Are you backing up your SQL configuration database? That's really the important part.
You can reinstall BES in a matter in of minutes if you need to... but the database is the critical piece. Make sure it's properly backed up and I wouldn't even worry about backing up BES.
I wouldn't use the snapshot feature. We have experienced performance problems when using VMWare snapshots. I believe this is due to the snapshot splitting the VM into multiple files that all have to be utilized.
Also, the whole point of using ESX is that the machine is no longer hardware dependent. If your hardware (ESX host) fails, you just start the machine up on a different host or you have it set up to automatically roll to good hardware. It won't do any good to take a snapshot and store it in the same datacenter on the same disks and you have a fire or other disaster.
For your DR to be effective, you need to replicate your virtual environment at a remote site.
Last edited by scott_perry; 10-21-2008 at 08:13 AM..
Reason: forgot something
Snapshots aren't a good long-term DR strategy, as Scott mentioned. What a VMWare snapshot does is lock the disk file and start writing to a snapshot file, which is essentially a transaction log like you would see in SQL. There are extra steps going on for disk writes at this point, causing a performance hit - and you'll now be consuming an increasing amount of disk space because the snapshot file grows as changes are written to it. When you run out of disk space (it can happen pretty fast on an active VM if you have snapshots in place), your VMs stop working.
I only use snapshots for disaster recovery during upgrades or other changes that could blow things up, and 48 hours is the longest that I'll keep a snapshot in place before deleting it (committing the changes to the real disk file).
This is some great stuff. I always do a snapshot before any MR or SP update in case something goes wrong. As far as a long term solution I will make sure the DB is always backed up and ready to be restored if necessary.
Look into VCB (VMware Consolidated Backups) and also SQL replication / Backup Policy.
My plan includes restoring from a weekly backup of the BES via VCB and then pointing to a stanby replicated instance of the Database. The latest DB is more important than the BES OS.
The caveat for Domino users is that you require the state databases, hosted on the BES, for recovery. So Domino shops shouldn't be so cavalier about the BES box itself.
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BESX 4.1.7 on Exchange 2003: 65 Devices
BESX 5.0.3 on Exchange 2003: 2007 Devices
Vmware and Disaster Recovery
