Selective VCB Backups

[jacksors]

I'm running NetBackup 6.5.3 on a Windows Server 2003 platform with VCB 1.5. I was curious to know if there is a way of selectively backing up drives on a VM using VCB. My Exchange servers are virtual and I don't want to snap the datastore for fear of corrupting the database, but I want the ability to quickly and easily recover the server and applicatino installation.

My plan was to snap drives C and D where the OS and app are and to use an agent to backup drives E and F where the database and log files are. Does anyone know of a way to do this or have another method of accomplishing the same scenario?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[ashish_patil01]

Please refer to the guide

http://support.veritas.com/docs/302438

Thanks
Ashish

[Anonymous]

Independent disks and VCB. The thing is, no snapshots are created when a disk is in independent/persistent mode. This can be a problem when you want to use VCB on all your disks. But this can also come in handy when you want to disable a specific disk from being picked up by VCB. For instance a Database server with a 1TB D: disk is probably not a candidate for for VCB in a normal situation. But when setting the D:\ disk in independent/persistent mode this disk will be skipped by VCB because it’s impossible to snapshot a disk that’s in this mode. This way you can dump the C:\ aka System partition and restore the VM in case of disaster recovery more easily.

Courtesy of Duncan Epping @ Yellow Bricks

[jacksors]

Thanks.

Ashish. This is the guide that applies to 6.5.2. I'm running 6.5.3. Can you tell me the specific information you are referencing in the guide so I don't have to read a 100 page document to obtain the information you wanted to convey to me?

Stuart,

Won't VCB fail if the disk is configured as independent? I have some VM's with a Raw Disk mapping, very similar to an independent disk in a way since it is not snapshot capable, and those jobs fail if I try and do something like that.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Interesting article on VMWARE regards selective backups and with RDM's

http://viops.vmware.com/home/docs/DOC-1392

Some people scripting it here too:
http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/jturver/2008/01/24/vcb-how-to-backup-a-selected-specific-disk-or-disks-using-vcbexport-and-a-useful-script-to-do-it

6.5.4 has some extra features around RDM's but again it controls snapping at the Array level, using an alternate client to offload the I/O to.

Veritas NetBackup™ for VMware Administrator's Guide, version 6.5.4