Vmware vStorage API backups without Vsphere

[AlGon]

Netbackup 7.1.0.1

Windows 2003 Server

Hello everyone,

One of our VMware environments is still ESX 3.5.  This will eventually be upgraded.

When checking into the compatibility for backing up VMware guests using NBU, I see it’s possible to backup VMs using the Vstorage API without having to upgrade to vSphere 4.  As long as your ESX version 3.5 U2 and vCenter 2.5 you’re good to go.   

How is this possible?

I thought the Vstorage API was only introduced with vSphere 4 and later.  I do know however, that without upgrading to vSphere 4 I won’t be able to take advantage of the BLIB feature, which brings me to my next question

On our vSphere environment we still have some VM guests running hardware version 4 preventing me from taking advantage of BLIB.  These have been put into a separate policy with BLIB disabled. 

The thing I’m slightly confused about is that I’m still able to perform incremental backups of these guests without BLIB enabled.  How exactly does this work? The only difference I can see is that when it comes to do a restore I can’t restore the entire VM from the incremental, only individual files.

Many thanks in advance

[Anonymous]

The exact same concerns and query you have are outlined in this VMware Community discussion

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/271264

Hope this answers your quandry.

[oleg_rebrov]

I believe this has to do with the fact that netbackup has the ability to "view" into the vms as they are being backed up to see individual files and identify if they have changed since the last backup (which is one of the reasons you need to set up timestamps, not archive bit on the off host client). The difference between this type of incremental and blib is that with the non-blib backup you still scan the full vmdk versus blib which only looks at the files included in the cbt (change block tracking) log.

[AlGon]

Thanks Stuart.  A very informative link and helps clear up my confusion

[AlGon]

Great stuff, thanks Oleg.