VMware lan-free backup

[rav63]

Hello all!

Could you please advice how to make SAN FC backups of vmware vCenter vms on many ESX servers in different datacenters to FC tape and d2d devices?

What and  where must be presented, what system can be backup host?

as I understand client  is vCenter server.

must vCenter and backup host be physical or not, is it bound to location where tape/d2d is located?

thanks a lot

[Bob_Clark]

Do you have Data Protector installed?

If so, have you done the VMware integration?

When backing up ESX virtual machines, you can back them all up by backing up the Virtual Center, or you can backup the ESX clients individually

To backup over fiber, your Virtual Center or the ESX clients have to be able to see the tape library or d2d device.  When creating the device, you include the vCenter machine or ESX clients as hostnames.  When creating the backup specification, use the option 'Use Preferred Host', so that whne backup starts, disk agent and media agent are the same hostname

Remember, this is only of you are using Data Protector

I am not able to answer the question about 'what system can be used as a backup host', that is more of a VMware issue

[rav63]

Sorry for unclear explanation.

Of course, we have DP 7.03 installed and we are doing Virtual Environment integration. Now all VMware backups flow over NBD.

A little bit about our configuration: we have two different datacenters with many ESX hosts, datacenter A and B for example. All ESX hosts are managed by vCenter server in B datacenter, vCenter is a virtual machine. Also we have FC tape libraries, one is in A datacenter and one is in B datacenter, presented and managed by physical hosts in these datacenters.

The question is how do we best configure backups to make them over SAN, not LAN in every datacenter.

P.S. more reading the VE integration guide maybe already helped to find the answer, I just need to confirm that is the right answer 🙂

SAN: Use this mode when your ESX(i) Server systems store their virtual

machine disks on Fibre Channel SAN or iSCSI SAN. This is an

unencrypted transportation mode over Fibre Channel or iSCSI.

For details, see the VMware documentation.

This transportation mode requires that the storage volumes on which the

virtual machines are located are presented to the client with the Virtual

Environment Integration component installed (backup host).

[Bob_Clark]

I am not an expert at VMware backups, but, this appears to be correct to me

[Hao7669]

In VMware, DP supports to integrate with VMware vStorage Image to protect VMs, it supports VMware LAN-Free backup in SAN environment. It use one physical server as the backup host, this backup host could  access the vdisks though SAN and has the SAN attached backup devices, hence it could do the LAN-free backup. DP will install the Virtual Environment Integration component (VEAgent) on the backup host, the VEAgent will communicate with ESX host to trigger the ESX to make the snapshot of the VMs and mount relevant vdisks to the backup host, then the backup host could access the vdisksd over SAN directly and copy the vdisks to SAN attached backup devices.

[HP_INDIA]

Hi,

Followng  are the prerequisits for SAN:

 - Backup host, ESX serevers are in same array zone

 - All VM's datastore LUN's should share with the Backup host

Regards

Nagaraj S G

[rav63]

Thanks, I've already successed to configure VMware lan-free backup

[peipei0827]

hi rav63 , i came across the same problem as yours.

Would you please show how you did the configuration? Is your backup host a physical host?

If the backup host is a vm, will it possible for the datacenter's vm backup be lan-free backup?

Looking forward to you reply, thanks in advance.

[rav63]

backup host is physical host, vmware does not support presenting fc tape libraries to virtual machine. you present datastore to backup host, it appears as unknown disk. also present the tape to backup host, set in specification destination use preferred multipath host - backup host. configure backup spec, select as transport SAN, not NBD. maybe DP will automatically select SAN, I don't know

Remembered a small security issue - admin on a backup host can do anything with your presented datastore with VMs, be careful

[peipei0827]

hi rav63 , you are very kind, thanks for your reply.

In my case, customer can't find another phsycial server as backup host, I try to use vm as backup host and allocate a fc card exclusively used by this vm and find out whether it's possible for this vm to recognize the fc tape library. 

[Tom321]

hi peipei0827, how was the progress with vm backup host finally? is it possible to use vm backup host with fc tape library?