Scenario 3: Protecting Xen host and virtual machines together

Backup the host system and virtual machines using system agent file backups of the host system. Protect Microsoft SQL and Exchange databases on the virtual machines using the appropriate system agent.

This approach to protecting a Xen environment entails performing file backups of the host system that include all of the virtual machine data. The file backup will capture the virtual machine’s configuration and data files.

Unitrends Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Agents are used to protect SQL Server and Exchange databases located on the virtual machines. This allows for multiple database backups during a day.

Under this scenario, recovering a full host system and the virtual machines would mean reloading the host operating system and then restoring the last master and last incremental backups of the host system. The virtual machines will be recovered during the file restore of the host.

Individual virtual machine can be restored from the file backup of the host system.

The Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Agents allow recovery of a SQL Server or Exchange database to the original virtual machine or to another client on the domain.

Scenario 3 – Advantages of protecting Xen host and virtual machines together:

     One backup to capture all host system and virtual machine configuration data

     One backup to backup all virtual machine data when VMs use host system storage for all files

     Microsoft SQL and Exchange databases can be recovered to the original VM or to another client on the domain

     Single virtual machines can be restored from file backup

Scenario 3 – Disadvantages of protecting Xen host and virtual machines together:

     Single backup can be quite large

     The performance benefits of concurrent backups not being used

     Unable to recovery selected files from virtual machine backups when full file backups are not performed on the VM

     Virtual machine data not stored on the host system will not be protected

     When using this method of backing up virtual machines, the sparse file is expanded and sparse data is backed up as zeros. This will impact the Protected System Content on your backup system, using more licensed capacity than would be used if the virtual machines are backed up as registered clients to the system

     No bare metal backups of the virtual machines

Scenario 3 – Considerations for protecting Xen host and virtual machines together:

     When you perform a backup of the virtual machines, you must backup all volumes that host files for the virtual machine.

     If the virtual machine is using storage external to the host system, this backup scenario will not capture all VM data.

     Hot bare metal is not supported for OES 2 on SUSE Linux Enterprise 10.