Backup & Recovery

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  • 1.  To CBT or Not

    Posted Apr 19, 2013 06:44 PM

    We are upgrading our vSphere environment to 5.1 and are moving away from NetApp volume based backups to Hitachi NetBackup based backups. Our vendor is asking us to enable VMware CBT and I wanted get some opinions on enabling this. I've done some research and CBT seems to be problematic and the time savings CBT saves on backups doesn't sound that beneficial if you have to deal with problematic CBT issues. Can anyone chime in and let me know if they recommend CBT for NetBackup and what their experiences have been?

    Thanks in advance for the input.

    Rick



  • 2.  RE: To CBT or Not

    Posted Apr 19, 2013 07:04 PM

    Note: Discussion successfully moved from VMware ESXi 5 to Backup & Recovery

    I have been using CBT with NetBackup (and EMC Clariion FC and EqualLogic) for years now, and have never had a single issue with it from the NetBackup side. The time savings on large VMs can be significant, and any time I have spent cleaning up CBT is minimal and usually due to power failures or other unusual circumstances. I wouldn't hesitate at all with it.



  • 3.  RE: To CBT or Not

    Posted Apr 19, 2013 08:07 PM

    CBT brings a huge benefit for VMDK based backups, and I would definitely recommend enabling it.

    We are using it for some years now (also with NetBackup), and had very few issues (that were not related to CBT itself, but to the software not using/handling it correctly).

    What "problematic issues" have you found?

    - Andreas



  • 4.  RE: To CBT or Not

    Posted Apr 19, 2013 09:04 PM

    The issues I've read about are related to backups not working correctly and the entire VMDK gets backed up. I've also heard about the CBT becoming corrupt and making all of your backups invalid in NetBackup/Veeam and not having a CBT causes the backup of that VMDK to be missed. It sounds like these are the exceptions to the rule if the first two people responding have had good luck.