VM Consolidate Backup Help

[v70]

Hi Guys

I am new to the VM Infrastructure 3.5 world, I am currently looking for the information of setting up a VCB proxy, Our backup software is Veritas Netbackup 6.0 running on Linux, so far I understand that VCB proxy is required to run on Windows Server 2003, is that mean I need to put the VCB and the Netbackup within the same box? Can I run VCB (on Windows) and Netbackup (on Linux) seperately?

Please advise

Thank you kindly

[kjb007]

You should probably keep VCB by itself. There is no problem with having separate VCB proxy server, and Netbackup server. In order to do the backup through netbackup, you will need an agent on the proxy server. I think that was what you were asking, but I wasn't sure if you were referring to master/media/client when you mention having netbackup within the same box.

-KjB

[passahobe]

Hello v70

It's no necessary that Netbackup and VCB resides on same box.

A bit more, I suggest you some considerations asuming your VMs resides on SAN (or iSCSI) infraestructure:

Your VCB Proxy has to have access to the Luns if you want to mount VMs images across SAN, so the best solution, (my opinion only) is install VCB on same server that Virtual Center and make sure that the VC has visibility of all LUNs with VMs datastores that you want to backup. After that you can use vcbmounter with '-m san' with no problems.
If you mount the images or files on the proxy VCB server, for access this mounted objects you will need install Netbackup agent on it. Otherwise, you'll need install the agent on the server used as destination for vcbmounter command.

I hope this helps you.

[Brian_Smith1]

If you are going to the trouble of deploying VCB and a proxy, you should use NetBackup 6.5.1 or later. That version of NetBackup introduces a VCB agent which runs on the Win2003 VCB proxy. No scripts, VM discovery when configuing the policy, and image-level backups can be used for file-level restore (no dual backups).

See the NetBackup information at

[v70]

Thanks guys, I am very appreciate of your great help

so far i have the setup as following

Windows Server 2003 - Virtual Center 2.5

Windows Server 2003 - VCB Proxy

4X ESX 3.5 - They all hookup to a iSCSI SAN Volume for vmdk

Linux RH 4 - Netback 6.0 MP4 Master and Media

I have installed the VCB, Intergration Module for Netbackup and Netback Administration Console on the VCB Proxy, and also mount the ESX SAN Volume by using MS iSCSI Initiator (but cannot browse the content, is it normal because of the OS dont understand vmfs?), am I on the right path? do i miss anything else? any comment would be appreciated.

Thanks again

[kjb007]

You don't mount the ESX volume directly with the MS initiator. You will need to use the vcbmounter command. That is what the vcb framework and the proxy is for. As long as the LUNs are available, you will use the vcbmounter command to do the mount and then ou will be able to see the vm files from the mounted vmfs.

-KjB