How to backup a Physical RDM ?

[nshetty]

Hello All,

I would like to know how we could take a backup of a physical RDM ?

Kindly share ideas and features of the product VDP that would allow or provide a workaround for the backup of the RDM in physical mode.

Also anybody with the knowledge of IBM TSM could provide some steps for TSM backup for RDM in physical mode.

I am looking at VDP or TSM for backup.

Thank you in Advance !

[UmeshAhuja]

Hi,

I think TSM does not support backup for virtual machines that have either independent disks (either persistent or non-persistent), or that have raw device mapping (RDM) disks configured in physical compatibility mode. RDM disk configured in virtual compatibility mode are supported.

Hence I would suggest you to take the LUN snapshot or mirroring at the storage level as a backup.

That is make a flash copy of the production LUN --- > Disconnect the relationship between two LUN after 100% completion --> Take the tape backup of that secondary LUN.

[nshetty]

Thank you both for the quick reply.

Umesh,

Does TSM provide options to perform guest copy as Andre suggests.

Thank you both for your assistance.

[UmeshAhuja]

Hi,

To backup RDM attached VM, you have to explicitly tell TSM to exclude the physical RDM and independent disks from the backup.  To allow TSM to backup the normal disks (like OS disk or any other virtual disk) in such VM, you need to add the option ‘-vmprocessvmwithindependent=yes -vmprocessvmwithprdm=yes’ into the VM backup job.

For Eg:
update sched vmware Weekly_full_Exchange DAYofweek=Fri Startt=20:00:00 Desc=’Exchange Weekly Full Backup’ OPTions=’-vmfulltype=vstor -vmbackuptype=fullvm -asnodename=DC1 -vmprocessvmwithindependent=yes -vmprocessvmwithprdm=yes -domain.vmfull=”vmfolder=Exchange” -MODE=FULL’

[a_p_]

Probably the easiest option to backup data from a physical-mode RDM is to use a guest OS agent to do it. There's no way that I know of to use any VM based applications, because physical-mode RDM's do not support snapshots.

André