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1 Replies Last post: Oct 1, 2007 6:24 AM by James Rosikiewicz  
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Eric Gustafson
1 posts since
Sep 25, 2007

Sep 25, 2007 3:27 PM

VCB as a scalable solution?


Is VCB a solution thatVI3 customers with large implementations (>20 ESX Hosts) are using? Or, are you using another solution such as vizioncore? I am specifically using Veritas NetBackup 6.0MP4 with VCB (I haven't tried again since issues with 32040 VCB Build) and had issues with performance. I want to mature the process I use to backup virtual machines, but will need to spend money on additional hardware to do so (a new media server and licensing). I'd like to know if it is working for other customers before making additional purchases. (No you don't need a media server to make VCB and NetBackup function, just install the console and you pick up a needed dll)

If someone has a large VI3 implementation and successfully leveraging VCB wiht NetBackup, then what would you consider the minimum requirements to build a robust solution?

ericg

Tags: vcb, netbackup, vi3, vizioncore
Click to view James Rosikiewicz's profile Candidate
James Rosikiewicz
1 posts since
Oct 1, 2007
1. Oct 1, 2007 6:24 AM in response to: Eric Gustafson
Re: VCB as a scalable solution?

Eric,
I wanted to provide some feedback to you question re: "a scalable solution".
We have been using WVMware for 4+ years. We started using VM backups outside the VM's about 6 month into our use of ESX. This was for several reasons. Here are a couple..
A full cohesive restore of a running machine with no boot recovery required.
No need to install a backup agent in every VM (for administration and cost savings)
We started using some Perl scripts. This worked well when we had 3-8 hosts an about 100 VM's
The script sent emails after every backup. This got old quickly as we approached 800+ VM's
We then tried the only commercial product at this time. This was able to meet more of our needs but it did not scale well. We experienced numerous false positive backups, Still received and email for every backup, and did not provide delta backup options and numerous other enhancements.
We have now switched to using esXpress (enterprise) from PHD Technologies Inc.
We are currently backing up 8 of our 24 hosts (about 60TB) nightly. Our current limitation is a lack of FTP storage that is currently at 9TB. We keep 2 weeks of esXpress backups on the FTP server. 2 Full's and 12 delta backups online. We dump this weekly to tape with Veritas on the FTP server.
Re: VCB, VCB did not exist back then we first started, Our research has showed that in order to us VCB to backup our setup would be quite costly (more server) and cumbersome. It also does not provide an easy way to restore.
Note: We also have Veritas Net backup installed on a couple critical VM's (for an extra level of safety)
Please let me know if you need more detail information.
Thanks
Jim

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