VCB - I'll share.

[markmaytum]

Took the plunge, re-upgraded to 7.7 so I could get Retrospect/VCB working.

 

Setup (all on a single HP DL380):

 

Retrospect 7.7 multi, value pack

Virtual Center 2.5 U6

VCB 1.5

A single, (extra, dedicated) 1gbE link into a iSCSI SAN switch - the primary ESX datastore. The backup set is disk-based on a separate, direct-attached array.

 

Went through the 7.7 addendum step by step, and at first, couldn't get the retrospect script to do anything other than, "no files needed to be backed up" - for either a file-level or image-level backup. I could confirm, through running vcbmounter.exe via the command line, that I could get an image or file backup onto my backup drive - just couldn't get Retrospect to do it.

 

My thinking was, somehow, the VC_RetroEventHandler either wasn't getting called, or wasn't finding the VCB framework folder correctly. Got frustrated, called technical support. Haven't heard back from them yet (they asked me to email them the VCB_RetroEvenHandler.bat and the config.js files).

 

In the meantime, I got a fresh, untouched, VCB_RetroEventHandler.bat and config.js and re-edited them, re-copied them to their correct locations, re-started the server. Now it works - perfectly so far. I don't know what I did wrong. The ONLY thing I can tell that I did different is in the VCB_RetroEvenHandler.bat:

 

I added a "\" at the end of the framework path statement:

 

set VCB_FRAMEWORK_PATH=c:\Program Files\VMWare\VMWare Consolidated Backup Framework\

 

The instructions on page 11 leave it off. Don't know if this is what did the trick or I made some other typo.

 

It is pretty durn cool to be able to snapshot a server and back it up right from the SAN in the middle of the day with no impact on the production network and (seemingly) no impact on end-user performance.