VCB & Backup Exec Questions

[AustinPowers]

1. Is there any way to have the pre-backup.bat scripts create a single monolithic fullvm file instead of multiple vmdk's?

2. Assume I use the pre-backup.bat to create fullvm datastore files on my proxy server and then copy those files to tape using a Backup Exec job. Is there any down side to not running the post-backup.bat until the next day? That way I would have those files available on disk if needed, and would not need to spend the time to restore from tape first.

I'd like to just run the post-backup.bat first to get rid of the previous day's files, then run pre-backup.bat to create the current day's files and do the tape backup.

3. Has anyone successfully used the vmware-mount command to mount a vmdk created as above on the proxy and assign a drive letter to it? I can get it to work at the cmd prompt, but it doesn't translate to the GUI.

[AustinPowers]

1. Is there any way to have the pre-backup.bat

scripts create a single monolithic fullvm file

instead of multiple vmdk's?

I found the entry below in another thread regarding excluding whitespace from a vmdk. I''m going to try adding a similar line for "-M 1" to see if that makes it a monolithic file. Fingers crossed.

I edited the \generic\glue.js file and added a line to add "-F 1" to the vcbMounter command. It seems to be working, we'll see if I can restore it okay.[/i]

[wunderon]

Does this increase the backup size?

[AustinPowers]

Does this increase the backup size?

Nope, just condenses the backup into a single file. I just think it's a lot cleaner if a 300GB vmdk is in one file instead of 150.

It was written to default to max. 2GB files so they could be backwards compatible with Windows OS versions from 40 or 50 years ago. :>)

[DanDill]

I just tried to add the "-M 1" to my glue.js file and it didn't work. The section I put it in was this:

vmMounterCmd = "vcbMounter.exe";

Tried changing to: vmMounterCmd = "vcbMounter.exe -M 1";

Can you copy the exact section showing where you added this and had it still work?

I also tried to edit the command to add the "-F 1" just to test and that didn't work either. It looks like there's a section to code it further down in the js file, however I'm not sure I want to mess with that.

Overall I just want the Backup Exec to dump it out to a monolithic file, rather than splitting into 2gb chunks, has anyone has success with this?

[bfent]

Yes, you will need to add the switch to the glue.js. You will need to add this into the function AttachVMData (about half-way down). I have it after the transport mode switch. It should look like this:

// set the transport mode (san/nas/cos/nbd)

cmd += "-m " + MODE + " ";

// set the vmdk file to monolithic (instead of the default of many 2GB files)

cmd += "-M 1 ";

// Tell vcbMounter that we are not expected to create the snapshot ourselves

if (!createSnapshot) {

cmd += "-e ";

[DanDill]

Great, worked perfectly!

Thanks.

[AustinPowers]

Got an answer from a VM support tech - don't screw with pre- and post- command order. If we leave the files on the proxy and delay the post- command, it leave a snapshot live on the VM. That causes a negative impact on performance. We'll do VCB as designed for DR and use Backup Exec Continuous Protection Service for file-level needs.