Forum ©XSIBackup: ©VMWare ©ESXi Backup Software

herrep

Member

From: Munich

Registered: 2019-07-08

Posts: 106

XSIBackup-DC: run --replica and make --backup from replicated VM

Hi,

When using XSIBackup-DC, I would like to create replica from my VMs on a daily basis, only keep the most recent replica (i.e. from today) and to create, for backup purposes, a deduplicated backup repository that is maintained on a daily basis.

As even --backup-how=hot has a small impact, I would like to keep the downtimes of the VMs as short as possible.  Therefore, I would like to replicate the VMs first and then run the deduplication from the replicas instead of processing the original VMs again.

Two questions arise from there:

1) Is there any drawback when processing such a chain (original VM => replicated VM => deduplicate replicated VM day by day) instead of working from the original VMs in both cases?

2) Coming from XSIBackup-Pro, --backup-prog=onediff created replicated VMs and registered them with a _XSIBAK postfix in ESXi so that I had no issue to continue with the _XSIBAK VMs for making the deduplicated backup.  However, XSIBackup-DC does not appear to provide such a functionality.  Do I need to deduplicate source folders where the replica are stored (instead of registered VMs), without the need of registering the replica in ESXi?

Any guidance is highly appreciated.

Best regards,
Peter

admin

Administrator

Registered: 2017-04-21

Posts: 2,055

Re: XSIBackup-DC: run --replica and make --backup from replicated VM

There isn't any drawback, in fact it's our recommended procedure to backup big production VMs.

(c)XSIBackup 1.5.0.0 and above offers CBT compatibility for replicas, thus you can use the same approach that you used with Onediff, yet with a more advanced algorithm, as Onediff depended on a permanent backup snapshot on the source VM.

As with Onediff, you depend on the first part of the scheme working right.

CBT feature offers the option --options=R, which will create a test snapshot after each CBT round and will allow you to turn on the replicated VM without affecting the CBT replica.

./xsibackup --replica=cbt "VMs(WS2012)" root@192.168.3.83:22:/vmfs/volumes/datastore1 --options=R