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Archive for the ‘vcb’ 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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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

If you are looking for a quick reference to determine which versions of VirtualCenter are compatible with which versions of ESX then check out the VMware Infrastructure Compatibility Matrixes .pdf.

The following image is the ESX Server and VirtualCenter Compatibility table from the .pdf linked above. Note that VC 2.5 is backwards compatible with earlier ESX versions, but ESX 3.5 is only compatible with VC 2.5. Also note that VMware Server is still compatible only with VC 1.4. I believe I remember hearing something about future versions of VC will be able to manage both ESX and VMware Server hosts, but I could be wrong. Maybe with the new VMware Server 2.0?

Click on the image for a larger version. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was linking to RTFM Education from my post Combining multiple VMware .lic files is a thing of the past I noticed Mike wrote a quick post about discovering the new LAN based backup features of VCB. I had to get my own copy of the VMware Consolidated Backup Improvements in Version 3.5 .pdf and understand the new LAN-based backup feature. In short, the requirement for a storage area network, and therefore the installation of VCB on a physical server with HBA(s) has been removed. Installing VCB on a Windows 2003 virtual machine is now possible. Maybe not recommended for larger environments, but possible and a achievable design for smaller infrastructures.

The .pdf also reveals that there are several other new features of VCB that were previously restrictions of the older versions. Read the rest of this entry »

I ran into a frustrating issue this week where VCB was backing up everything except the .vmdk files. The vcbMounter.exe command would run and finish without errors, but when I checked the backed up files in the VCB Proxy’s “holding tank” LUN everything was there but the virtual disks. I was troubleshooting with a 20 GB Server 2003 VM and the command finished in about 30 seconds. During the troubleshooting I watched Virtual Center announce it was creating the snapshot and then immediately delete the snapshot. It did not error. There were no clues in any of the logs. It wasn’t until the -L 6 option (verbose) was added to the vcbMounter command that I was able to see the problem.

It turns out that the VM’s virtual disks were Independent. The VM was originally created on a ESX 2.X host a couple of years ago. I had helped the customer migrate to VI3 last year. Apparently the migrated and upgraded virtual hardware maintained the older disk settings. Once we powered down the VM and unchecked the Independent feature VCB backed up the .vmdk files. Unfortunately there are more than 50 VMs this customer will have to schedule shutdowns for in order to uncheck the Independent disk setting.

Independent virtual disks do not allow snapshots. Snapshots are required in order to use VCB. VCB works by creating a snapshot, which freezes the VM temporarily and then sends future disk activity to a “disk buffer”. The original .vmdks are then static and can be copied to the “holding tank”. Once VCB has finished copying the .vmdks the “disk buffer” is committed to the original disk and then the VM is “thawed” backed to normal. VMs created on ESX 3.x hosts do not have the Independent disk option enabled by default.