Best Options for backing up a small VMWare Site

[Norm_Wesley]

We have VMWare VSphere 4.0 U1 - it's the free version.  It's installed on a decent Dell PowerEdge R710 with lots of space and an attached MD1000 - about 2 TB of useage storage space.

In it, I have 7 Virutal machines - mostly Windows 2008 (not R2) and a couple Windows 2003 Standard servers.

We also run Exchange 2007.

Backing up this environment is BUE 2010 with SP1, installed on a Dell R310 with a LTO4 tape attached.

We own the following licenses and maintenance is up for renewal:

-1 Exchange Agent

-3 Windows Agents

-1 Main Server (installed on R310 - a physical box)

So we need to buy renewals for the licenses we own and we need to buy 2 new Windows Agents.  But because this is a VMWare environment, I thought that it might be better to buy the VMWare agent.  I am a bit confused though and have two questions:

1) Can the VMWare Virtual agent backup all my virtual machines even though this version of VMWare is free?

2) Should I consider upgrading to BUE 2010 R3 to reduce the amount of redundant data that is being backed up (or do I need to buy a separate Agent/Option that allows me to do the deduplication that is noted in the above article)

3) I have another 3 sites that all have VMWare installed (VSphere - Free version) and each site has 2 or 3 virtual machines on a single physical host.  They all run SBS 2008 and have BUE 2010 installed together on one of the virtual O/S's.  In these environments, there is a LTO3 tape drive connected to the actual VMWare server and it's associated with the SBS Virtual O/S - where we have BUE installed.  If I buy the VM Agent, can it work in this configuration or will it only work when the backup server is installed on it's own physical box?

Sorry for the stupid questions - I've used BUE for a number of years, but I don't backup the actual VM's themselves, instead I backup just the Operating Systems with the backup exec agents as the VMWare opiton is a bit expensive and not always justified when there are only 1 or 2 actual servers installed on one physical box. 

[pkh]

1) Can the VMWare Virtual agent backup all my virtual machines even though this version of VMWare is free?

No.  You need the paid version because BE uses the vStorage API to backup the VM.

2) Should I consider upgrading to BUE 2010 R3 to reduce the amount of redundant data that is being backed up (or do I need to buy a separate Agent/Option that allows me to do the deduplication that is noted in the above article)

Dedup is a paid option and you need a 64-bit media server.

3) I have another 3 sites that all have VMWare installed (VSphere - Free version) and each site has 2 or 3 virtual machines on a single physical host.  They all run SBS 2008 and have BUE 2010 installed together on one of the virtual O/S's.  In these environments, there is a LTO3 tape drive connected to the actual VMWare server and it's associated with the SBS Virtual O/S - where we have BUE installed.  If I buy the VM Agent, can it work in this configuration or will it only work when the backup server is installed on it's own physical box?

If BE is installed in a VM, then the AVVI agent cannot be used for the physical host containing this VM.

[Simon_B_]

Regarding 3) I can't imagine why this would not work. Sure, you cannot backup the Virtual Machine containing the BE installation via AVVI snapshots. But it should be possible to take AVVI backups of other guest OS running on the same ESX server

[Norm_Wesley]

Thank you all for your comments.  I appreciate the help.

I guess I need to upgrade them to VSphere Essentials.

One thing that confuses me is the difference between the VMWare Agent and something called the VMWare Suite.  I spoke to someone in sales and they said that I could get the VM Suite. 

Anyone heard of this?

[teiva-boy]

Point of reference for anyone that searches and stumbles into this thread.  The cost for the VMware Agent for Backup Exec is roughly 3x the cost of a regular Remote Agent for Windows.  

So the net of that is, if you virtualize 3 or more guests per physical host...  It makes better sense to buy the virtual agent.

[Norm_Wesley]

I've purchased the VMWare VSphere 4.1 Essentials product from VMWare and I'm planning my installation.

I have two choices in my download - ESX or ESXi and while I generally understand the differences, my exposure in the past has been to install ESXi as it's been free.  Under this scenario however, I've got the paid version of VMWare VSphere Essentials and I understand that even if I install ESXi, it include's the necessary storage API's which is what I need to get the backup exec vmware agent running properly.  This is what I want.

But I'm interested in knowing if anyone has had any difficulties with ESXi vs ESX from a BUE perspective?

Alternatively, any comments on ESX vs ESXi - again from a Backup Exec perspective?  Any stories to share?

[teiva-boy]

ESXi or ESX make no difference!  It's the licenses that are applied to vCenter that determine features and functionality enabled.  

ESXi is the preferred platform, and the one going forward for VMware.  It's smaller, lighterweight, and you can run more guests than a similarly equipped ESX host.