"Do they boot up and behave properly when they are running live databases like Exchange and SQL" Yes, as long as the script stops those services during the snapshot. (Only needed for a minute or 2). The OS will act as if the plug got yanked (Just as with most backup/restore processes), but the databases will be a safe, consistent state. I have written the scripts, tested, but don't use VCB/quiesce on production SQL/Exchange servers. I just use VCB with flat servers, if you will. I then RSYSNC the files to a remote datacenter afterwards. Kinda like a homebrew VMotion. Sam
________________________________ From: Bill Songstad [mailto:bsongs...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 1:19 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: VMWare tools I was using regular client backups as well, but a recent MotherBoard failure on my ESX host left me high and dry for 36 hours because rebuilding 4 servers and reinstalling them only to back them up and restore them back to the original host was going to be a pretty big hassle not to mention having a full day of email and SQL logs out of sync with the most current backup set. So I figured that if I had some host based backup solution, I could be back online in a couple of hours instead of 16. (no reinstalling, no patching and then restoring from backup) On paper, VMs are great, see, I can rebuild a server in a fraction of the time of a PM, but now I have to rebuild all of my servers in a 4x fraction. I'm curious about real life experience with these live snapshot backups. Do they boot up and behave properly when they are running live databases like Exchange and SQL? Bill On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Michael Leone <oozerd...@gmail.com> wrote: On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Sam Cayze <sam.ca...@rollouts.com> wrote: > I've set up some backup scripts to make my own VCB backups. It was > pretty painless. > I'm by no means a script expert either. I have 10 ESX hosts. I don't do VCB backups at all; I backup each VM exactly as I did when it was a physical host (i.e., using Networker installed in the VM). So I don't need the VMs to be quiescent, before backup (which wouldn't happen here, anyway). ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
