Do we have any options to take Snapshot backups for Clustered Servers?

Hello @backup 

I am trying to find on Books online that you cannot do it. Generally we would say if VMware does not support it then Commvault does not support it. But in this case you advised VMware kind of supports it if you tweak the settings. 

What happens to the backup if you run a job just targeting that windows cluster’d disk? Is it successful? 

Can you browse and restore that after? I would make a new subclient, separate the VM and its disk and do some testing. 

Kind regards

Albert Williams

When a disk is set as an idenpendent disk, it is excluded from all vmware snapshots. ref this link from vmware
So you can use this to exclude the disks from regular VSA backups. The VSA backups will backup the VM and all other disks, except the independent disk.

For the data on the independent disk, configure a fileagent backup to protect this. I would assume the reason for the shared disk, this disk is handled by some kind of cluster. On a Windows file cluster you install the agent on all nodes and configure a cluster client, that will handle the backup.

Hi @John Robert,

Yes, this is the exact plan we have. But do we have any alternate way/solution in this situation? We are in the process of finding all the possibilities 

Hi @Albert Williams,

Yes, it is a limitation by VMWare for snapshots. Currently, we are taking backups with File System iDA and we are able to restore it as well.

Why my ask is because, we have an Oracle RAC cluster where we are unable to restore the Oracle ASM disks/nomenclature from File System Backups.

With the Virtual Server backups, we can be able to restore entire VM.

I know that there is inconsistent in DB from VM backups, we can create a new instance with the ASM disks.

Any suggestions or any thoughts that will help in this case?

Warm Regards,

Sravan Kondeti

Depending on how the shared cluster disk is configured, IntelliSnap can backup RDMs and independent disks:

https://documentation.commvault.com/2023e/expert/enabling_intellisnap_backup_operations_for_rdm_and_independent_disks.html

If you use this option note the caveat about being crash consistent unless you are using application aware. https://documentation.commvault.com/2023e/expert/running_intellisnap_backup_operations_that_include_rdm_and_independent_disks.html

We are in the same mingle and while we are trying to push VMware to come up with an officially supported solution we are working on migrating to vVols (from VMFS) which would allow us to create intellisnap snapshots on a more granular level instead of have to snap the entire datastore for just a few VMs. Still the remark from @Damian Andre regarding consistency would apply here as well.