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Archive for the ‘dr’ Category

I received an email today from VMware addressed to all customers about the end of availability for VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB). Quoting from the beginning of the communication but not the entire message, it reads:

“The purpose of this letter is to inform you of our vSphere backup product strategy, ongoing enhancements, and end of availability plans for VMware Consolidated Backup.

VMware Backup Product Strategy
VMware released vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) with the vSphere 4.0 release in May, 2009. VADP is the next generation of VMware’s backup framework. We have also been working with several backup partners to integrate VADP into their solutions to make backup of vSphere Virtual Machines fast, efficient and easy to deploy compared to VCB and other backup solutions. Several of our major backup partners have already released VADP integrated backup products and we expect most of the major backup partners to have VADP integrated backup software by the upcoming feature release of the vSphere platform in 2010.

Future Product Licensing
Given the strong interest and adoption of VADP by our backup eco-system and the benefits offered by VADP compared to VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), we are announcing the End of Availability for VCB starting with next vSphere feature release in 2010. Starting with the next vSphere platform feature release, VCB will be removed from vSphere platform. VADP integrated backup products (including VMware Data Recovery) will be the recommended option for efficient backup and restoration of vSphere Virtual Machines. This will allow us to focus new value added feature development on VADP instead of two backup frameworks (VCB and VADP).”

[omited]

I’ll go out on a limb and say that most of the VMware community will

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If you are looking at various options to automate virtual machine (VM) ip address reconfiguration when failing over virtual machines to a disaster recovery (DR) site, this post explains an option so simple it is beautiful. To give full credit, the Vizioncore vReplicator 2.5 Best Practices document enlightened me to the strategy of using a local only VMware vSwitch and an extra virtual NIC (vNIC) in each VM. It’s been a long time since I had a “ton of bricks” moment, but this concept crashed down on me with the realization of a configuration that works in any version of ESX, doesn’t require extra software or hardware, and better yet, doesn’t have to be scripted! Just configure some extra virtual networking and forget about it!

Here is a general outline for automating the DR ip addressing with this method:

At the Primary Site

• For these instructions assume the production vSwitch at the primary site has a Portgroup named VM Network
• Build a new vSwitch and do not attach any physical NICs (local only isolated switch). Create a Portgroup named DR Network
• For each VM you need to fail over to a DR site, add an extra vNIC and attach it to the DR Network Portgroup

At the DR Site

• Create your DR site production vSwitch, attach physical NICs and add a Portgroup named DR Network.
• Create another vSwitch and do not attach any physical NICs (local only isolated switch). Create a Portgroup named VM Network

All you have to do for this to work is

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VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) is included with VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 Enterprise Edition, but I’ve blogged before how VCB can be misunderstood as the complete solution for virtual machine (VM) backup. Furthermore, VCB’s scripting and command line interface can be a surprise for system administrators who are used to and expecting a GUI and scheduler. Mostly for these reasons, VCB is usually implemented integrated with traditional agent based backup solutions or virtualization third party VM backup products. However, for those that want to try a pure VCB solution in their virtual infrastructure there are a couple of free ecosystem developed tools that claim to provide GUI features and ease of use enhancements.

This post provides some basic information on 2 free VCB tools – VCB Wrangler and vbcMC Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for some good information about backing up VMware virtual machines (VMs)? Researching or planning for VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) or third party solutions like PHDVirtual esXpress that enhance the VCB functionality? PCPRO Magazine has combined an article I wrote last October with a related work from author/blogger/VMTN Guru Eric Siebert into a free E-guide titled What You Need to Know about Virtual Machine Backup that is worth the download. After a quick registration with Bitpipe.com, (Bitpipe and SearchDataBackup.com are both TechTarget.com sites) you’ll have access to a 9 page PDF that is an easy read full of useful, real world VM backup implementation advice.

If you did not know already, Bitpipe provides access to great virtualization industry articles and whitepapers on as well as many other technologies. I subscribe and get an email notification from Bitpipe full of great research links daily.

Here is more about the E-Guide from the download page: Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote a tip for TechTarget.com’s new SearchDataBackup site. Five things backup administrators should know about VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) walks through some high level planning details for backup administrators considering new options for data and server protection for systems running on virtual infrastructure. The tip talks about why VCB is not the entire backup solution, provides VCB storage and server requirements, discusses the VCB Holding Tank’s role, explains why you still need third party backup agents, and provides and overview for the process of restoring virtual machines and files with VCB.

Check out the whole tip at the link above, and while you are there sign up with SearchDataBackup for great information about data protection and disaster recovery options for both physical and virtual servers.

vmware, vcb, techtarget, searchdatabackup, dr, backup

The subject of backing up ESX hosts for disaster recovery comes up from time to time, but not nearly as often as backing up the virtual machines. To be specific, I am talking about backing up the ESX Service Console. Honesty, to reinstall ESX takes such little time there is really no need to keep a full system backup for recovery. There is an advantage to saving key configuration files and folders to quickly re-apply after a re- installation, however. This can be done without installing a backup agent on the ESX Service Console.

This post provides information on what ESX Service Console files and directories to backup, how to use the tar command to create a backup file, and then how to restore from the backup file after a new installation. The material comes from one of the VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC) toolkit documents that I often use for customer documentation deliverables. To give credit where credit is due, the author of the document is listed as “VMware PSO – Practice Development”.

The rest of this post is copied from the VAC toolkit document except for a few format changes. Read the rest of this entry »

I attended this VMworld 2008 session on Wednesday 09.18 at 9:00 AM. The presenter was Sunder Parameswaran who is a Senior Product Manager at Symantec. The session was about using Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) in VMware virtual infrastructure (VI) to overcome application high availability and disaster recovery (DR) challenges.

My main interest in this session was on the topic of Geo Clustering with VCS. Also known as Metro Clustering, this is the ability to have one node of the cluster at your primary data center location and the second node at a separate physical location like a disaster recovery site.

Sunder began by outlining various VI challenges.

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