Backup Linux Servers with RDM

[NetRock]

Hey Guys,

We've implemented VEEAM backup and replication 6.5 in our customer's site. We have few, yet very critical, VMs that
are running Ubuntu with a RDM disk with physical bus sharing attached to them. RDM disk uses physical bus sharing due
Clustering service that is running on the Ubuntu VMs. We have problem backing up these servers due to RDM with physical
bus sharing. I did some research and found out that I should back up VM's OS and data, not like other regular VMs with
VMDK disks. I just looked around and found Linux Server under Backup Infrastructure menu.

Can I use this option to backup Ubuntu OS and data on RDM?


NetRock,

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Joe,

Since pRDM disks do not support snapshots, you cannot backup these VMs with vStorage API for data protection. You can of course add this Linux box to the backup console as a Linux server and then use file copy jobs to copy all data from these disks, but be aware that this will be exact copies of your files (no compression and deduplication will be applied). If you can change your configuration to vRDM disks, then you will be able to backup this VM with regular backup/replication jobs.

Thank you!

[NetRock]

Hello Joe,

Since pRDM disks do not support snapshots, you cannot backup these VMs with vStorage API for data protection. You can of course add this Linux box to the backup console as a Linux server and then use file copy jobs to copy all data from these disks, but be aware that this will be exact copies of your files (no compression and deduplication will be applied). If you can change your configuration to vRDM disks, then you will be able to backup this VM with regular backup/replication jobs.

Thank you!

Hi Vitaliy,

Thanks for da response! I am using Virtual RDM for the shared drive of the linux machines but for clustering reasons and a need to distribute VMs on different
ESXi hosts we've used "Physical Bus Sharing" and that's why VBR cannot backup machines!

So I was correct the only way to backup those machines with vRDM and Physical Bus Sharing is to add them as Linux Server and back 'em up , right?

Cheers,

NetRock

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, this is the only way to copy Guest OS files to the backup location.

[foggy]

This actually could hardly be called a backup but rather a simple file copy, as File Copy job does not perform incremental passes doing a full run every time.