- Community Home
- >
- Storage
- >
- Around the Storage Block
- >
- Excluding VMs from VMware Application Synchronized...
Categories
Company
Local Language
Forums
Discussions
Forums
- Data Protection and Retention
- Entry Storage Systems
- Legacy
- Midrange and Enterprise Storage
- Storage Networking
- HPE Nimble Storage
Discussions
Discussions
Discussions
Forums
Forums
Discussions
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
- BladeSystem Infrastructure and Application Solutions
- Appliance Servers
- Alpha Servers
- BackOffice Products
- Internet Products
- HPE 9000 and HPE e3000 Servers
- Networking
- Netservers
- Secure OS Software for Linux
- Server Management (Insight Manager 7)
- Windows Server 2003
- Operating System - Tru64 Unix
- ProLiant Deployment and Provisioning
- Linux-Based Community / Regional
- Microsoft System Center Integration
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Community
Resources
Forums
Blogs
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark as New
- Mark as Read
- Bookmark
- Receive email notifications
- Printer Friendly Page
- Report Inappropriate Content
Excluding VMs from VMware Application Synchronized Snapshots with Nimble Storage
Blog written with Gaurav Ranganathan - VMware Integration Lead Developer at Nimble Storage
In Part 3 of this blog series, we looked at how new write I/O generated by a VM impacts the amount of time taken to create and delete VMware snapshot and several recommendations for a reliable application consistent snapshot deployment on Nimble Storage datastores.
In this blog, let's explore a situation where certain VMs in a datastore either consistently fail to create application consistent snapshots or application consistency is not required:
- VM snapshots consistently fail
If a VM generates new write I/O that exceeds the capabilities of the ESXi host when consolidating the snapshot (read all new writes since the last snapshot from the delta file merge them into the base VM disk), then scheduled snapshots of the VM are likely to fail.
This can happen typically with VMs that ingest large amounts of new data like a database server VM that performs a nightly ETL process, a backup VM with either VMFS disks or virtual RDM disks used as backup repositories.
- Application consistent VM snapshots are not required
If the application data is protected using a different mechanism, such as synchronous or semi-synchronous storage replication or host-based replication for disaster recovery, application consistent snapshots may not be required for such VMs.
As mentioned earlier in the blog series, application-consistent snapshots are configured at a datastore level in Nimble Storage. This provides a simple and scalable way to manage backups. Instead of creating dedicated datastores for some VMs, it is possible to easily exclude VMs from the application consistency phase of the backup.
The VM exclusion feature utilizes the "Tags & Custom Attributes" feature of VMware vCenter. This allows the VM admin to configure these easily within the vCenter UI.
Step 1: Create a Tag Category named "NimbleVMwareSyncSnaps"
Select "Datastore" and "Virtual Machine" as the associated objects, and restrict Tags Per Object to "One tag".
Step 2: Create a Tag named "NimbleSnapExclude" in the category "NimbleVMwareSyncSnaps"
Step 3: Select a VM that needs to be excluded, and from Actions menu chose "Tags & Custom Attributes" > "Assign Tag"
Assign the NimbleSnapExclude tag created above.
These tags indicate to the VMware NPM module on Nimble OS (described in Part 2 of the blog series), to ignore this VM while creating VM snapshots for VMs in the datastore. Excluded VMs are still protected in the storage snapshot with a crash-consistent image of the VM.
In the next blog in this series, let's look at how to recover VMs from either the application-consistent or crash-consistent backups captured in the storage snapshot.
- Back to Blog
- Newer Article
- Older Article
- haniff on: High-performance, low-latency networks for edge an...
- StorageExperts on: Configure vSphere Metro Storage Cluster with HPE N...
- haniff on: Need for speed and efficiency from high performanc...
- haniff on: Efficient networking for HPEโs Alletra cloud-nativ...
- CalvinZito on: Whatโs new in HPE SimpliVity 4.1.0
- MichaelMattsson on: HPE CSI Driver for Kubernetes v1.4.0 with expanded...
- StorageExperts on: HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Intelligent 1-Click Update...
- ORielly on: Power Loss at the Edge? Protect Your Data with New...
- viraj h on: HPE Primera Storage celebrates one year!
- Ron Dharma on: Introducing Language Bindings for HPE SimpliVity R...