Backup best practise / guidelines

Software-based VM-centric and flash-friendly VM storage + free version

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simonmac
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:45 am

Thu Nov 30, 2006 3:18 pm

Hi do you have any documentation as to how to best backup servers running from starwind?

In our environment we have a number of servers, all booting from IBvolumes using emboot.

Currently we are using NTBackup on each of the servers to backup system state, onto a dedicated backup server with it's own disks. (This procedure goes back to before we went with StarWind)

I have always suspected this is negates a big reason for the SAN approach in the first place.

Would a more sensible (and complete) approach be to just copy all our *.ibv* files onto our backup server?

Or is it better to use the new replication/mirroring facilities to mirror onto the backup server? If mirroring is the option a step-by-step dummy's guide would really help me!


Kind regards

Simon
Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Thu Nov 30, 2006 11:00 pm

Hi Simon,
simonmac wrote:Hi do you have any documentation as to how to best backup servers running from starwind?
We are planning to provide such a manual soon.
In our environment we have a number of servers, all booting from IBvolumes using emboot.
Which mode is used for the IBVolumes (incremental backup or growing image)?
Currently we are using NTBackup on each of the servers to backup system state, onto a dedicated backup server with it's own disks. (This procedure goes back to before we went with StarWind)

I have always suspected this is negates a big reason for the SAN approach in the first place.

Would a more sensible (and complete) approach be to just copy all our *.ibv* files onto our backup server?
The IBVolume has been originally designed to make backup easer.
In the recent StarWind 3.2 switching of sessions of an IBVolume creates creates new jornal files leaving current ones read-only, so they are ready for backup.

There is the StarWind VSS Hardware provider helper package for Win 2003 that supports creating of completed backups for StarWind IBVolume.
It's available on request to support@rocketdivision.com.
Or is it better to use the new replication/mirroring facilities to mirror onto the backup server? If mirroring is the option a step-by-step dummy's guide would really help me!
If you use the Mirror with iSCSI replication, the local image is an ImageFile-compatible file and the remote one -- is another iSCSI target that also needs a backup solution.
So I guess using of IBVolume's features will suit your needs better.
Best regards,
Valeriy
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