Virtual Machine backup and recovery.

[cer113]

Hi,

We have VSphere 5.0 and would like to find easy way to backup virtual machines not only file level but in case of some problems we would like to be able to easy  restore virtual machine as cost of having virtual machine down is way more expensive than any software.

I had few good reviews on Veeam backup and recovery so my question would be what would be the best software to do virtual machine backup. Price is not an issue here as having one VM down for 3 hours may cost hundreds of thousands.

What would you recoomend it may be Vmware solution or third party doesnt matter.

[vmroyale]

What other backup software is already in use in your environment? It can often make sense to leverage this investment, if it meets the needs.

[cer113]

Believe it or not we dont have any at the moment. We do IBM Tivoli Backup but not on vm level just files backup. But this is going to be a problem if we need to restore vm.

[vmroyale]

I implemented TSM once with NetApp NFS using NDMP for full VM backups. In addition to Veeam and others, definitely see what Tivoli has in this space as well. I tend to prefer a single solution for backup, when it is possible and makes good sense. Just my 2¢...

[ChrisPahl]

We use Veeam at our company and the instant restore feature is nice.  Basically allows you to power the VM on using the backup file.  Using this feature I have been able to restore a VM in minutes.  We have also just upgraded our environment to 5.1 so we are evaluating Data Protection and Data Replication modules.

[ldelloca]

You first need to list your requirements, excluding any software solutions. You already listed one, that is having an RTO of less than 3 hours for any VM. Depending on the size of a given VM, restoring a full vmdk disk from backup to production storage could be impossible to reach even with high-speed restore operations, so Instant VM Recovery from Veeam could be a feature to fulfill this requirement.

Other elements you need to evaluate before eventually go for Veeam are for example if your environment is completely virtualized, since Veeam cannot backup physical server; other suggestions like keeping TSM to do both could be right, or maybe you prefer to have "best of breed" and manage two backup software, or even if you need to do offloading to tape, at the moment Veeam cannot do that and you need to rely on a second software to save to tape (but Veeam is expected to have tape support in the next release)

My 2 cents.

Luca.

[rasidz]

I agree with Idelloca about making an informed decision about investing in a backup solution. As he correctly points out, Veeam does not back up physical machines or file systems. Investing in point solutions may solve your challenge of backing up the VMs but they also introduce complexity in your backup environment. Your physical and virtual machines are now being backed up in different repositories, you no longer have a single pane of glass view of your entire backup environment, and you need to pay for two or more solutions to do a good job of backing up all your data. This is not to mention the administrative overheads and costs of licensing and managing multiple solutions and training your staff to use them. You would rather invest in an end-to-end solution which gives you the ability to manage both your physical and virtual machine backups. Check out Asigra Cloud Backup. It is an end to end data protection tool that also provides instant recovery capabilities for VMware virtual machines called “Virtual Disaster Recovery” which can help you in DR processes. Asigra provides you instant turn-on of virtual machine copies both in your local environment and at a remote data center. So, you are covered either in the light of local machine failures, or complete site failures. Using a complete solution like Asigra will help you back up all your data to a single repository and manage all your backup and recovery operations from a single console overcoming the additional cost, complexity, and effort that comes with the use of multiple point solutions such as Veeam.

[Michael Stanclift]

Veeam is fantastic, and affordable. The new VMware virtual backup appliance is nice, but honestly not as flexible in terms of how much space you have to dedicate to the backup process up front. It also requires vCenter 5.1.

[MaximK10]

Cert113,

Have you picked a solution yet?

The new version of Veeam Backup & Replication, that was suggested by a couple of people, is coming out in Q3 of this year and have a lot of new features. If you are in fact fully virtualized, this could be the only solution that you will need. You can get more information on the new features that are coming out in v7 like tape support and WAN acceleration - v7 features.

Keep us updated.

[fasttrack]

Hi guys,

why do not use Acronis vmProtect?

[ch1ta]

Previously there has been a discussion regarding Acronis VMprotect product line, and I can’t say people were happy with this solution:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/413626

Also, as far as I’m concerned, replication over WAN used to be a challenge with Acronis VMprotect – a variety of customers reported that they could never get it to work; though, it might have been addressed in the recent VMprotect version.

As to my own experience, we’re using Veeam in our environment for both backup and replication task, and quite satisfied with it; works, as expected.

Cheers.

[MaximK10]

Cert113, Veeam Backup & Replication v7 is now available. You can check out all of the new features and innovations in the following document - Whats new in v7

[Noonan1970]

Hi Cert113,

Another great Backup & Replication product on the market today is PHD Virtual.  I've been using them for over a year now and they've worked great for me.  I started looking at them as a more cost effective solution than Veeam.  Veeam has a good solution but PHD could do everything they could do plus more, for ~ 60% of the price.  If you are in the market still for a Backup and DR assurance product, you should definitely do some research on PHD Virtual.  Here is a link to their website if you'd like more information www.phdvirtual.com

[MarVista]

Hello,

Veeam backup this is on the top in backup solution for visualization now version 7 is also available with great feature.Also you can install free tail version for testing the feature..

Yours,
Mar Vista

[BackupGal]

cer113 wrote:

Hi,

We have VSphere 5.0 and would like to find easy way to backup virtual machines not only file level but in case of some problems we would like to be able to easy  restore virtual machine as cost of having virtual machine down is way more expensive than any software.

I had few good reviews on Veeam backup and recovery so my question would be what would be the best software to do virtual machine backup. Price is not an issue here as having one VM down for 3 hours may cost hundreds of thousands.

What would you recoomend it may be Vmware solution or third party doesnt matter.

Have you checked out Unitrends?

Highlights:

• You can deploy as a virtual appliance if you have existing infrastructure, or a physical appliance if you need the storage

• Restore individual files or a whole VM. You can even take bare metals of the VM and do V2P or V2V, etc

• Instant recovery via failover virtualization

• If you have physical servers to protect, you can do that as well and manage both through a single pane of glass

• Protect 100+ versions of OSs, applications, hypervisors, etc (ie, Windows, Linux, Mac OS, AIX, Solaris, iSeries, SQL, Exchange, Oracle, VMware, Hyper-V, and many others)

• Archive data to SAN, NAS, disk or tape for long term storage

• 30-Day Unlimited Free Trial Available:  http://www.unitrends.com/products/software/download

• Free Edition Available (4VMs, Free Forever):  http://www.unitrends.com/products/software/download

-Jenn

Twitter: @BackupGal

[disclaimer: I'm not in sales, but I do work for Unitrends]

[admin]

Veeam backup is one of best solution these days  for VM backup and fast recovery ..also version 7 has new advance feature so i would recommended Use Veeam backup Number 1 solution.