still relevant. 
    Another one:   https://access.redhat.com/articles/216393

  • Backing up VMware using SAN snapshot is a quickest way to get a pile of rubbish. The backup of VMware must be taken through VADP (NBU supports it) and then can be read from SAN, but it's not a SAN-level snapshot. Restoring VMware VMs through SAN is usually slower, unless you are restoring a thick-provisioned VM due to the way VMFS works.

    Conversely, RHEV backup and restore API is not supported by NBU and there is no way to snap a running RHEV VM in a supported way using NBU alone. There are third-party tools certified by Red Hat, such as vProtect which can integrate with NBU for a consistent backup of RHEV VMs, however it won't be a SAN snapshot either.

    • Nithya1's avatar
      Nithya1
      Level 3
      Thank you so much for the quick response. Do we have any document related to RHEV??
    • Nithya1's avatar
      Nithya1
      Level 3
      Thank you so much for the quick response. Do we have any document related to RHEV??
      • Marianne's avatar
        Marianne
        Level 6

        The good new is that RHEV is on the roadmap for NBU snapshot level backup.
        Bad news is that there is not yet indication of when this will happen.

        You need to reach out to Product Management via your local Veritas office.
        The more requests that are officially brought to PM, the more chances you have that it will receive a higher priority.

        In the meantime, you can have a look at Statement of Support for NetBackup 7.x and 8.x in a Virtual Environment:    http://www.veritas.com/docs/000006177

        Extract: 
        Support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization NetBackup can be used to protect virtual machines within Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) deployments and the RHEV Manager. For more information, see the following Red Hat Reference Architecture document: https://access.redhat.com/articles/340293

        The Redhat docs are old, but still relevant. 
        Another one:   https://access.redhat.com/articles/216393

  • There are a lot of RedHat articles about RHEV & NetBackup but they are all about traditional standard (and MS-Windows) policies. Most of the documentation (from 2011) include some references about BMR. So they just protect the VM as if they were physical machines, with an agent.

    An API was released that should allow to make RHEV snapshots for backup & restore software but I haven't seen it in use. I've heard about third party software that could integrate NetBackup with RHEV snapshots but I haven't tried it yet.

    Related links:
    https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/doc/NB_70_80_VE
    https://access.redhat.com/articles/340293
    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=922475