VADP aware image backups, what happens during vmotions?

[jedijeff]

I am currently doing an evaluation of Simpana9 and was curious(before I test and screw something up) what happens if during the imagae backup, either during the snap or backing up the snap, if the VM vmotions to a new ESX host or Storage vmotions to a new Datastore. Will VADP queue it up until after?

Thanks!!

[Suresh Babu Nekkalapudi]

Hi,

You should not see any issues even if VM is migrated through vMotion. But Storage vMotion while backup may cause a backup failure. However a subsequent backup post the storage vMotion will succeed.

In 5.1, Migrate option itself is disabled while backup. That means you'll not be able to do a manual migration of VMs while backup is in progress. However this does not impact the VMs in Automated DRS cluster

More details are available in my blog - http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/Backup-Buddy.com/2013/03/25/interoperability--vdp-vm-mobility

[jedijeff]

Thankyou. We use DRS, so it seems when a backup is occuring even if DRS moves the vm to another host, the backup should continue. I assumed that and thank you for the confirmaiton. But a Storage Vmtion could hose the backup, which I guess makes sense too.

I guess then the important issue is whether your VADP enabled backup software can correctly identity the VMs that were moved in a timely manner so as not to miss the next backup cycle.

[Suresh Babu Nekkalapudi]

whether your VADP enabled backup software can correctly identity the VMs that were moved in a timely manner so as not to miss the next backup cycle.

- I am currently using VDP(vSphere Data Protection) which is built on VADP and i absolutely see no issues even if VMs are migrated. Without editing the backup job i can still continue the scheduled backups successfully