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Rumple
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Backup Advise

Post by Rumple »

I have a somewhat complex environment and looking for advise on how best to handle the backups.

I am going to assume at this point VMA mode is the most appropriate
Considerations:
2 ESX hosts with Local Storage
VM's have multiple Domains
Potentially Different Retention policies based upon Space usage
VM's may have Disk exceptions that need to be set.

In the past I've used multiple backup jobs and grouped the appropriate servers into different jobs based on the above considerations
One of the problems with this approach is that its very easy to forget to add a VM to a backup job and not find out until its too late.

Obviously backing up the entire Host will resolve this issue entirely, but it appears that I then lose all flexibility to set per VM credentials, disk exceptions,etc
So..outside of being very careful and watching my notes..anyone have any other idea's I might not be considering?

Edit - The other challenge I am having is that I've added the VC Server but when trying to select individual VM's for backup using VMA mode since its local storage it take a long time setting up jobs because I have to figure out which host the VM is on before adding it to the Host. Need a way to be able to group by host or something in the tree view..
Gostev
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Re: Backup Advise

Post by Gostev »

Rumple wrote:Obviously backing up the entire Host will resolve this issue entirely, but it appears that I then lose all flexibility to set per VM credentials, disk exceptions,etc
No, you do not lose this flexibility... it is there
Rumple
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Re: Backup Advise

Post by Rumple »

Maybe I am just misunderstanding that piece then.
when I select an entire ESX host and click on exclusions, I see that under disks I can globally select to only backup specific SCSI ID's for all VM's that would be on the host..which doesn't work because usually you have different disks on different VM's that need excluded (like all the Exchange stoage volumes), but you may have a SQL server where you only need to exclude a single disk but need to include the first 3

I see that you can Add a VM and then define exclusions n the VM..but that seems to me that you are selecting the ESX host plus adding a VM as well (which would be redundant backup I would think).
Gostev
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Re: Backup Advise

Post by Gostev »

You should add your host to the job, then click Exclusions, select Disks tab, add specific VMs or containers there that you want to customize disk processing for, and choose disk processing options for each entry. Same for guest processing options and credentials - in the advanced settings on the corresponding wizard step, add specific VMs or containers that you want to customize processing settings for, and choose credentials and processing options for each entry. Thanks!
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