I had a big problem Monday AM on one of my core SAP VM instances, that also happens to have a SQL DB server on it. Our VCB process finishes up on late Sunday night, if you’re not aware of how VCB works, it basically creates a snapshot of the Virtual Machine, then mounts the now readable VMDK parent to a proxy server where your backup agent resides. Once the backup is complete the snapshot is committed.  This wasn’t the case Monday AM — the VM crashed and I was paged. Snapshot didn’t commit, parent VMDK could not be found, had to manually set Parent CID in the delta VMDK file then finally when I got it back online the SQL DB was corrupt :( — luckily I had a full SQL backup from the night before.

This is where VMware KB 1007969 comes into the story…

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Posted under ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips, Storage

So, I’ve already had a couple posts including some shell scripts that I wrote that will quiesce your Virtual Machines then initiate a NetApp level snapshot.  Some have noted (including myself) how they are not the best tools for getting the job done….mind you, they worked for me and my purpose, but they were lacking.  I’m not going to get into what they were lacking, but lets just leave it at that (definietly not a commercial product). Luckily for us, NetApp has released a new product called SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure (SMVI) which a lot of people have already discussed in the blogging world.  This is another tool of the SnapManager series which automates the snapshot process for your application, including system quiescing (VM snapshots) and also integration with SnapMirror (if your using it).  Tons of information on SMVI can be found on the links at the bottom of this blog.

OK — so lets take it a step further, say you don’t want to fork out the money for SMVI, what can you do?  Well, NetApp released on its NOW ToolChest (support subscription required) a tool called VIBE, Virtual Infrastructure Backup Engine.

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Posted under Backup & Recovery, NetApp, Storage

Alright, well I finally set aside some time to sit and think about my script that runs my snapshots (VMware Snapshots then NetApp Snapshots then remove VMware Snapshot).   The problem with my current script is that if you have multiple VMware Snapshots they all get removed… which IMO maybe isn’t a bad thing (since your not suppose to keep snapshots for that long), but I can see in some environments it may not be a good thing.

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Posted under Backup & Recovery, ESX 3.5 Tips, NetApp, Storage, VMware

This all started back about a year ago when I decided to move my datastores from Fibre Channel to NFS. The data was already on a NetApp FAS960c so I was enjoying thin provisioning and snapshots…but I wanted more!

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Posted under ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips, NetApp, Storage, VMware, VMware HA

UPDATE: I have re-written this script for enhancements, these can be found on the post titled “NetApp Snapshots in ESX - Take 2“

Many of you NetApp/ESX users should know by now that SnapManager for VI has been released. Many of you should also know that NetApp’s costs of licensing such tools can be fairly pricey. For those of us that can’t afford or justify the purchase of SMVI, I give to you a very handy script that I wrote….

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Posted under Backup & Recovery, ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips, NetApp, Storage, VMware