Dell PowerVault DL2000 - Manual (Page 3)

VMware Virtual Machine Protection
3 October 2008
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‟s Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI 3) has quickly become an industry standard
for organizations looking to virtualize their IT environments.
Companies are becoming dependent on efficient backup and quick recovery of their virtual
systems and the host systems they run on to maintain business productivity and cost savings that
server virtualization delivers. This includes not only the Guest virtual machines, but also the
applications that have been installed on those Guest virtual machines such as Microsoft
Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint Server. A lost ESX server could impact productivity up to several
hours, or even days, for multiple departments while the IT administrator struggles to recover the
virtual environment and the individual Guest virtual machines.
Administrators looking to protect their VMware environment quickly understand the frustration and
time involved with backup technologies that were not built specifically for protection virtual
environments. Administrators and companies who have not had the experience of recovering a
Guest virtual machines using basic backup and recovery tools will face several limitations to
quickly recovering their data with these older backup tools designed only for physical systems
including:
Having to install a backup agent inside of each Guest virtual machine or on the ESX
server directly
Recovery of a single file typically requires a long restore of the entire Guest virtual
machine
Separate backups for system level vs. individual file level recovery
Taking Guest virtual machines off-line during backup in order to protect them
completely
Concerns about ensuring applications running inside of the Guest virtual machines
can be recovered
Having to use separate backup products for physical vs. virtual machines
Traditionally, this problem has been overcome with the use of VMware utilities that allow 3
rd party
backup software to perform backups within the ESX Service Console of running Guest virtual
machines. Unfortunately, performing the live or “Hot” backups of running Guest virtual machines
using these utilities can require using scripts and Linux based tools that usually require Linux
scripting experience.
Additionally, these types of backups on the ESX server can place an additional performance load
on the entire ESX server during backup, affecting all Guest virtual machines on that ESX server
and all of the users connected to the
Guest virtual machines on that ESX server. Performing a hot
backup can prove to be difficult or impossible to manage manually and certainly is not cost
effective if it‟s not centralized and useable by the necessary staff.
VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 introduces new technology, VMware Consolidated Backup( VCB),
to help overcome some of these challenges with the traditional backup methods of virtual
machines, but it also introduces some backup and recovery challenges of its own that need to be
considered for all environments planning on implementing it including:
Managing cumbersome and complicated VCB “scripts” to integrate with existing
backup products
Installation of proprietary VCB “integration modules” that require additional testing
and setup
Separate backups for system level vs. individual file level recovery to recover a
single file from a .vmdk
This paper attempts to discuss these topics, how Backup Exec can help address these unique
challenges, and ultimately provide sufficient information to administrators to make a decision on
what Backup Exec solution is right for them.
VMWARE VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE 3 BACKUP AND RECOVERY CHALLENGES