DR and linked clones / VDI?

[HenrikElm]

I know that VDI and vSphere does not yet work together. But when it does, we would like to be able to back up VDI clients. How would DR work with linked clones regarding backup and restore?

Another one.. Are there any issues with DR and thin provisioning?

/Henrik

[TomHowarth]

to be honest, I do not understand why you would need or want to back up your VDI guest, your templates, Linked Clone Masters yes, but replicas and Clones, I do not know. Do you currently back up your physical Desktops? I would be suprised if you did, you just do a standard image and make sure that your users data is safe and secure.

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author for the upcoming book "[VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment|http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780136083214]”. Currently available on roughcuts

[HenrikElm]

Being a hosting provider, we sometimes have little or no control over what is installed in the customers clients. It would still be great to be able to offer a fast restore of a client if something happens to it. Today we host servers and our clients handle their own PC clients and those are almost never backed up, but all the more reason to move all PC clients to us then if we can offer a smart client backup/restore function? Needless to say a refresh/recompose may be hard in such a setup, but the other features of View are enough to be quite compelling.

So.. Still.. How may DR be used with VDI/Linked Clones?

/Henrik

[TomHowarth]

IF you correctly design you environment there is still no need to back up individual VDI guests. utilisation of a Profile management solutions like AppSense User Environment Manager(other Profile management solutions are available), coupled with a Application virtualisation solution like App-V or ThinApp. allow you to completely decouple the "user uniqueness" including the application side of the equation from the Machine. thereby completely removing the requirment to back up the device.

The recover process of a failed environement is as simple as re-provisioning your guest. and letting them log back on. all the individuals uniqueness is stored on their profile/home directory.

If you found this or any other answer useful please consider the use of the Helpful or correct buttons to award points

Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author for the upcoming book "[VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment|http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780136083214]”. Currently available on roughcuts

[HenrikElm]

Lol.. I know all this and we have been over this before. You still dont get it, altough I this time specifically say that we have a very mixed environment with us hosting many different companies with different levels of self-government where refreshes are not useful and many companies are not willing to take that step to full automation yet. Surely you must understand the need to offer different levels of a service?

Now, can anyone who actually know the answer to the original question post, I'd be most grateful.

Best regards

Henrik

[TomHowarth]

Firstly I take a litte bit of umbrance at your tone. but that is not a factor "I have broad shoulders". But YES I DO GET IT. You Don't You are providing a Service. part of that service is to create an offering that is better that what they currently have. by offering such a varied and none standard environment, you are making your ongoing operational management a nightmare. You are offering your customers a Service. they really do not care how there infomation is presented to them only that it is and it is safe and secure. and before you ask "Yes I have done this before, serveral time to be precise". I have been through your pain.

However on to DR - The best way to deal with your back up/DR strategy is to use a third party backup solution like esXpress 3.5 with full de-dup on (other third party backup solutions are available). VMware's Date Recovery is slightly limited in its performance at in this iteration.

If you found this or any other answer useful please consider the use of the Helpful or correct buttons to award points

Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author for the upcoming book "[VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment|http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780136083214]”. Currently available on roughcuts

[HenrikElm]

Believe me, I truly really want to get to the situation you are talking about. That would be fantastic and eventually we will hopefully arrive there. In the meantime however while all of our clients are working to get there over the years together with us, we need to look at ways to offer client-PC hosting with as useful features as possible, such as DR for clients. This will be an optional feature for those that need it.

If already at the "nirvana" position you talk about, no client backup would indeed be needed. If at a "current" level an option to be able to restore a clientPC would probably be a good idea. Also, the single-instance-storage of the DR target would make the client backups quite small I guess, increasing the probability it will be sufficient? We will try out the performance and see if it is good enuff, right now there seem to be a few bugs to iron out before we can use it.

As for my tone, English is not my mother tounge and I may come out as hard or soft, not too easy to say as I just type more or less what I want to achieve. From now on, please don't read too much into percieved tone. For example I have no idea what umbrance is.

Well, I do appreciate your energy to steer us in the right direction, but right now we need to know more about all available options to increase value and ease of use for our clients. I thank you for the example with esXpress and we'll include it in the testing as well.

Best regards

Henrik