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un-backed up VMs

pma111
pma111 asked
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In your environments do you have any VM's that you do not backup as a matter of course? Our admins have sent through 'what we currently backup' in Veeam but a quick cross match to a list of all servers in the domain show some servers are not being backed up at all (which may be purposeful - hopefully!). I was just interested if this is common and examples of VM's where you don't need to backup the configuration/data?

Also in your experience - how easy would it be for an admin to miss something critical in terms of VM/virtual HD in backup selections? Realistic or very rare?
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David SankovskySenior SysAdmin
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Commented:
I'll start with your 2nd question - It's very realistic, basically, sysadmins are people as well, and they can miss something just as easilly as me, you or anyone else.
Also, that depends on who creates new VMs on your hypervisor and who is in charge of backups.

As for what is and what isn't backup-up;
This is very company specific - for example, we don't backup our DB server, we obviously backup the DB itself and the logs... The reason? it'll take longer to restor a full server from backup, it's faster (in our very specific use-case, you mileage may vary) to just whip up a new Linux server, transfer the IP address of the dead one to the new one, install the DB engine and restore the critical DBs first, and then after the mission critical DB is back online, restore the rest.

Also, if you have multiple domain controllers (of the same domain, not talking about multi domain environments) it's not always necessary to backup all of them (unless of course they have other, non Domain-controller role on them)
and so on and so on

My suggestion to you, is make a quick cross-ref as to what isn't being backed up, have a meeting with the relevant people, and see what needs to be, and what doesn't.

Hello ThereSystem Administrator
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Distinguished Expert 2018
Commented:
What kind of servers are not backed up?

We back up all servers, no exclusions. Some servers are backed up more frequently (DB servers, file servers, production servers), eg. every hour, some of them are backed up eg. every 12/24 hours but all the servers should be backed up.

One exclusion might be a test server and client VMs.
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert / EE Fellow)VMware and Virtualization Consultant
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Commented:
Test and R&D servers.

All Production servers are backed up. (at least 3 times, in different locations, and air gapped into Cloud and On Tape)
Brian BEE Topic Advisor, Independant Technology Professional
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Commented:
Perhaps servers which are redundant?
Network Engineer
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Commented:
We have servers that are specifically not backed up, because the vendor doesn't support backing up the VMs (looking at you Avaya).

I don't back up some remote branch servers because I replicate all important data back to the data center.

I don't necessarily backup redundant servers.

It is very likely that new VMs will not get backed up. This is why I like the feature of my backup software that it will automatically backup any new VMs unless explicitly removed from the backup.