So, just had a great conversation in the chat room with Richard Schwartfeger who got me going - it was a really insightful conversation for a newbie - here it is:

• Me

  Does anyone know how I can backup a vm to a local NAS box with vmPro?

• 4:02 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  Can your local NAS box present an NFS or SMB (CIFS) share?

• 4:11 PM
• Me

  Yes, we are a Windows shop so a CIFS share should be OK - though I had created an iSCSI location thinking that would do...?

• Thanks for your help.

• 4:15 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  vmPRO will back up to any NFS or SMB share. To the best of my knowledge (I haven't read the release notes for the recent version), we don't backup to iSCSI today.

• 4:19 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  There are advantages to NFS with VMware as you can re-add backed-up vmdk's within vSphere, even do an emergency boot from the backup target. Alas VMware don't support SMB like they do NFS.

• You can still access your backed-up VMDK's from Windows machines via the SMB share folders vmPRO can present.

• :-)

• 4:22 PM
• Me

  Hmm, my NAS can support NFS too...

• 4:25 PM
• Me

  But, CIFS in vmPro seems to want active directory or workgroup so I have no idea what to do with it...

• It would be great if I could just do \\server\folder but it doesn't seem to want that at all.

• 4:27 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  No AD? As for a workgroup, try the default which is "WORKGROUP" (it's all caps in Windows, not sure if it needs to be when typed into vmPRO).

• 4:32 PM
• Me

  Yes, AD is supported on my NAS but the CIFS settings doesn't give you an IP address to identify where you want to put the backup.

• 4:37 PM
• Me

  Further, the NFS settings wants a share as well as the ip address but doesn't like the shared folder I give it - it is pretty confusing since the vmPro options don't loo anything like the NAS box settings.

• 4:38 PM
• Me

  Hmm, interesting the NFS configuration seems to call itself NFS Export - like it seems vmPro is going to take a backup and store it within the vmPro appliance rather than save the backup to the NAS box.

• Now I am wondering whether vmPro always stores backups within the appliance and only after the backup has completed will it send it to the NAS box - does that make sense ???

• 4:42 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  Check out page 41 of the User Guide for detail, but the gist is below:

• "/export The /export directory gives you direct access to the virtual machines (VMs) running on the ESX server. /recover The /recover directory gives you access to the VMs' backed-up data."

• Richard Schwartfeger

• Let's split this off the main room if you still need help.

• 4:56 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  So the /export folder is essntially a live mount of your running VM's in VMware, (which is very cool as you can drag and drop files in and out of your VM's, or integrate vmPRO into a legacy backup software and have it performa a flat filesystem backup instead).

• Me

  Ah, so where do backups get stored then - I don't want to store them on ESXi but on my NAS box - I though the whole point of vmPro was that it did the backups - are you suggesting something else does the backup?

• 5:00 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  OK. so vmPRo lives in your VMware environment, it has to mount your VM's (actually their snaphots taken via VMware's storage API's) to back them up. An added bonus of this is that we can present these live VM's as a share. Let's say you don't need to back up a while VM, maybe you want one folder (e.g. /Users ) so you can copy that with drag and drop, a sheel script or point ye olde backup software at that folder and back it up to Tape for example.

• 5:04 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  If you just do a vmPRO backup, it SmartReads the vm's and copies what needs to be backed-up to your NAS target over the network.

• 5:06 PM
• Me

  OK, that is kind of what I thought it would do. So in my world all I want to do is create backups of specific VMs (not all of them) so that I can put them on a NAS and in if one ESXi host fails, restore them to another ESXi host.

• Richard Schwartfeger

  If you went dirtect to the NAS device and had a look inside the target share, you'd see lots of folders with vmdk's in them (full backups). What do you do if you only want one file out of that VM? Well, rather than re-add the VM to VMware, vmPRo mounts them and presents them under the /recover share where you can browse to the file you want and drag and drop it to your PC.

• vmPRO sounds perferct for your use case.

• Me

  Problem then seems to be configuring the connection to the NAS box.

• Richard Schwartfeger

  Which brand is the NAS?

• Me

  Actually, I don't propose to resoter indiviudal files - I have another backup strategy for that - though what you have described might be an improvement...

• NAS is Thecus

• Richard Schwartfeger

  Indeed, it's really nice doing sigle-file recovery with just Windows Explorer!

• Me

  Yep, I can see that. And if I can use CBT and do regular backups of the VMs then it could be better than current...

• 5:11 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  You can use CBT, when you've set up vmPRO, it can auto-discover all your VM's, then you'll see them in a big list, you select the ones you want to backup and you can enable/disable CBT as needed. You can doe the same for VSS as well, (enabling VSS for Windows machines is how you get consistent backups of open files like Exchange or MS- SQL).

• 5:13 PM
• Me

  OK, you are being very helpful, thanks. But, I still don't understand what I have to do within the VMs, how to configure the CIFS share and I guess create a backup policy that would 'take a snapshot' and copy the 'files' to NAS...

• We don't use Exchange and I use SQL backup jobs for backing up SQL Server

• Richard Schwartfeger

  I always hate to do this, but have you read the fine manual? :-D

• http://downloads.quantum.com/quantum_vmPRO_software/3.3.0/6-67535-0...

• 5:16 PM
• Me

  Yep.

• Actually, 3.2 revB

• I think the doc needs some use cases and flowcharts to make it clear what you have to do - I have been looking a this most of the day!

• 5:19 PM
• Me

  Ah, I think I have just managed to create a CIFS storage location on my NAS and connected to vmPro...

• 5:20 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  I suppose it could be confusing talking about all the shares. Let me see if I can summarise...

• 5:23 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  OK, with bits from the manual and what I know.

• "SmartMotion™ At the heart of vmPRO is SmartMotion. SmartMotion provides the backup services of vmPRO by initiating a scheduled push of specified VMDK files to any specified NAS target. The target can be resident on a plain NAS device or on a deduplication system such as the Quantum DXi."

• So, this is the first share to deal with. It is the one on your NAS and can be called whatever you wish. vmPRO sends it's backups here.

• "SmartView™ SmartView can present the ESX environment as a virtual NAS file system in either a CIFS or NFS share format. Through this presentation, SmartView provides users easy access to VMs located on ESX servers."

• 5:26 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  These are the second shares to think about /export (the live VM's insides VMware) and /recover (the backed up VM's inside your NAS) and /recover/files (the backed up vm's mounted with their internal files systems made browsable so you can do single file recovery) - as mentioned these (/export and /recover) are *virtual* shares, that is, there's no NAS storage inside the vmPRO aplliance, /export and /recover are just pointers to either the ESX or NAS storage (with some magic in between).

• 5:29 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  The share you create on your NAS box to be the backup targte shouldn't be called export or recover though, (for hopefully obvious reasons).

• Me

  OK, so in this context a *backup* is 'a copy of a VMDK file' which is sent by vmPro from ESXi to NAS - SmartMotion - what about the other files in the VM?

• 5:31 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  Other files?

• Like vRDMs?

• 5:32 PM
• Me

  or VMX files or log files - maybe these are not necessary to do a restore?

• 5:35 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  Ah, we grab everything needed to bring a full VMDK back.

• Me

  Also, I tried to create a SmartMotion policy but could not see where you specify which VMs to include in the backup. On page 73 of the manual it does say go to ESX and choose which VMs to Export - but I don't want to Export I wanto backup and why would I do that in ESX and not in vmPro...?

• Aho, OK when you say VMDK you mean everything that is needed.

• Richard Schwartfeger

  OK, that's differnt in the latest manual, let me find a copy of 3.2

• Me

  I am now loading the manual you suggested...

• Richard Schwartfeger

  Ah, right, this is explained a little later (page 90 of the new manual) "To select VMs for export (enable or make available for backup), do the following:"

• So exporting (in this context) is choosing from all of your VM's which ones you want to make avialble for backup.

• 5:44 PM
• Me

  Yes, found it. I guess the confusion comes from the manual which said go to ESX and decide which VMs to export whereas this is in the vmPro GUI.

• Richard Schwartfeger

  What the UI has you do is create your policy (or policies) first and set a default one. Then you choose which VM's you want to backup. Kinda the opposite to what traditional backup software does.

• Me

  OK, I think I am nearly there - if I leave the CBT reset to be the standard once a week, presumably that means the backup after the reset will be a full backup and dubsequent backups will be differentials?

• Richard Schwartfeger

  Ah yes. At some point in the setup, there would have been a check box about adding vmPRO to vSphere, so you can access it as another tab in the ESX GUI.

• 5:48 PM
• Me

  Is that the vCentre plugin - I am not using vCentre at present...

• Richard Schwartfeger

  Yes, there's an explantion of CBT & diffs on page 161 of the 3.2 manual

• and page 84 of the 3.3 manual

• Me

  I have the 3.3 manual now.

• 5:52 PM
• Me

  OK, so, when I am viewing the VMs in the GUI I guess I am really looking at SmartView?

• Richard Schwartfeger

  Basically.

• Me

  And if I do a restore through SmartView presumably vmPro will restore all backups (full and diffeential) since the last full backup?

• 5:54 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  Ok, let me caveat that, what you see as the exporeted VM's in the GUI, are the ones that will show up undr the /exports folder on the LAN which would be locate at //vmpro-server/exports

• So SmartView is the ability to present live or backed-up VM's as browsable shares on the LAN.

• 5:56 PM
• Richard Schwartfeger

  If yo do a reover of a Diff, you are correct, vmPRO takes the last full and then adds the diff(s) to it to recreate the vm as it was at the point in time you wish to restore.

• Wow, my typo rate is going up. :-)

• 5:58 PM
• Me

  :-)

• You have been really helpful. Probably ought to put this conversation at the front of the manual!

• Richard Schwartfeger

  oh and where I wrote //vmpro-server/exports above, put whatever you have calld your vmpro server or its IP number in placce of vmpro-server.

• Me

  Yep, got that. How does the SmartView differentiate between live and backed up views?

• Richard Schwartfeger

  Well, send Mark Thacker on ForumV a nice email about me. :D

• Me

  Will do.

• Richard Schwartfeger

  Ah, live VM's are under /exports and backed-up are under /recover

• I'll see if I can copy all of this chat window and send a summary to the documentaion team.

• Me

  OK, great. I will go away and work on this.

• Thanks very much Richard, really great help. Cheers, Jerry

• Richard Schwartfeger

  No worries, glad I could help. I only lurk here about once a month, so you lucked out today. :)