Backup & Archiving Community Blog

Why Roseville?

We started the NetBackup and Backup Exec launch sequence this week with the release of the Countdown to Better Backup Calendar. This was modeled after the idea of an Advent Calendar. Every few days we will open a new window to reveal a new feature of the launch calendar leading up to the product launch. As part of the launch effort each square on the calendar will open in a different city worldwide. This helps us reach our customers and partners in cities around the world and it gives us a chance to bring together all the people who have worked on the release.

Often in marketing it is hard to deliver technical information to the end customers. Everyone is busy, and there is so much noise online it is hard for product announcements to reach customers. One just needs to post a question on LinkedIn asking question about a technology to...

Vmware Backup Requirement:

Licence:

Backup Exec - AVVI agent licence

ESX - Vstorage API licence

Permission:

>> Through ESXi directly Requires a root account or an account equal to access the Vm and take snapshot.

>> Through Vcenter as described in the Article Here

Other requirements: (GRT And NON GRT)

>> Fault Tolerance based machine does not allow snapshot, hence avoid backing Up FT based VM's or Turn off FT on the machines

>> Either Vmware snapshot Provider or BE vss provider is a Must for Application level GRT.(recommended BE VSS)

Incremental and differential Job requirement:

>> hardware version: 7 for the virtual machines

>> Policy based full and Incremental/differential Job

>> change block tracking should be enabled (by default it is enabled , otherwise backup exec uses vstorage to enable...

Well if you have got to this page you probably already have backups running to disk (and duplicate to tape) via the VCenter using AVVI and your looking to turbo charge your backups.

Well here are the simple truths.

1. You muck this part up and the windows host initialises the LUN that your datastore is on… there goes all your VMs. You have been warned
2. Getting Backup Exec to use the SAN is straight forward. Obviously your VMhosts and  BE Media Center  must be connected to the SAN via HBAs. The VCenter does not have to be, it is just acting as a “go between”
3. If your backing up directly to tape, the only gain you are going to get is likely to be marginal as the tape drive is likely to be your bottleneck. But putting the backup traffic over the SAN switching fabric will free up bandwidth on your main network.
4. If you are backing up to disk, then prepare for some major reductions in backup...