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

I’ve been quite busy the last couple weeks, so busy that I’ve neglected VMwareTips.com for far too long!  Today I’d like to tell you about an exciting upcoming release for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) and NetApp SnapMirror users.

NetApp announced a couple weeks back the integration of NetApp SnapMirror to Tape and Snapshot technologies with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) 6. As a result, NetApp and IBM customers using TSM 6 will experience enhanced backup capabilities for data stored on NetApp FAS storage devices.

TSM 6 leverages NetApp SnapMirror to Tape technology, enabling customers to use TSM Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) support to back up FAS volumes directly to tape or across the network to any tape device managed by TSM. This can be done without having to scan each volume to find new and changed files, helping reduce the amount of time customers need to back up their FAS systems, which can make the backup process up to 12 times faster.

TSM 6 also leverages NetApp Snapshot technology to reduce progressive incremental file backup time by comparing the current backup Snapshot copy with the previous backup Snapshot copy to identify new, changed, and deleted files. Traditional backup scans of large file systems can take hours. However, TSM 6, together with NetApp Snapshot technology, completes the identification of new, changed, and deleted files in seconds, drastically reducing the amount of time customers need to complete NetApp file system backups with TSM.

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Posted under Backup & Recovery, NetApp, Storage

Idealstor, a leading developer of disk-to-disk backup solutions, announced today the release of iBac VIP for VMware Virtual Center.  iBac VIP for Virtual Center was created to simplify VMware backups by offering a single license that backs up every virtual machine regardless of how many ESX hosts have been implemented.

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Posted under Backup & Recovery, Storage