Is backupExec 2014 perfect for VMWare Host/Guest backup?

[Syed_Mazhar]

Hi Guys,

We are running two Esxi VMware Hosts (HP DL 380 g6) with 10 guests VMs including File server, Exchange and MSSQL. I have installed Veeam Trial recently and it appears to be working well. However we are keen to know if BackupExec 2014 is right solution for us?

I am intrested in knowing if Backup Exec supports:

1. VMWare host Esxi and guests backup and instant  restoration? How long it takes to recover / run from backup a VM in case of failure?
2. Granular restoration of data , emails from within a guest VM?
3. agentless backup solution for VMware?
4. VMWare DR solution?
5. Also, why Backup Exec 2014  may be better than Veeam

Many Thanks

Syed Mazhar

[CraigV]

Hi,

1. BE won't backup the host. No yardstick by which to measure how long a VM takes to restore. You need to figure out where you're restoring from (disk/tape), what medium you're restoring across (SAN/LAN) and then work out the write speeds.

2. GRT-based backups if they go to tape automatically stage to C:\Temp and you need as much free space as your largest VM. This is because the entire VM stages to disk from tape to restore a single file. When backups are made to disk, no staging takes place.

3. Yes...you can do a full VM backup/restore but can't do item-level restores without the RAWS agent installed.

4. You would look at duplicating backed up data to another BE media server using CAS (Enterprise Server Option).

5. Tough call...BE can't do Instant Recovery. Simply put...you need to compare the 2 very carefully.

Thanks!

[mhubbard1]

CraigV captures it pretty well above.  In addition to the info above, neither Veeam or BE 2014 can do host level backups of VMware ESX/vSphere.  So we're even there.  As far as GRT is concerned, Veeam cannot yet do granular restores of SQL.  That functionality is (allegedly) coming later this year in version 8.  BE and Veeam perform the same way from an "agentless" perspective.  Both are VMware Ready and make all the calls through the vSphere APIs.  No agent required (except for recovery as stated above).  What do you do for physical machine backup?  BE can do both from a single console and deduplicate to a single dedupe target.  Something else do consider.  Let me know if you have any other questions.  

Thanks,

Matt

[Syed_Mazhar]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for providing the useful information, it seems pretty hard decision to make. 

1. Veeam claims it runs the VM instantly from the backup within 2 mintues and while the VM is running Veema transfers the disk-file to the Exsi-host storage. How does BE fit into this?  In case of VM failure, does BE moves the disk-file to the Esxi-host first and then start the VM. Which one is faster to recover a VM?

2. What about Offsite DR backup? Veeam says to run two backup jobs, one to local storage and one to offsite storage for offsite backups.  Again how BE handles DR for VMware?

Kind Regards

Mazhar

[LegAEI]

Here's a bit of perspective from a user if you want it:

1. VMWare host Esxi and guests backup and instant  restoration? How long it takes to recover / run from backup a VM in case of failure?
   
   I know you want a direct comparison with the enterprise level Veeam instant recovery option, but there isn't one. What Backup Exec CAN do is create a VM from the backup and have it ready to go on a backup Vhost. The big difference between the Veeam solution and Backup Exec is that BE can do this for physical machines as well as VM's.
    
2. Granular restoration of data , emails from within a guest VM?
   
   This requires an agent for databases and applications unless you go with a VPRO or capacity license. That means the agent will have to be running on the machine. ALSO, with Backup Exec to restore to PST you have to have Outlook 32 bit installed on the target machine.
    
3. agentless backup solution for VMware?
   
   This was already answered.
    
4. VMWare DR solution?
   
   See my answer to question 1. Also, with CAS (enterprise option) you can back your backup server up to the cloud. With both solutions you will have to have an active vsphere host to turn on your servers at the remote location.
    
5. Also, why Backup Exec 2014  may be better than Veeam
   
   Pros (please remember, this is just my personal experience, I am not an employee or partner):
   1. Do you have more than just VM's to back up? Symantec will back up any data it has an agent for. If you purchase the deduplication license you can do client side deduplication for your data so you transfer less data over your network infrastructure.
   
   The licensing options are pretty decent too, there is going to be a license setup for your situation instead of trying to cram your operations in to a socket-based scheme just to make your backups work.
   
   2. (My favorite) Restore searching. I don't know where the file is, the user doesn't know where the file is, their computer is dead and they are working off a new machine and that "link" is gone because they didn't store it somewhere that was backed up. Fine, I can just search the server for the file and get my point-in-time options to restore.
   
   3. Better tape support. I know Veeam says hardware agnostic but really, getting the tape player to work took a very long time for me when I did my trial.
   
   4. Long term storage support. Veeam does a lot of great things with their storage, but it is mostly focused on DR as far as I could tell when I did their full trial. We have lifecycles for our data that have to go back years, I can't just be concerned with the data that is live right now. I know there is GFS support for veeam backups, but just like with restoring older versions of data, you have to KNOW when/where the data was backed up and that information can be the hardest piece to find out at times.
   
   
   Cons:
   1. Veeam is faster. There's really no reason to beat around the bush, Veeam is faster. I don't know why, it just is. I was able to generate backups inside my backup windows without any issues.
   
   2. Veeam backups are all inclusive units and don't require a separate catalog database. I have no idea why Symantec keeps with this setup, but my favorite search feature relies on it I'm sure (restore search.) However, if you want to just have a set of backups hanging out for no good reason except to have them, simply copying your Veeam backups to another disk is all you have to do. As long as you have a full backup file, you can restore using Veeam's free tools. That's a pretty big deal in my book.
   
   3. Live restoration while running off a VM backup. Veeam's version of this lets you run live off the backup while it copies the backup to the original location. Symantec will let you create a VM from a backup set, but you have to have the extra storage for that VM.
   
   4. Agents aren't very resilient if you have network issues. I am constantly having to babysit agents. However, I don't know if this will apply to you if you just use the agentless backup. Also I have 22 sites and 75 servers to manage, and it doesn't take up too much of my day.

In the end we went with Backup Exec because it was a more comprehensive solution for our network. If my entire network was comprised of Vhosts, the decision would be a little harder, but the biggest point of all of this is to make sure whatever you go with has the features YOU need for YOUR network, and not what people try to sell you.

Cheers.

[CraigV]

Hi,

1. Yes Veeam does this. I've recovered a file server within 2 minutes before. It starts the VM from within the backup file (*.vbk), and while it might run slowly, your VM is able to have changes made to files etc while you stream this off to the datastore. BE doesn't do this, and I don't know of any other backup software that can. 

2. Veeam has Backup Copy...v7 introduced this. Backup to disk, and then it streams this off to another site. BE can do the same thing. It duplicates what has been written, so they're essentially the same here.

Thanks!

[syed_jahanzaib]

LegAEI Amazing reply

[Syed_Mazhar]

Thank you LegAEI and CraigV for detailed responses. 

I am using both Veeam (Trial) and BE 2014 (Purchased) versions and here is my experince of using both.

Veeam is quite easy to setup and  the interface is more user friendly. New users can easily adopt Veeam without any previous experince of using Veeam.  At my end, It appears that Veeam GRT support is better than BE2014. Veeam does not complain about "agents not properly installed" or any  GRT  issues, it simply works straight away.

BE 2014  dashboard is just like an aeroplane cockpit with full of options, ofcourse that gives more granular options to manage and troubleshoot backup jobs. So if you are new like me, then you have to go through few learning curves to fly BE2014 high in backup skies. So far I have experienced few GRT errors releated to SQL and File Servers, which were backed up through Host-Backup job. BE has it's trust established with those Guest VMs.  BE2014 appears to be slightly better than Veeam, when its comes to creating a customised backup job. There are loads of job settings that can be tweaked to meet your requirement. 

In our case, we alraedy had previuolsy purchased backup Exec 2014, so I decided to use backup Exec instead of investing into Veeam.

Not sure if I am right in concluding that if you want easy and quick solution, one shoud go for Veeam but if you are familiar with Backup Exec 2012 or previous versions and happy to go through few learning curves, BE 2014 is the correct option.

Can I ask another questions please? Using BE 2014, shall I create single backup job for VMHost, so that will backup the Host and all Guest VMs ? or shall I make a seprate backup job for each individual Guest VM and a seprate backup job for VMware Host? 

Many Thanks

Syed Mazhar

[maurijo]

Vmhost seperate, guests in one job is what I do. But I think that is personal preference...

[LegAEI]

Becaused of Microsoft best practices, I don't have anything to back up on my Vhost, so I don't. I just back up the guests.
 

[Martin-B]

In the same vein: I have 92 VM servers (and a few physical ones) so have combined servers with a similar function into manageable jobs.

My question about this however is does BE manage each server seperately within that job, or if one fails (as it reports occasionally) are the others affected too?  (I know I should run a test restore to find out, but asking is often easier and quicker).

[LegAEI]

The job will report as failed, but as with all other backups that have multiple sources, the job will continue until completion and will let you know which VM's have issues in the job log. So you could have your very first VM fail, and the job will say failed at the end, but your other 23 VM's in that group (assuming you had 24) will back up correctly.

It's a pain in the butt for reporting, or if your boss likes to look over all the status windows and sees nothing but red (or in my case orange) because you are having issues with one VM or another. But I'm still confident in the backups.

It's still good to run periodic restores

[Syed_Mazhar]

How about adding Linux VMs Servers to Backup Exec 2014?

Don't know how can I add Centos 5.x and 6.x to Backup Exec 2014 V-Ray edition. Backup Exec gives error every time I try to add the Linux VM.

The server was unable to complete the requested operation

Any ideas how to create friendship between backup Exec 2014 and the Linux VMs?

Many Thanks

Syed Mazhar

[LegAEI]

For plain VM backups, you don't need to install the agent, just create a new NON-GRT backup job for that VM host and do an offline/full backup.

If you want to do a GRT-enabled backup, you will have to install the VM tools for the virtualization platform, then get agent for linux installed on the VM itself.

[the_trace]

I would stay away from Backup Exec.  I've had nothing but problems with it in recent years.

[david_roberts1]

Good afternoon!

Please forgive me if this needs to be a new thread, but it seems to be related....

I have 3 VM hosts running ESXI 5.1, about 90 VMs total.  We have several backups of selections on file servers and application servers that happen to be VMs, and we've had no issues (we've been doing that since BE12.5).  However, now that we've upgraded to BE2014, the program said we have to back up our Exchange 2010 mailbox server (a VM) using the VMware Agent and a host-initiated backup in order to use GRT. 

Here's my question: I use DRS on my VMware environment.  What does BE2014 do if it goes to do a nightly backup of my mail server on VMHost 1 and it has moved to VMHost 2 during the day?  Does that cause the job to fail? 

Thanks for your help! I'm trying to evaluate the best options for backing up this mail environment and the new process in BE2014 is a little confusing.

[LegAEI]

The best way to back up your exchange 2010 environment is to do an exchange backup of the DAG. THen it won't matter where the server is hosted. Your ESXi backups will just not have the information in them anymore and you should get a warning message that something that was previously in the set is no longer there.

Again, add your DAG as the target for your backup. If you have a vPro license it should cover the exchange hookup.