SAN Transport and VM's with Multiple Drives

[Neil_Natic]

I have SQL, SharePoint and Exchange servers virtualized.  Most of these instances have the OS partition on one SAN LUN and the data on a different drive which is on a different LUN.  My question is how to best back these up. 

In addition to that, if I am doing a backup by hitting the vcenter and grabbing vmdks like that, will it get both drives that are associated with the vm server even though they are on different SAN LUNs (os and data)?  Will i still be able to granularly recover SQL, SP, and EXCH if needed in this scenario?

Not sure why but i feel more comfortable doing direct SQL, Exch, or SharePoint backups using the specific agents like if they were physical boxes instead of just grabbing the whole server via vcenter (utilizing SAN transport).  Am i being foolish?  Do I need to forget my old school mindset?  Is doing the vcenter (san transport) backup equally as reliable?  

How would you handle this scenario?

[Jaydeep_S]

Could you share the details of version BE and ESX. By SAN Luns are you saying it is a Raw Disk mapping. If it is AVVI backup and the GRT both may not work as it is not actually supported.

If the application data (databases, logs) are on a Basic, mbr disk (no dynamic, gpt) then yes the best way to backup would be using the HVVI agent and enabling GRT on the job. This would allow you to make a single pass backup with the ability to restore individual items (files, emails, etc)

[Neil_Natic]

Sure. ESXi 4.1 (although we just upgraded two non production servers to 5) and BE 2012 (fully patched as of yesterday)

The LUNs are shared amongst the ESX hosts (they all have read / write to the same LUN and host servers on the LUN) but only our Exch database drives are RDM's.  They are basic MBR disks otherwise.  

So with the Exchange setup being RDM's are you saying to not use the vmdk backup method?

For everything else you are proposing that we do use the vmdk backup method and that it will grab all of those drives / databases in doing so.

Correct? 

[Jaydeep_S]

Yes, you could perform a GRT enabled AVVI backup of the ESXi servers. As for the Exchange Server, the RDM disk is a limitation and will hve to be backed up traditionally using the Remote Agent.

Here is an article that will help you configure AVVI backups using SAN transport mode.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH155831

[Neil_Natic]

Are verify jobs recomended on SAN transport / vmdk backups?