VMware backups for Lotus Domino Server VM's - What are the options?
Environment
- NBU 7.1 (master server SLES11)
- NBU 7.1 (vmware backup host Windows Server 2003)
- vSphere 4.1 U1
- Lotus Domino 8.5 on Windows Server 2003 Virtual Machines
With this environment: Is the only option to 'efficiently' backup Lotus Domino servers (emails and databases) to use a NBU Client and the NBU Notes DB Agent inside the Guest OS? and perform Full and Incrementals.
Reason for my question is I have tried the NetBackup for VMware backup method with Mapped Full VM, BLIB option, Exclude unused and deleted blocks, Full and Incremental schedules, ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES. The resultant backup size between Full and Incrementals is not much different. The total file numbers backed up IS different.
Example (data taken from the columns in Activity Monitor):
Full Backup of Domino Server = 301GB (Files: 60045)
next Incremental = 274GB (Files: 1450)
My initial understanding is that every day databases and email .nsf files seem to get changed, at least their timestamp on the filesystem is updated, and I presume that Indexing and Compression happens on each of these files regularly so the VMware Method is just not fit for the job.
Have not found a definitive answer to this or a decent paper to discuss protection for Lotus Domino servers in the Virtual environment.
Similar question posed on IBM's site, but no comments.
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd85forum.nsf/dba3ca7e515d55ff85256a0700727b35/2012c566df5821248525782c005b45a5?OpenDocument
What solutions are you using?
