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Backup Solutions ESXI (free edition)

Tags:
  • External Storage
  • Servers
  • Tape Drives
  • NAS / RAID
  • Backup
  • Business Computing
  • VMware
Last response: in Business Computing
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August 7, 2014 4:06:27 AM

Hi,

I have an ESXi server i'm setting up but not sure about the backups part. In theory I would like to all the data on the main server replicate itself onto an exact copy onto the secondary server. The drives will be in a RAID 5, 6 or 10. For example if the main server went down the secondary server can pick up where the main left off no issues. Like a mirror, that theory. I would also like to have an external backup. From my research I have found that tape backups are going to be my best option due to the large amounts of data. With the whole backups (external), I currently have time machine and would like to have the external backups setup similar to time machine.

Thanks for your advise/help in advance.

More about : backup solutions esxi free edition

August 7, 2014 10:33:26 AM

alext97 said:
Hi,

I have an ESXi server i'm setting up but not sure about the backups part. In theory I would like to all the data on the main server replicate itself onto an exact copy onto the secondary server. The drives will be in a RAID 5, 6 or 10. For example if the main server went down the secondary server can pick up where the main left off no issues. Like a mirror, that theory. I would also like to have an external backup. From my research I have found that tape backups are going to be my best option due to the large amounts of data. With the whole backups (external), I currently have time machine and would like to have the external backups setup similar to time machine.

Thanks for your advise/help in advance.


this kind of server architecture for high availability is commonly referred to as "fail-over" and it's a bit complicated when you have a bare-metal hyper-visor.
You need to configure a DNS fail-over and test it extensively.
In terms of External Backup, Tape will be the most cost-effective in terms of gross capacity per dollar, but it is extremely cumbersome even if you have a proper autoloader library. It will also be EXTERMELY slow to restore from backup and should be used as archival backup.
there are LTO File-system Tape NAS devices but they are are an order of magnitude more expensive than a single tape machine.

I would suggest a large capacity NAS attached to the WAN instead of a Direct attached device on the primary server. You can do medium term backups on the NAS and then archival backups on Tape.
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