VMware - Anyone using Array Based Clones/Snaps ?

Question

ESX Ranger. VMware based Infrastructure Snaps. VCB. Blah. Blah. Blah.

Has anyone simply used SnapView to snap/clone a a LUN running VMware guest OS's as backup alternative? Just curious before I roll my sleeves up and dig in.

One more monkey wrench - how about Replication Manager?

dynamox · Accepted Answer

you could snap/clone the lun ..of course it would not be consistent, so you would need to script some kind of process to where you put vm guest into backup mode ..snap/clone the lun ..and put the guest back into regular mode, but i was looking at this link ...some of this functionality already built-in into VI 3 ?

http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/consolidated_backup.html

vincent_corona · Answer

A major conceptual flaw with VCB is that support for Archive bits are non-existent (so I hear). So, out the window go the benefits of Full backups on the weekend and incrementals/differentials during the week.

Granted, a snap/clone of this doesn't solve that either, but I was actually looking more at Snaps/Clones as a disk backup for examples such as a clone just before our quarterly microsoft patching incase we need to revert back.

dynamox · Answer

i read this the other day ..kind of interesting.http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid94_gci1260724,00.html?track=sy421&asrc=RSS_RSS-27_421

dynamox · Answer

i don't see why it would not work ...put guest into snapshot mode, snap the lun ..resume guest.

pgarevalo · Answer

One question:Has anybody used SnapView to clone (automatic, by script) a LUN (physical machine) and present this clone to a virtual machine?

CLARiiON

VMware - Anyone using Array Based Clones/Snaps ?

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