VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘esxpress’ Category

One of the Solutions Exchange theater presentations I sat through was at the PHD Technologies booth. I watched a presentation on their latest product release, esXpress 3.6. Backing up virtual machines (VMs) is a constant and important concern of virtualization administrators, and esXpress offers a unique, award winning alternative. Up to 16 simultaneous live backups or restores per ESX host is possible without impacting ESX Service Console resources and without configuration of additional VCB (VMware Consolidated Backup) infrastructure.

The secret to esXpress is the use of VBAs (Virtual Backup Appliances). A VBA is a prebuilt software solution running on it’s own Linux OS that runs as a VM along with the production VMs on each ESX 3.x /4.x host. There are no agents to install in the VMs being backed up, nor any dependency on APIs. A single Configuration Virtual Appliance must run somewhere in the environment to provide a esXpress management console that enforces global configuration settings across all the backup VBAs. A fourth VM appliance can also be added to the solution to serve as a deduplicated, backup destination target VM. Other possible backup destinations are SMB, SSH, FTP, and VMFS repositories.

Some other quick highlites of esXpress 3.6: Read the rest of this entry »

PHD Virtual added their latest VMware utility to it’s ever growing list of free tools for virtualization administrators. Patch Downloader 6.0 is best described as a tool that will “ease the pain” for dowloading ESX 3.X patches in environments without vCenter Update Manager (VUM). Designed to filter the list of ESX patches available by selecting the desired version of ESX/ESXi, Patch Downloader enables the administrator to review individual patch classifications and instructions. Patches are then easily downloaded to a configured repository where they are ready to be manually transferred and applied to each ESX/ESXi host. I assume support for ESX 4 patches will be added soon.

The following image is a screen shot of Patch Downloader downloading ESX 3.5 patches.

Patch Downloader is the fifth free tool from PHD Technologies. The following excerpt is from an email I received and provides links and and a brief explanation of the other tools already available.
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One of the engineers from our storage team asked me to join a discussion about whether or not restoring VMs from images made by any of the live VM backup utilities would be a reliable process for a client. I unknowingly joined what was really a battle about whether the client would be better off using SAN based snapshots, host based replication, or live VM imaging specifically for Exchange and SQL VMs. All are proven solutions, and depending on budget, recovery objectives, and service level agreements all solutions could be deployed with confidence. The customer, and this post, is focused on the live VM backup solutions and their reliability for Exchange and SQL. Based on cost of implementation and infrastructure required the VM backup tools are the most affordable and easiest to deploy, but they also leave you with the most uncertainty.

Before continuing I want to point out that normal backup agents still need to be used for Exchange and SQL VMs. Not one of the VM backup solutions can perform application maintenance or specialized backups, like the Exchange Information Store backup for example. Understand that the live VM backup tools only specialize in capturing a quiescent, working image of the VM operating system and application.

First let’s understand what we mean when we say quiescent data. In the latest VMware Virtual Machine Backup Guide quiescing is defined as: Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for a comparison of VM backup solutions? PHD Technologies, makers of esXpress, have put together a matrix of features comparing how their product stacks up to VMware’s VCB, Vizioncore’s vRanger, and even vRanger integrated with VCB.

Check it out online in original form here.

I have saved the matrix as a stand alone page as well.

updated 12-11-07 *****

After reading comments from readers I realized Read the rest of this entry »

You don’t have the budget for the required infrastructure of VCB backups? Try esXpress from PHD technologies. I mean literally, try their free 30 day, fully functioning, fully supported demo that can back up live VMs to a dedicated VMFS partition, an FTP server, or both! After the 30 days you can continue to perform daily full backups for FREE!

Once you install it on all your ESX hosts, you can configure the backups from a basic console GUI or integrated within the VI client connected to the VC2 server.

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