What is the best backup solution for VMware Infrastructure system that hosts a wide variety of VMs?

Posted by SBWorks on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by SBWorks
Published on 2011-02-23T06:21:40Z Indexed on 2011/02/23 7:27 UTC
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Filed under:

backup

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vmware

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san

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infrastructure

In a situation where you are running:

VMware Infrastructure 4.x with multiple hosts
Over 150 VMs with a wide variety of operating systems (Linux in a half dozen distros, Solaris, every MS version, etc.) in multiple languages with almost every mix of installed software (luckily, no Exchange mail servers)
Using an EMC fiber channel SAN
The VWs that need need to be backed up use about 2 terabytes of data (total)
The goal is to keep backups for about 3-months

At this rough scale, what backup solutions have worked well for you? And, as an add-on question, did any of them have de-duplication that you thought was effective and useful?

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