At the San Diego VMUG this session was presented by Rick Vanover from Veeam. He covered some tips and tricks for doing VMware backups. Of course the session was Veeam focused, and highlighted features of their backup software.
Tips for efficient VM Backups
- Take a modern approach
- We have a robust platform with vSphere, use it
- Seek an approach built for virtualization – Remove burdens of agents inside VMs, easy on VM administrator, and scalable
- Do not put the backup data where the VMs are running (e.g. SAN). Storage can fail.
Disk-Based Backup Flexibility
- Many people do disk-to-disk backups with VMs
- vSphere gives you a framework with many options (VDDK, VADP, direct SAN access, etc.)
- Hardware dedupe appliances are more efficient than backup software dedupe
Upgrades with preparation
- A virtual lab can help you ensure that a critical upgrade will go smooth as planned
- Restore VMs to a sandbox and test upgrades without affecting production
Know where Bottlenecks Exist
- Backuping up VMs have many moving parts
- It’s important to know what may be slowing down your backups
- Source storage, network, disk target, CPU resources, backup window
Veeam Explorer for Exchange
- Restore Exchange items directly from the Veeam backup
- Search and browse across one or more Exchange databases
- Recover emails, contacts, calendar items, tasks, etc.
- No agent needed, free in all editions of Veeam Backup and Replication
