Our VM setup
- 4 ESXi hosts
- SAN storage shared between hosts for VM's in production
- 47 VM's (taking up about 3Tb) so 75Gb on 'average'
- However real distribution is more like
- 7 machines <15Gb
- 18 machines <45Gb
- 11 machines <100Gb
- 9 machines <200Gb
- 1 machine 360 Gb
- 1 machine 2.8 Tb but all of those volumes (largest is 1Tb) (except OS) are RDM (and in addition there is 20Tb archive volumes via iSCSI)
vRanger
- We are making replica's of our VM's to an older SAN based storage for all of the VM's (except the 2.8Tb machine) on a daily basis. 2 database servers are replicated on a 6 hour scheme.
- In addition to this we make backups of our VM's to 2 NAS storage devices on a weekly basis (first week of month full backup, rest of the month incremental)
- These backups of the VM's are later written to tape (using Netvault backup software (see further)
- In addition to vRanger we are using Netvault for backing up
- The RDM volumes (weekly full, daily incremental) 6 weeks retention
- The volumes of the second largest file server (weekly full, daily incremental) 6 weeks retention
- Backup up the 'system state' of a number of vm's
- These backups are done to VTL (only last week is kept there) and duplicated onto tape from that location.
- It is also used to create TAPE archives from the 20Tb of archive volumes (two copies actually).
- When these archive volumes are 'full' a final third copy is made (and it is kept in the tape library.
- Both vRanger and Netvault have gone through a change in ownership: 2 separate companies -> Quest software -> DELL
- And the sales / support channels in this part of the world has been less than spectacular with all these changes.
- Our infrastructure is showing its age (e.g tape library is close to 6 years)
- A number of new possibilities are cropping up (e.g. Cloud storage, VTL alike appliances…)
- Need for tape? Do any of you have a complete tapeless setup? If so how do you implement the 3-2-1 rule (3 copies, 2 media types, 1 off site)?
- Would it be a feasible scenario to cover my backup / replication needs with veeam only (replacing both vRanger and Netvault)? With or without tape?
- Do any of you have experience with BIG machines (like the 2.8Tb one) and would you even consider to replicate this machine? Or make of backup of the machine (instead of a file system backup of the volumes like we do today)
- And finally (bit OT)
- If I take away the Netvault product entirely I am still stuck with the archive data.
- Would you consider using veeam for these type of file backup?
- The 20Tb volume is typically sliced up in yearly datasets of 4-5Tb?
- Anyone out there that would be using the cloud for example as a secondary / third location for this data
- A back of the envelope calculation gave me a price of 10500 euros to store 20Tb of data for 5 years in Amazon Glacier, while buying a 24 slot LTO6 library with 2 drives and 5 years of support and the necessary cartridges for dual copies would set me back 15000 euro?
(perhaps a bit much for one post but it is all linked hence one post)