VM /ETC

Dan Anderson – Consulting Architect

Tim Myers – Senior Consultant

This is my third 2 hr sesion today. I had to get coffee and refuel. I’ve sat in the same seat in the same room since 10:15 …. except for lunch.

Dan Anderson is the drill sargeant of VCB. If you’ve attended one of his sessions you know what I mean. He should keep me awake.

VMConverter 3.01 can now be used to restore from VCB images – that is huge!! You can restore to ESX, VMServer, workstation. This is the first “ton of bricks” concept that has hit me this week. Makes the restore process for full VM backups much more feasible.

Notes and questions from session:

• Separate physical proxy – W2K3 sp1 or R2
• network conn to Vc2
• FC HBA
• backup software ( on supported list)
• ESX 3.02 for VCB 1.03
• VMFS 3 on SAN (fibre) or iSCSI (it works, but not supported ??? according to Dan)
• Can not reside on same system as VC2 – vlun driver of VCB will screw up customized template deployment. It will work up until you try that it works … best for VCB to be it’s own server.

Advantages

• Reduced resource contention
• lan-free backup
• optional backup agents
• performance
  • traditionally backup agent uses 5-7% cpu and will increase exponentially with multiple vms being backed up in a VI. VCB eliminates this potential issue.
• timing – VC2 receives request and creates snapshot and allows VM to keep running in production mode and allows admin to backup whenever.
• cold backup – can be backed up while VM is down (must be registered in VC2 – must have been powered on at least once so it was registered in Vc2)

VCB File level backup notes:

• quiesce (sp?) script freezes application – snap id .vmdk created
• thraw script restarts application and moves frozen snap id to VCB proxy server – syncs and flushes
• mount snap id .vmdk in specific area on the VCB proxy server
• then use backup software to backup mounted .vmdk – backup software archive bit feature must be turned off to use – check compatibility list
• unmount .vmdk and gets rid of snap shots – cleans up.

Full VM Backup notes:

• export VM in COW format – copy on write – does not take whole VM but a collection of 2 GB files without white space to VCB Proxy server
• Backup software can not access until export is finished

Integration Modules

• Intention was to help kickstart partners to enable VCB use – baseline scripts only. Never intended to be “total solution”. Very little changes will be made to current scripts. Some vendors are way ahead of others:
  • Netbackup 6.5 requires “0″ scripting – go see Veritas booth this week
  • Commvault Galaxy
  • Vizioncore ESXRanger
  • CA Brightstor ArcServe

Not supported:

• If the VCB Proxy can not see the disk images it can not back up it – SAN zoning for ESX VMFS
• RDMs in physical compatibility mode – therefore MSCS clusters unsupported
• VMS on NAS/NFS not supported at this time

Backups on ESX Console OS – uses ESX resources

• only full VM backups
• backup any VM on any ESX on a datastore
• can not backup to/from non SAN storage (local storage / alternate datastores)

How Do I size & design VCB ???

It depends on several factors !! VCB is 5 – 10% of total backup solution

• VCB sizing - running any backup software such as Media Server, NetBackup, etc. on same server? How many expansion slots for multiple HBA’s for added throughput??
• VCB Bottleneck – usually I/O bound, not CPU bound
  • FC throughput to proxy
  • HBA speed
  • FC Switch speed
  • HBA qty – more hbas more speed
  • 3rd party backup software – # of i/o(s) they can push, parallell or serial jobs?

VCB Best Practices

• High I/O VMs are not good canidates for snap shots / VCB – if you wouldn’t snap shot a VM during the production day you probably should not use VCB to back it up at night.
• HBA setup
  • example: customer had 20 tb, 900+ vms wanted backed up every night in 6 hrs
    • backup server, vcb, and media server all in one physical server
    • one set of hbas for ntfs, another set of hbas for vmfs, tape arrays on third set of hbas
    • tested with 1.5 TB was able to move 140.8 MB ps and took 3.0 hrs – customer needed 40+ hrs
• consult backup software for sizing and tuning
• OS must be 2003 Sp1 or R2 on physical server
• disable auto driver letter assignment in windows – failure causes data corruption – disabled by default in enterprise edition only. if this happens STOP and open SEV 1 support with VM support.
• if backup software can , do multiple parallel jobs – not streaming one job, but multiple jobs.
  • low number of parallel jobs should be OK – 8 is rule of thumb max amount jobs in parallel.

Wish List : – not currently in development but should be!

• Plans to utilize MS VSS
• back up software understands VMFS

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