Off-host and Snapshot solution suggesiton

[mahmedp]

I am in a stage of designing a solution for customer who is already having NB5230 appliance and Netbackup master server windows 2012 R2.

custemer wants to backup vmware clients as below.

snapshot will be taken at client side and copied to MEDIASERVER or any other server.and then release client resources. 

netbackup will backup snapshot from offhost server and source client will be released.

Is there any hardware based snapshot server available?

kinldy help.

[Nicolai · Accepted solution]

This sound like a normal VMware Vsphere backup soloution to me using SAN transfer

Will there be databases involved in the setup ?

The links below provide good background infromation about VMware backups.

Nuts and bolts in NetBackup for VMware: Transport methods and TCP ports

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/nuts-and-bolts-netbackup-vmware-transport-methods-and-tcp-ports

VMware Transport Modes: Best practices and troubleshooting

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH183072

[Marianne]

You are describing VCB-type backups where vmdks are copied/mirrored to a lun that can be read by the media server. This method is no longer supported by VMware or NetBackup. Backups are done directly from VM datastores. If you zone the datastores to the appliance, the backup transfer will be most efficient using SAN transport. Please go through the link in Nicolai's post and the NBU for VMware manual.

[mahmedp]

thanks nicolai and marianne,

i have gone through the nbu vmware guides and familiar with procedure. but i was checking if any other options availble which can give better performance.

is there any other good way of offloading VSS snapshot of physical manchines and backing up.

[Marianne]

Nope. As I've said - you are looking for VCB-type backups. There is no offhost backup from secondary copy available for Vmware. Your options are SAN, network (ndb) or hotadd.

[Nicolai]

Snapshot for physical host is notorious difficult and expensive to operate

Unless you run a very important bushiness application where $$$ is no problem I recommend you don't go down that road.

But it free to take a look at the snapshot compatibility matrix :D

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH126901

Windows VSS framework help you a lot, but again if you have something else that plain file system backup its going to be difficult and expensive. Nothing you will deploy large scale.

[Dollypee]

Just like Marianne had explained, it doesnt get any better at least for now than the process she had already enumerated. I am currently leveraging same backup procedure in my company for over 5,000 VMs. Incase some of the VMs are hosting applications such as SQL, Exchange & share point, backup of these app can also be done right the with snapshot. Please see netbackup for VMware admin guide   http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=DOC6461&profileURL=https%3A%2F%2Fsyma...

depending on your intended netbackup version. You can also protect these application by means of installing netbackup agent and apply respective netbackup options ( but need a license).

As for snapping physical servers..please do not even thread that path. Best bet for you is to install agents and backup the data as a file level backup ..etc.  Hope this help? Thanks.