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2010 and VCenter

Updated: 30 Sep 2010 | 3 comments
arg175's picture
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I have Symantec 2010 and VCenter 4.  I have 5 ESX servers running ESXi that I will be backing up.

Any suggestions on advantages/disadvantages on licensing through VCenter or on each ESX box?

Thanks

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teiva-boy's picture
30
Mar
2010
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There are some caveats to

There are some caveats to your situation.

You have ESXi and not the pay for ESX or vSphere4.  

With the free edition, you do not have access to VCB or the new vStorage API's.  Thus, you cannot take advantage of the operational benefit of the BE2010 virtual agents.  That is, snapshot based backups.  

However, with ESXi, you can still purchase the virtual agent, that is licensed per physical box, and covers an UNLIMITED number of virtual guests.  Think about it...  You buy one "Agent for Vmware Virtual Infrastructure," and you can cover 1 or 100 virtual guests running on one physical host.  The more guests you virtualize, the cheaper the virtual agent becomes.

So without the operational benefit of the snapshot based backups, you are stuck with the traditional agent based backups.  Which is not a bad thing at all IMO.

If you are virtualizing more than 4 guests per physical host,  then it makes sense to get the virtual agent.

There is an online portal, save yourself the long hold times. Create ticket online, then call in with ticket # in hand :-) http://mysupport.symantec.com "We backup data to restore, we don't backup data just to back it up."

arg175's picture
30
Mar
2010
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Sorry I should have clarified

Sorry I should have clarified in my first post, I have ESXi with Enterprise Plus. 

teiva-boy's picture
30
Mar
2010
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Then use the Vmware Agent for

Then use the Vmware Agent for BE.

There is an online portal, save yourself the long hold times. Create ticket online, then call in with ticket # in hand :-) http://mysupport.symantec.com "We backup data to restore, we don't backup data just to back it up."