After a week of testing and fuzzing with both VizionCore vReplicator originally known by esxReplicator as well Veeam Backup & Replication, I was able to be one of the contributor to the new comparison at ITComparison.com.

The comparison titled VizionCore vReplicator (esxReplicator) vs Veeam Backup & Replication covers many important aspects of the two products. It has been well crafted to help IT professionals find out which product is better for their enviornment. I was glad all this collaboration with other virtualizaiton professionals has met up with success & the comparison was released to the public yesterday.

It was fun to have to test all these aspects for these two leading Replication products. It was even more fun to discuss the results & compare them with other members involved in the comparison. Get to know how other people though about a point to be positive and other just vote against it.

Ah more fun of all the team had put a blog post at VizionCore vReplicator vs Veeam Backup & Replication blog post, which will allow other members in the virtualization community to comment on the comparison & try to debate it. Ah it is even open to the vendors to prove the finding is wrong or leave an update of upcoming fixes or development.

I believe the comparison is worth looking at if you are considering building a disaster recovery solution for your VMware enviornment where storage replication is not an option.

You can leave your thought in here, or directly on the ITComparison.com blog.

This post is the third part of the “Vizioncore vRanger Quiescing & VSS Setting for image backup of Virtual Machines.” to start from the beginning of the series please start at: Vizioncore VRanger (Previously ESXRanger) Quiescing & VSS Recommended Settings. Or if you are looking for the recommendation for virtual machines which does not run a database application then check out the second part of this series: Vizioncore vRanger (Previously ESXRanger) Quiescing & VSS Setting for non-database Virtual Machines. If how to setup Vizioncore vRanger Quiescing & VSS for database virtual machines is your aim, then you are at the correct part of this series.

As mentioned earlier, Quiescing is recommended to be disabled for virtual machines running a database application to avoid problems which seems to often occur when quiescing virtual machines that run a database application. In addition, for database servers which support VSS (MS SQL Server, MS Exchange, Active directory, and so on) it’s recommended to enable VSS to obtain a transactionally consistent backup image. As that backup can go over SAN using VCB, or over LAN using vRanger directly below is the required changes for both cases:

Over LAN:

Ensure that Quiescing for vRanger backup is disabled (“disabled by default”). In addition, if your database applications support VSS you should Install VSS for that virtual machine & enable VSS by placing a check mark next to “Enable VSS” in vRanger. Setting is illustrated in the images below:

(How to install VSS in Database Virtual Machines)

(Disable Quescing & enable VSS)

Using VCB:

As the “disable Guest Quescing” check mark does not affect VCB setting, and Quescing will always happen when running VCB if the VMware “Filesystem Sync Driver” which installed as a part of the VMware tools is installed on the VM to backup. For database servers where you are using VCB to backup and want to disable Quescing you will have to remove the Filesystem Sync Driver from under control panel => VMware tools on the virtual machine to backup as shown in the images below:

After that if your database support VSS, you will need to install VSS on the virtual machine you want to backup as well enable VSS for the machine you want to backup from vRanger as below:

If you find this guide useful & want to take it with you on your TP as an e-book. You can download it as our gift to you at Vizioncore vRanger (Previously ESXRanger) Quiescing & VSS Setting for database Virtual Machines e-book

I hope this tips were helpful, please leave a comment with your thought or comments.

This post is the second part of the “Vizioncore vRanger Quiescing & VSS Setting for image backup of Virtual Machines.” to start from the beginning of the series please start at: Vizioncore VRanger (Previously ESXRanger) Quiescing & VSS Recommended Settings. Or if you are looking for the recommendation for virtual machines which run a database application then check out the second part of this series: Vizioncore vRanger (Previously ESXRanger) Quiescing & VSS Setting for database Virtual Machines. If how to setup Vizioncore vRanger Quiescing & VSS for none database virtual machines is your aim, then you are at the correct part of this series.

As mentioned earlier, for non-database virtual machines enabling Quiescing is recommend to get a file system level consistent images. In addition, VSS is not required for non-database servers backup. As that backup can go over SAN using VCB, or over LAN using vRanger directly below is the required changes for both cases:

Over LAN:

To enable Quiescing for vRanger backup which is done over LAN you will have to remove the check mark “Disable Guest Quiescing”

Using VCB:

As VCB has Quiescing enabled by default, and not affected by the “Disable Guest Quiescing setting in vRanger you have nothing to do assuming that the Filesystem Sync Driver which installed as a part of VMware Tools by default is installed on the VM you want to backup.

I have been always hit by customers who have a problem taking an image backup of virtual machines that run a database application. Another repeated question is “when & when not to use Quiescing & VSS with VCB & vRanger”. For that I have decided to write this set of posts hoping to answer these questions. The answer will have the instruction of how to do this as step by step for Vizioncore vRanger, which is a great & easy backup software for VMware, but the explanation apply for any other image level backup software used with VMware, though you will have to adapt the instructions to the backup tool of your choice.

vRanger provides support for Quiescing the virtual machine before it start to backup that VM. The purpose of Quiescing is to ensure that no file system writes are pending when the snapshot is taken, allowing for file system level consistency. Although Quiescing has always been proved to be a great method to backup normal virtual machines, it seems to cause issues for virtual machines which is running a database. Example of virtual machines with database & where it’s recommended to disable Quiescing is MS SQL Server, MS Exchange, Active Directory, and so on.

For VMs which run a database, it’s highly recommended to stop Quiescing. Though not Quiescing a virtual machine before backing it up you will end up with a crash-consistent image (Restoring a crash-consistent image is essentially the equivalent of rebooting a server after a hard shutdown.). Although most applications & operating systems today can sustain a sudden shutdown, most enterprises will not accept to take that risk for critical servers. As database servers are mostly critical servers, then a crash-consistent images might not be the desired solution. For that case, vRanger offer VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Services) which can get you a transactionally consistent backup image. For you to benefit from this feature, the application you are backing up has to support Microsoft VSS. Example of applications which support VSS are MS SQL Server, MS Exchange, & Active Directory.

The message of this document:

1-     Virtual Machines which does not run any database, you are recommended to enable Quiescing. As running Quiescing before the backup will give you a file system level consistent image, which is a lot better than a crash-consistent image.

2-     Virtual Machines running a database tend to face issues when Quiescing happen, so it’s recommended to disable Quiescing on database servers. If the database application being used support Microsoft VSS (Active Directory, MS SQL Server, MS Exchange, & So on) , then its  recommended to enable VSS which will provide you with a transactionally consistent backup image.

From above you will figure out that the way you handle your vRanger backup setting is depend on the server being backed up is a database server, or a non database server. For that, the instruction is introduced as how to handle it for non database server, then how to handle it for database server and titled as below:

1-     Vizioncore vRanger (Previously ESXRanger) Quiescing & VSS Setting for non-database Virtual Machines

2-     Vizioncore vRanger (Previously ESXRanger) Quiescing & VSS Setting for database Virtual Machines