fox1977 Posted January 5, 2011 Posted January 5, 2011 Anyone here any experience of using vranger? Been trialling the software here but struggled after moving datastore offsite and struggled to get full backup to continue as incrementals. every slight change in the backup job seems to want to redo a full backup. I've just managed to get the backend iscsi infrastructure in place for the lan free backup. I'm about to start looking at veeam to see how that works out? Anyone out there who has tried both out? Thanks
Dave_O Posted January 9, 2011 Posted January 9, 2011 (edited) Hi Guys,, I was wondering what solutions any of you guys are using to backup VMware server. We currently use backup exec and backup in the region of 2Tb, So what i am really asking is do you know of any better solutions ? Cheers Use Veeam. Here's a job log from Christmas day. Doesn't go wrong, we do termly restores on selected machines just to check, works every time. This is one job out of approximately 12 split by service. Backups total about 6Tb. Session Details Status Success Start time 12/25/2010 3:00:17 AM Details Total VMs 6 End time 12/25/2010 9:08:59 AM Processed VMs 6 Duration 6:08:41 Successful VMs 6 Total size 4.87 TB Failed VMs 0 Processed size 4.87 TB VMs in progress 0 Processing rate 231 MB/s Processed Objects VM name Status Start time End time Total size Processed size Processing rate Duration Details BCS-FS01 Success 12/25/2010 3:01:26 AM 12/25/2010 3:38:58 AM 490.00 GB 490.00 GB 223 MB/s 0:37:31 BCS-FS05 Success 12/25/2010 3:38:58 AM 12/25/2010 4:24:43 AM 1.04 TB 1.04 TB 397 MB/s 0:45:45 BCS-FS06 Success 12/25/2010 4:24:43 AM 12/25/2010 4:29:32 AM 240.00 GB 240.00 GB 853 MB/s 0:04:48 BCS-FS03 Success 12/25/2010 4:29:32 AM 12/25/2010 7:04:38 AM 1.04 TB 1.04 TB 117 MB/s 2:35:05 BCS-FS02 Success 12/25/2010 7:04:38 AM 12/25/2010 9:03:16 AM 1.04 TB 1.04 TB 153 MB/s 1:58:37 BCS-FS04 Success 12/25/2010 9:03:16 AM 12/25/2010 9:08:47 AM 1.04 TB 1.04 TB 3 GB/s 0:05:31 Edited January 9, 2011 by Dave_O
fox1977 Posted January 10, 2011 Posted January 10, 2011 Over what network/backbone are you backing them up as the processing rates look pretty fast? Just building my infrastructure now with a seperate iscsi network for lan free backups. Waiting for my iscsi storage to turn up tomorrow.
Dave_O Posted January 10, 2011 Posted January 10, 2011 (edited) Fox1977 The infrastructure is 4Gig Fibre channel. The Veeam backups we do over lan are less than this ( two thirds of the fibre rate - see below). We run two copies of the backups to two physically separate locations one over fibre one over lan. Session Details Status Success Start time 1/1/2011 1:00:19 PM Details Total VMs 4 End time 1/1/2011 6:26:45 PM Processed VMs 4 Duration 5:26:26 Successful VMs 4 Total size 3.60 TB Failed VMs 0 Processed size 3.60 TB VMs in progress 0 Processing rate 193 MB/s Processed Objects VM name Status Start time End time Total size Processed size Processing rate Duration Details BCS-FS01 Success 1/1/2011 1:01:53 PM 1/1/2011 1:31:51 PM 490.00 GB 490.00 GB 279 MB/s 0:29:58 BCS-FS02 Success 1/1/2011 1:31:51 PM 1/1/2011 3:12:21 PM 1.04 TB 1.04 TB 181 MB/s 1:40:30 BCS-FS03 Success 1/1/2011 3:12:22 PM 1/1/2011 5:36:35 PM 1.04 TB 1.04 TB 126 MB/s 2:24:12 BCS-FS04 Success 1/1/2011 5:36:35 PM 1/1/2011 6:26:23 PM 1.04 TB 1.04 TB 365 MB/s 0:49:47 Dave O Edited January 10, 2011 by Dave_O
gshaw Posted January 10, 2011 Posted January 10, 2011 Is there any way to put Veeam backups onto tape at some point? It's the only way we can truly get the data off site at the moment so still need to have that option... looking at DPM to see if we can trust it enough to take over from Backup Exec...
Dave_O Posted January 10, 2011 Posted January 10, 2011 GShaw Stick a backup device onto your Veeam box and back up the appropriate folders. Veeam backups create a single file (large) per backup job with differential like files (relatively small) for each revision you keep. As long as a Veeam backup is not in progress then backups are just like backing up a file server. We do these backups to tape during the day as we know there are no Veeam jobs on the go and it does not impact any services.
Dave_O Posted January 10, 2011 Posted January 10, 2011 When we bought it back in March 2009 it was £240 per CPU
Dave_O Posted January 10, 2011 Posted January 10, 2011 The LDD group?! Not sure if they still do it. Only really used them once.
jayemm Posted January 11, 2011 Posted January 11, 2011 When we bought it back in March 2009 it was £240 per CPU That looks like a good price, will have to look into it for my new VM solution.
sister_annex Posted January 11, 2011 Posted January 11, 2011 In the same way as Dave_O, we also just do a basic file dump of the veeam backup files to disk. We use a Disk 2 Disk solution though as Tapes do not have the capacity. We currently run a single 2Tb removable Hard Disk per day (5 days at present) which basically takes a copy of the veeam vbk files (using robocopy). The vbk files are the big files referred to in Dave_O's Post. If there was ever an issue (and there has been on a couple occasions here) the vbk on disk can be imported into veeam and then either individal files or the entire machine can be restored as normal. Currently the 2Tb disk holds about 1.2Tb worth and that is the accumulation of ~40 servers. Also just to note, the disks are encrypted and only backup the most recent veeam job which runs the night before - this is solely for the purpose of disaster recovery (And end of year backups) we use the usual veeam backups on the server to recover anything during normal uptime If you need any more info let me know
cpjitservices Posted January 11, 2011 Posted January 11, 2011 We simulated this and we didnt lose a thing apart from the odd blank word document all our backups go offsite mainly using our won batch files... DR was no problem all we did was remote into the local Backup Server and the Offsite Backup Server and started transferring over everything that had been backed up - we have an incremental backup everyday and a full one on a Friday.
gshaw Posted January 11, 2011 Posted January 11, 2011 I was thinking about putting a box down the other end of the building and having replicated backups done that way (original thoughts were based towards DPM) although we could do the Veeam way with the backup server in the server room and then pushing the previous night's files off to tape then shifting that around as we do now. Does Veeam backup the VMs themselves or are there agents to install at all? Hazy memory suggests it's the first one but need to check it out again
andrew-virtusolve Posted January 11, 2011 Posted January 11, 2011 We sell both Veeam and vRanger and have found Veeam to be the most reliable, but vRanger to be far easier to use and work with. vRanger 5.0 is coming out on 17th January which offers a load of new benefits over the previous version and integrates the replication, but Veeam 5.0.1 is a rock solid solution, both have their merits depending on your solution. You will also need to remember that you need the full vStorage API's for either solution, which means you need to have a vCenter server running and licensed before they will function. As a third option you may also want to look at PHDVirtual, but we don't rate it when the other two are around. As for licensing, vRanger is offering a new Essentials product that matches the VMware essentials one (cheap, up to three servers and 6 CPUs covered) VMware are pulling out of offering backup solutions, so you can expect VDR to be dropped (as VCB already has been).
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