Hi all,
we are about to implement a new VM backup solution based on Symantec Netbackup 7.1 leveraging the vStorage API to perform image backups on a Netbackup media server that is directly attached to the SAN.
We tested the setup in our test environment, and it works well and looks promising there. Before we go for our production environment (about 50 vSphere 4.1 hosts with >900 VMs) I'd like to ask for experiences (good or bad) and recommendations/best practices of people who did this before.
Specific questions I have are the following:
1. Can I expect the backup jobs to run smoothly, or may I experience problems with jobs erroring out, snapshots being left over etc.?
2. How much free space do you keep on your datastores to ensure that there is enough space for the snapshots used during backups?
3. What will happen if the snapshot of a VM being backed up fills the datastore up to 100%? The VM's execution will be suspended, but what about the backup job? Will it be able to terminate cleanly and delete the snapshot again?
4. How many max. concurrent backup jobs per datastore do you run?
5. How do ensure that the max. number of jobs per datastore is never exceeded?
Thank you for any comments!
Andreas