Backup Central

Hi

We are expanding the network and we're planning to house a lot of the vm's on the LUN of a san and have the esx hosts access them on the LUN via iSCSI

We were planning to have an LT05 tape drive connected directly to the SAN and backup the LUN to tape

Having looked further into network backups (i'm new to backups in general let alone vmware) i've come across the following

Server 2008 doesnt allow backup to tape anymore
I'll need a 3rd party software to do tape backups

from what I can see with Vmware Consolidated backup - you're meant to backup to a backup server and then backup from there to tape.

Q1. Is this how it is meant to be done with VMWare Data Recovery as well?


Q2. Is there a backup application we could install directly on the SAN and use to backup the vm's on the LUN straight to the tape drive connected to the SAN? And will it do normal backups (files, network shares, etc) or only backup vm's?


Regards

Simon

Hi Simon,

First what I understood is that you are creating ISCSI storage on ESX and create an VM on it, this ESX connected to SAN switch and also your tape is connected on same.
-- We were planning to have an LT05 tape drive connected directly to the SAN and backup the LUN to tape
Are you planning to backup only VM's on SAN?
-- Server 2008 doesnt allow backup to tape anymore
Win2k8 server allows the backup on tape I think some drivers issue is coming on your server.
Before using VCB need know which ESX version you are using, if you are using ESX version 4 and above then you can backup VM's using VMware API's there is no need to configure VCB.
-- Q1. Is this how it is meant to be done with VMWare Data Recovery as well?
(VMware API)
If you are using ESX 4 and above then you need 2 machines one will act as proxy and other will be the backup server. We are using the backup software for that, where agent is installed on proxy server(VMware API's are installed on same) which will transfer the snapshot of individual VM machine from proxy to tape attached to backup server through SAN.
-- Q2. Is there a backup application we could install directly on the SAN and use to backup the vm's on the LUN straight to the tape drive connected to the SAN? And will it do normal backups (files, network shares, etc) or only backup VM's?
I don't have any idea regarding the software installed on SAN.

Hope this will help you.

Regards,
Jickriya

Look into:

Quest vRanger
FalconStore
EMC's Avamar
Symantecs Backup Exec
Symantecs NetBackup

An there are many others as well. In any case, expect that you are going to need a separate server to manage backups with.