DC25 VMware vCenter Data Recovery

Listed as VMware vCenter Data Recovery in the session title, the program manager annouced that the product name will be called ‘ VMware Data Recovery’ from now on.

This is one of the new management products that VMware will release in 2009. vCenter Data Recovey enables administrators to perform back-up and restores of the virtual machines. The interface is kept quite simple and does not have a lot of advanced features to keep things simple.

• integrated in vCenter as a plugin
• shipped as a virtual appliance  
• available with the next generation of VMware Infrastructure; vSphere
• de-duplication is used for back-ups of .VMDK reducing the size of the back-up file.
• targeted for usage by administrators who are responsible for management of virtual machines and back-up/restore (small and medium business/ SMB). The product is not targeted at enterprises having a standard back-up solution already in place and where back-ups/restores are performed by dedicated teams.
• First back-up of vM is always a full back-up, rest can be incremental back-ups.
• a restore rehearsal can be performed. This is a restore of a virtual machine without a live network connection of the VM to test the back-up. 
• Unable to write to tapedevices . Back-ups are written to disk only.
• in the beta release there is no option of a file restore. A restore will restore the complete .VMDK file. In the final release a file restore will be possible.
• an exact time to have a back-up job started cannot be selected by the admin. A time window is selected in which back-ups are allowed to run. (off hours). Data Recovery decides when the back-up job will run.

vCenter Data Recovery could be used by participants of VMworld Europe 2009 in the Hands On Labs. Joep Piscaer of Virtuallifesytle.nl has a description of the product and quite a few screendumps.  

http://www.virtuallifestyle.nl/2009/02/vmware-vcenter-data-recovery/

More info:

Yellow Bricks: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/03/03/vmware-vcenter-data-recovery/

VM-Aware: http://www.vm-aware.com/2009/02/24/vcenter-data-recovery-hands-on-lab/