VMWARE VIRTUAL MACHINE PROTECTION DELL POWERVAULT DL 2000 POWERED BY SYMANTEC
VMware Virtual Machine Protection The PowerVault DL2000– Powered by Symantec Backup Exec offers the industry‟s only fully integrated backup-to-disk solution with software factory installed. Dell and Symantec have codeveloped this offering to give you easier management capabilities of the backup-to-disk environment. It‟s an ideal way for any IT department to achieve faster, more reliable backups and restores.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection VMWARE VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE 3 BACKUP AND RECOVERY CHALLENGES As server consolidation continues to accelerate, placing larger and larger numbers of VMware „Guest‟ virtual machines in a single virtualized environment, planning backup, restore, and disaster recovery of the virtual environment is an essential requirement of managing your virtual infrastructure.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection VMWARE ARCHITECTURE OVERVIEW Planning your backup and recovery procedures for an ESX Server system, you should identify the items that need to be addressed for recovery in your environment before a recovery is required.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection ADDRESSING THE VMWARE VI3 BACKUP AND RECOVERY CHALLENGES As discussed earlier in this paper, while virtualization can provide enhanced server utilization and flexibility, it also introduces unique backup and recovery challenges. There are several ways that Backup Exec can be configured to safely protect VMware environments.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection TRADITIONAL VMWARE VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE (ESX) 3 BACKUP METHODS Traditional Agent-Level Backups Installing Linux Agent on ESX Server Basic Script-level VCB Integration Traditional Agent-Level Backup In this method, you are essentially treating each virtual machine as if it were a traditional physical system.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection DISADVANTAGES OF BACKUP EXEC AGENTS IN GUEST VM BACKUP Installing an Agent in each of the Guest VM systems can be cost prohibitive for many organizations in terms of both money and i/o performance on the ESX server. Existing Backup Exec licensing applies to VMware environments.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection DISADVANTAGES OF BACKUPS WITH RALUS IN SERVICE CONSOLE Care needs to be taken when backing up these files to make sure they are backed up in a consistent manner, assuring that restored files are not corrupt. Before backing up the vmdk files, all I/O operations to these files must be halted.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection ADVANTAGES OF BASIC SCRIPT LEVEL VCB BACKUPS For a wide range of ESX Server virtual machines, VCB can accomplish two types of separate backups of Guest VM data. File Level This type of VCB backup will result in the entire file system contents of the .vmdk files to be mounted as local directory (i.e. mount point) on the VCB Windows 2003 Proxy Server that can then be protected by Backup Exec via a normal file system backup of the VCB Proxy Server.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection DISADVANTAGES OF BASIC SCRIPT LEVEL VCB BACKUPS It is important to understand that both Image and File Level VCB backups must be performed separately to obtain both complete backup of a Guest VM and individual file recovery. This “twostep” process results double the backup time, double the disk or tape backup media storage, and twice the backup administrator‟s time to ensure both backups run successfully.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection BACKUP EXEC AVVI FEATURES AND BENEFITS AVVI Features Benefits Integrated with VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3) Supports and integrates with all key VMware technologies including VCB, VirtualCenter, VMotion, VMware Converter, ESX/ESXi, and VMware Tools.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection USING BACKUP EXEC AGENT FOR VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE (AVVI) Once the Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructure license has been installed on the Backup Exec server, the easy to use Backup Exec interface can communicate with VMware‟s VirtualCenter or with individual ESX servers to walk Administrators through the process of identifying the necessary ESX hosts, Groups, and Guest virtual machines for fast and simple backup and recovery.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection When the need arises to recover and entire Guest VM, simply browse to your protected Guest VM systems in the Backup Exec console to restore the entire Guest VM or individual .vmdk files.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection Or use Backup Exec‟s built-in Granular Recovery Technology (GRT) to allow individual file/folder recovery from within a .vmdk file without having to run a separate backup of them.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection Backups can be restored back to their original locations or to alternate locations, including alternate datastores, host ESX servers, with different virtual machine names and to different virtual networks.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection VMWARE BACKUP METHOD COMPARISON CHART The following table provides a comparison of the VMware backup methods described in this document.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection VMWARE BACKUP METHOD COMPARISON CHART (CONT.) The following table provides a comparison of the VMware backup methods described in this document. Feature Backup Exec Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructure (AVVI) Scripted VCB Off-Host Proxy Level Backup Service Console Backup via RALUS*** YES VCB 1.5 does support the backup or recovery of online application data beyond a crashconsistent file system backup of the .
VMware Virtual Machine Protection LICENSING BACKUP EXEC AGENT FOR VMWARE VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE The Backup Exec Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructure is designed to accommodate the needs of large and small deployments – whether it‟s a single ESX host or a robust, multi-ESX, VirtualCenter managed environment. It is licensed simply on a per-ESX host basis.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection LICENSING BACKUP EXEC AGENT FOR VMWARE VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE Installation of AVVI is simple and does not involve installing any software on the ESX Server. The following section describes what components of Backup Exec and VMware Virtual Infrastructure are installed where.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection VMWARE DATA PROTECTION BEST PRACTICES WITH BACKUP EXEC Backup Configuration For best performance, it is recommended that Backup Exec for Windows Servers be installed on the VCB Windows 2003 Proxy Server to perform the backups of the exported data from the ESX 3 servers.
VMware Virtual Machine Protection SUMMARY Server virtualization has quickly risen to mission-critical status in many companies; therefore, keeping it highly available and protecting its data is not an option, but a business requirement. Consequently, backup and recovery including full disaster recovery are among the most critical processes of datacenters that contain virtualized servers.
