topic Re: DataProtection of VMware Virtual Machines from Corporate to a DR-Site in ONTAP Discussions

DataProtection of VMware Virtual Machines from Corporate to a DR-Site

evantatcwb — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 07:21:08 GMT

I hope someone here has some recommendations, or some ideas I can start searching up.

Currently I have a FAS 3140 (partnered together with 2 controllers) at our corporate office, I have NFS shares shared out to our ESX hosts. The NFS shares contain our virtual machine folders with the VMDKs within them, I need some ideas on what I should use to duplicate/backup our VM's on the FAS3140 datastores to our DR-site which has a FAS 2050.

What I want to do is backup consistent VM's from Corp to DR nightly, but I don't know what I should look into. I want to have a long retention of data on our FAS 2050, hopefully at least 2 weeks or more.

What I want:

(corporate office) Fas3140 -> 3 days to 5 days snapshot kept.

(DR-site) FAS2050 -> 10days to 20days snapshot kept.

Data stored -> VMDK's from Netapp NFS shares on the FAS3140.

I need consistent virtual machine backups, I don't want crash-consistent backups.

What I have thought about:

Snapmirror: I thought about using snapmirror (SMVI) provides consistent virtual machine backups.

Problem: It duplicates the data you need over from Corp to DR, but If I setup to have 3 -5 days of snapshots at corp I will also only have that as well at the DR-site I want longer retention 10 to 20 days.

Snapvault: This will allow me to have longer retention of data at the DR-site, so I can have 3-5days at corp, and 10-20days at the DR-site.

Problem: Snapvault is not integrated with SMVI, so all my backups of the virtual machines are all crash-consistent backups (chance of corrupted VM's)

Recommendations:

Does anyone have any recommendations on how I should proceed with this? What I would like to have is hopefully NetApp will finally have SnapVault Support within SMVI. This way I can have consistent virtual machine backups and the different retentions of snapshots at both Corp and DR sites.

Any help is appreciated everybody, thanks for taking your time to read this email.

Evan

Re: DataProtection of VMware Virtual Machines from Corporate to a DR-Site

BrendonHiggins — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:32:21 GMT

Have a look at snapmirror with SMVI to your 2nd site and then snapvault the 2nd site's data to a 3rd volume in the 2nd site.

Or use SMVI to create snapshots on your primary site then script a host to run a snapvault update command via RSH to the 2nd site. If you use a snapshot naming convention with "recent" the latest snap will always be snapvaulted.

Hope this helps

Bren

Re: DataProtection of VMware Virtual Machines from Corporate to a DR-Site

evantatcwb — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:33:05 GMT

Thanks for the quick reply Brennan.

Some questions about your solutions, I am currently still using Data Ontap 7.2.6.1 is it possible to do a snapvault to itself on a FAS2050. If I remember correctly the Snapvault Primary License and Snapvault Secondary License cannot be on the same filer. But it is possible if it does have 2 controllers so you can snapvault from one controller to another, but my FAS2050 only has 1 controller so I do not think this is possible for me.

FAS3140 - 2 controllers (partnered)

FAS2050 - 1 controller

For your second solution: what you are suggesting is use SMVI, this will put the SMVI-snapshot in the snapshot folder of that current volume. Than use "snapvault update" to vault the data from that one folder to the secondary filer? is this correct? . So since I can name SMVI snapshots now in 2.0, all I need to do is run SMVI to do a snapshot called "recent" so it will actually be recent.0 and increments as days go by. So can I just use snapvault on the secondary to pickup recent.0 and vault it over? within that volume?

so how it would work is:

SMVI to itself (corporate controller), snapvault to secondary (to DR).

Re: DataProtection of VMware Virtual Machines from Corporate to a DR-Site

nbabu — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:25:56 GMT

Can't you upgrade the fas2050 to 7.3.x ? Then you can have SV primary and secondary on same filer and can do what Brennan was mentioning.

Re: DataProtection of VMware Virtual Machines from Corporate to a DR-Site

BrendonHiggins — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:56:54 GMT

We have been running 7.3.1P3 since March and have not had any issues.

Bren

Re: DataProtection of VMware Virtual Machines from Corporate to a DR-Site

evantatcwb — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:46:23 GMT

Sorry about the late reply, been very busy. Can the SV Primary and SV secondary be on the same filer if the Filer only has one controller?

Re: DataProtection of VMware Virtual Machines from Corporate to a DR-Site

nbabu — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:55:22 GMT

Yes, from 7.3 onwards SV primary and SV secondary can be enabled on same controller (on a single controller). Please check release notes for ONTAP 7.3.