Backup Exec 2012 VM backup guide

[Yan_Thung_Seng]

Dear all,

  We just upgraded to BE2012, and wish to understand the best practice guide for VM protect. Our enironment have 1 Vsphere 5.0 and majority of our servers already virtualized. The role and the relative requestion as follow

1. File Server - (windows 2k3 and 2k8r2)  some with RDM some direct VM for data volume.

Question a. in BE 2010, we used to do VM level backup and the file backup. So one server with multiple jobs. E.g.  weekly VM backup, weekly data file full backup and daily data file incremental backup. What is the best recommnedation on BE2012? Can we just have a job select OS volume, DATA volume (selected file) and system states and configure it to be weekly full and daily incremental? Does it protect the files and the complete VM as well?

2. SQL server- (2000, 2005)

Quesntion a. In BE2010, the VM GRT backup does take care of MS SQL DB, but it doesn't take care of tran Log. So even we run Log backup, it will fail and say the full backup not done by BE SQL. For the reason, we have to create multiple jobs e.g. full VM backup, Full DB backup, DB Log backup. It is really a challange to us as there are too many jobs to manage and we also have to ensure jobs will not conflict each other as we can't estimate the backup windows. How is the best practice in BE2012?

3. Server with SQL and File servers (physical, remote site)

Question.a. In BE2010, we are using client dedupe to protect remote site servers (10mbps link). They are usually DB server as well as file server. Accordingly to audit policy, we have to do DB full backup daily. The full backup in file may not be complete in one night. With Be2010, we are able to create 1 job, to configure daily full SQL backup and file incremantal. However the feature is missing in BE2012, so if we do incremental job for all, it become incremental file and DB Log backup :(. I foresee we need multiple jobs to configured to fulifill audit requirement and backup windows. Again, time windows estimation is going to be a challange. What is the recommnedation in this case?

I wish to hear your advise sooner. Thousand thanks in advance. 

[Manjunath_Rajan]

Please refer the below link for more info.

 http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO74443   

[Yan_Thung_Seng]

Thousand thanks for the prompt response. I read the link and just try to understand if there is no way to create lesser jobs? Also, the VM GRT for MS SQL still not compatible to with log backup and we need a separate job for full and log apart from VM backup right?

What about

3. Server with SQL and File servers (physical, remote site)

Question.a. In BE2010, we are using client dedupe to protect remote site servers (10mbps link). They are usually DB server as well as file server. Accordingly to audit policy, we have to do DB full backup daily. The full backup in file may not be complete in one night. With Be2010, we are able to create 1 job, to configure daily full SQL backup and file incremantal. However the feature is missing in BE2012, so if we do incremental job for all, it become incremental file and DB Log backup :(. I foresee we need multiple jobs to configured to fulifill audit requirement and backup windows. Again, time windows estimation is going to be a challange. What is the recommnedation in this case?

I wish to hear your advise sooner. Thousand thanks in advance. 

[pkh]

1) For those VM's with RDM disks, you would still need to back them up as if they are physical machines if you want to backup the RDM disks.

2) When you backup a VM with SQL databases, this backup does not truncate the log.  You would need a separate job to backup the databases, and then backup and truncate the logs.  In BE 2012, log backups is another job method, just like doing an incremental backup.  You would need a full backup of your database before you can do a log backup.

3) It would be easier to manage if you separate your file and SQL database backups.