09-20-2013 10:53 AM
Hi,
I've been reading the admin guide and various forums, but am quite confused as to the best way to utilize BackupExec, VMware, DeDup and Synthetic backups.
I'm NOT interested in doing backups that require agents (as I may not have control at the OS level)
I'm NOT interested in doing full backups on a weekly basis (to avoid network/SAN traffic)
What I am interested in is as (roughly) as follows
Reasoning
Presently I'm unable to select Synthetic backup when when the vCenter is selected as source. Synthetic is only availabe when I select a single computer as protected through vCenter backup
Please advice on the best strategy.
Sincerely
Mikkel
09-20-2013 12:40 PM
Hello
What version of Backup Exec are you using? Have you purchased the Deduplication Option?
09-20-2013 06:45 PM
09-20-2013 06:45 PM
You cannot do synthetic backups with a dedup folder and you cannot do synthetic backup with a VM backup.
09-23-2013 12:14 AM
To add to pkh and teviva-boy's valid comments
Whilst you can do VMware (AVVI) backup that allows the capability to restore indivdiual files (known as GRT) without a remote agent installed, you cannot do a GRT restore back to the original server without a remote agent installed. Option are:
1) Redirect to another location and then manually move the files back to the original servers
2) Install the remote agent inside your VMs (and make sure the media server has nework access to those VMs
For info VMware (AVVI) backups use the VMware snapshot process (via vStorage API) to in effect backup the VMDK files. Whilst this process does support Incrememantal backups of the VMDK files at a block level, because Synthetic backups are actually a function of remote agent file system backups, then they are not compatible with the vStorage process.
09-23-2013 04:58 AM
Hi,
I appreciate all the comments, but am left somewhat disappointed.
I'm fully aware of filelevel backups without the RAWS installed on the guest machines - and do use it.
Not being able to do synthetic backups of virtual machines is - in my book - a rather large short coming. Having used Veeam for a number of years, that is one thing I really use a lot.
I guess I'll go back to the end user and tell them to rethink their backup strategy.
/Mikkel
09-23-2013 05:22 AM
I take it you are aware that an Incremental VMware backup does result in only needing 1 job to restore the whole VM in a DR scenario as BE then selects all the media behind the scenes to assemble all the separet incremental and full backup sets.
Also the Dedup option means an overall storage saving, as such the Synthetic option does not really give much visible differences to an end user apart from the ability to always end up with a full backup on tape even though you initially ran incremental backups.
09-23-2013 05:25 AM
Hi,
I do realise that, and it's a requirement to do off site tape storage that this particular client needs. Hence the need to do syntehtic backups.
/Mikkel