10-17-2018 07:02 AM
Hello ,
We are planning to activate Block-Level-Incremental backup for our Vmware machines backups and I want to know what are the drawbacks of this option and its impact on backup sizes , backup windows , and resources consumption (CPU , storage ..) . Also what are the other benefits apart the better support of incremental backups .
Last question : what was the first release of Netbackup to introduce this feature ?
Regards,
Zakaria
10-17-2018 08:20 AM
I would start with the VMware Administrator's Guide (Chapter 7).
Also, perform a search on this topic in this forum and you will see quite a few informative posts.
I think it was introduced in some version of 7.1.x. Someone who has been using NetBackup longer than me can possibly give the exact version.
10-17-2018 09:07 PM - edited 08-09-2019 01:15 AM
MSDP Dedup storage + BLIB:
MSDP Dedup storage + no BLIB:
Direct to Tape + BLIB:
Direct to Tape + no BLIB:
Bonus info:
If you use MSDP Accelerator for VMware, be careful when duplicating Incrementals to from MSDP to Tape. All Incrementals will rehydrate to Fulls when being duplicated to Tape.
E.g.:
Accelerator OFF: Full(100GB) + Inc(10GB) + Inc(10GB) + Inc(10GB) + Inc(10GB) + Inc(10GB) + Inc(10GB) = 160GB of Tape space used in one week.
But with Accelerator ON, all Incrementals will become 100GB when going to tape, making it 700GB Tape space used for the week.
Workaround: Only duplicate Fulls and not Incrementals to tape when using Accelerator for VMware, or, just disable Accelerator if you must duplicate the Incrementals too.
Reference: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000075317
10-18-2018 12:01 AM
hello,
Thank you for your responses but I want also to know if we will have an overhead in resource consuption during backup or restore operations beacuse as I have understood NBU will synthetize a Full backup from an incremental + Full so I think this can lead to an overhead in Vmware and Media server levels , and I'm not sure if this beahvior really exist and if it is endurable or not .
Regards,
Zakaria
10-18-2018 12:02 AM
hello,
Thank you for your responses but I want also to know if we will have an overhead in resource consuption during backup or restore operations beacuse as I have understood NBU will synthetize a Full backup from an incremental + Full so I think this can lead to an overhead in Vmware and Media server levels , and I'm not sure if this beahvior really exist and if it is endurable or not .
Regards,
Zakaria
10-18-2018 12:22 AM
For Media Server during backup: BLIB should reduce overhead because the Incremental blocks has already been "picked out" by VMware.
For VMware during backup: CBT should reduce disk read needed - and therefore overhead - during each Incremental backup.
For Media Server during restore: If you are restoring an entire VM, you would "bother" the Media Server just as much whether you let it "synthesize" a Full+Inc in one go, or - when not using BLIB - you manually restore the Full first, then manually restore the non-BLIB incremental files. This "overhead" is negligible unless you need to perform restore operations all the time.
For VMware during restore: Either way it will still need to receive the entire VM worth of data from the Media Server over the network, then store it in its Datastore. It's overhead should be the same either way.