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ESX Server 3.0X backup solutions

I am in process of buying a DL385 server for ESX 3 server, also I am getting an MSA 30 with about 2TB worth of space. On the ESX server I will our file server, exchange and few other server as VM machines. The question I have now does anyone have a similar type of environment and if you do what backup solutions do you use for the ESX server.

I have been looking at ESX ranger, ARCserver and a few others but my biggest problem is that I would like to be doing a backup to tape directly instead of backup to disk and then to tape, also backup of the exchange mailboxes, do any of these solutions do a live backup of exchange? by the looks of it none of them do.

Thanks.

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rindi

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bbarac

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oh so arcserve does have an agent for exchange, that sounds much better the ESX ranger.

When you say backup the file, are you talking about doing a whole ESX server backup? taking an image pretty much with arcserve?

rindi

The agent isn't free...

The Virtual Machines used by VmWare (ESX and other Versions), are installed to an image file that emulates a disk. You can backup that file as a whole. Symantec's Backup exec supports backing up complete Virtual Machines (it also uses an agent for that), and I'm sure arcserve, as the other big backup software, has the same options.

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Duncan Meyers

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bbarac

ASKER

Thanks for the advice I knew that exchange agent for arcserve is not free, nothing is these days. For the other poster I can't have downtime for option one and I don't want to use VCB, too many disadvantages that I don't like about that software.

Duncan Meyers

If you need the granularity of an Exchange mailbox backup, then you must perform the backup from within the guest OS.

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ShineOn

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bbarac

ASKER

I am still working on getting the server and esx software, then I will be looking more detailed into the backup solutions.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

rindi

your welcome

ShineOn

Expanding on my other comment - you can do "brick level" with the Exchange agent, but if you pop for the Exchange "Premium Add-On" you get message-level backup and recovery...