Backups when vCenter goes offline

[Daveyd]

I'm sure this may have been discussed before but is there a workaround to perform backups when the vCenter server is offline? My SQL server that holds the vCenter database went south last night and none of my backups were completed.

[Vitaliy S.]

The only workaround that comes to my mind, is to add ESX(i) hosts as standalone ones and reconfigure your backup jobs to retrieve VMs from these hosts directly. Please be aware that on doing this you will have a full backup jobs pass (not incremental), since your VMs will have another ID assigned by ESX(i) host. Thanks!

[Gostev]

The workaround above is only suitable if you are not using VMotion in your environment. Otherwise, you really need to make sure your vCenter server is highly available.

[Daveyd]

The workaround above is only suitable if you are not using VMotion in your environment. Otherwise, you really need to make sure your vCenter server is highly available.

The VCenter server is highly available but we are using a remote SQL instance to hold the vCenter, SRM, and VUM databases...which is not highly available. I think I am going to move all those DBs to a SQL server that is a VM

[cag]

[merged]

If vcenter server fails do I also lose all my backups / replications ? Can they be rebuilt. I see a feature to re-map replication jobs.
or does veeam depend on VCENTER to run.

Where this leads to can veeam backup/restore a VCENTER Server or do I need another process to backup vcenter.

I would think I can run veeam console without vcenter and run a instant restore? Yes / No

[foggy]

Yes, you can backup vCenter using Veeam B&R, there are several existing topics on that also, please search. (for example, this one: HOWTO: Backing up vCenter host issues). Thanks.