Backups & CR of same VM - Storage impact

mauzilla

We would like to schedule backups (delta backups) and also replicate the VM to another host (continuous replication). I noted that when we select smart mode in backups, under excluded VM tags the info box indicates that replicated and DR VM's must be excluded. Is this simply the info box or is there any considerations we need to take if we want to both backup (delta backup) the VM to NFS storage but also have a CR VM in place?

From what I can gather, when a VM backup is made, a snapshot is created of that VM which I assume is considered the backup "base". To have the same VM backed up in different jobs, multiple snapshots will be created to facilitate the different jobs. In our case, the VM's we want to replicate is relatively large (each VM about 1.5-2TB in size each on a 6TB local SR). If it is possible to achieve both delta backups + CR in different jobs, how big is each snapshot? Is there a way for me to detect what the storage impact will be on the host if I have different backup jobs?

olivierlambert

Yes it is possible. In your backup job, just enabled both delta backup AND continuous replication.

So it will "multiplex" the backup to stream both to the remote (delta backup) and another SR (CR). This will use the exact same unique snapshot to do both

mauzilla

@olivierlambert said in Backups & CR of same VM - Storage impact:

Yes it is possible. In your backup job, just enabled both delta backup AND continuous replication.
So it will "multiplex" the backup to stream both to the remote (delta backup) and another SR (CR). This will use the exact same unique snapshot to do both

You guys are too smart Olivier! Thank you

mauzilla

@olivierlambert last question on this one, CR was not enabled by default, and I also dont want to replicate all the vms in the backup job, only some of them. I take it that if my intention is to do both, I will likely need to start fresh and have seperate jobs:

One for delta backups that does not replicate (we only want this to run on a Saturday)
One for delta backups + CR (we would like to run this daily)

I must then make sure I dont "duplicate" the same VM for backups in both jobs?

olivierlambert

That's a way to do it. Use smart backup on tags.

Eg a tag called "delta only" and a tag "delta+CR", so you'll be sure to assign the right tag to your VM