VMware VDR or VEEAM backup to choose for Backups & Restores of VM

[Ace007]

Hi

Can anyone suggest the best solutions to choose - VDR or Veeam Backup.

I know that there are limitations with VDR as it is suitable for small infrastructure environment..

My Infrstructure is 1 VC, 4 hosts. 50-60 VM's in a cluster. and usually i do backups to tape.

Thanks in Advance.

[AndreTheGiant]

Both product cannot make backup to tape. But there are several trick to use other programs to backup the catalog and the files of backup.

VDR could be fine for small environment, but for example it has only a file level restore.

Veeam has also application level restore, an interesting tool to test backups, a VM replication engine, more flexibility in scheduling and type of backup...

So, if you have a budget for it, I suggest to choose Veeam (or another commercial backup program).

Andre

[Ace007]

Andrew M wrote:

VDR could be fine for small environment, but for example it has only a file level restore.

Veeam has also application level restore,

I Agree, and also we have good budget for that, but i need some good points to highlight about Veeam backup, my management is thinking to use VDR, i want to let them know that VEEAM is having more good features then VDR.

What do you mean by application level restore. i have not heard about that.

Thanks in Advance.

[AndreTheGiant]

Some features has documented here:

http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup/features.html

If you ask for a trial you can test the products.

Application specific helper are in the download site (need a registration).

Andre

[Ace007]

Veeam Backup & Replication is licensed per CPU socket,

Per CPU Socket of the Host or the VM ?

can you clear me please.

[AndreTheGiant]

CPU socket.

Same as other commercial backup products.

[idle-jam]

also you might want to consider alternative that can provide tape out solution if you need to such as symantec backup exec. The above mentioned does not provide natively ..

[chriswahl]

Ace007 wrote:

Per CPU Socket of the Host or the VM ?

Socket of the Host.

[Ace007]

Can anyone clear me.

When we perform new backup job with VDR, we have an option to select requiered vmdk files, is that same kind of option available on VEEAM ? because i can see only option to select VM, no option to select individual file.

Also please tellme I am doing right or i need to do something please suggest.

you may ask why i need that ? for example, if i have 3 drives for a VM -  C: D: E:, from which c: is 20 GB contains windows OS and other two are huge disks and the data (folders which i need) are being backedup by my TSM software. Then i would like to backup only the OS disk and remaining disk are being copied by TSM. I dont want to copy complete D: E:..

Thanks.

[chriswahl]

Veeam can also back up the individual VMware level files (vmdks) or choose disks based on their SCSI connection (such as SCSI 0 Disk 0). The option of which disks to backup resides in the backup job.

I used this feature extensively on SQL and Exchange servers, to target volumes containing the DB and logs while skipping any miscelaneous volumes containing restores and dev/test type data. I ended up moving VM disks to SCSI 3 that I did not want backed up, and instructed Veeam to backup anything on not on SCSI 3.

[AndreTheGiant]

you may ask why i need that ? for example, if i have 3 drives for a VM -  C: D: E:, from which c: is 20 GB contains windows OS and other two are huge disks and the data (folders which i need) are being backedup by my TSM software. Then i would like to backup only the OS disk and remaining disk are being copied by TSM. I dont want to copy complete D: E:..

This depends by your backup policy.

IMHO, I prefer to have an image backup of the entire VM... just to have a real "system disaster recovery". Of course only system disk may be enough, but you need to document which other disks were present.

And remember that VDR and Veeam (and other backup product) can work in "incremental" mode, so only new data are copied, not the entire disk (exept the first time, of course).

Andre

[habibalby]

Hi,

I just would like to through a hint in here....

If you choose Veeam for replication, please make sure your source and destination hosts are same build and VMTools which are installed on the VMs are updated.

I encounter a problem when I was trying to replicate between my production and DR Site, the production on 4.0.0,164009 and DR site on the latest build  4.1.0 build-260247. When I replicate the test VM, it replicates fine, but when I try to replicate as incremental replication, when it succeeded and tried to powerOn the VM, I got a blue screen :smileyhappy:

Just to eliminate the problem from the version build, I have restored the test vm on a vESX server with the latest build the same as DR site and then I initiate the replication from vESX to the DR site, full replication and incremental replication, it went fine and that issue did not happen again.

Overall, the veeam backup is an application aware and really good product.

Hope it helps...