What is Virtualization?

Virtualization allows multiple operating system instances to run concurrently on a

single computer; it is a means of separating hardware from a single operating
system. Each “guest” OS is managed by Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), also
known as a hypervisor. Because the virtualization system sits between the guest
and the hardware, it can control the guests’ use of CPU, memory, and
storage,even allowing a guest OS to migrate from one machine to another.

How do we get virtualization?

Well there is no. of options available for this, but VMware, Citrix and Microsoft are front runners
in domain. Here are the products from above for the same.
1. VMware ESX and VMware server
2. Citrix Xen
3. Microsoft Hyper-V

Popular ESX Server:

ESX Server :
ESX Server is VMware’s flagship enterprise server virtualization platform. It comes in
two versions – ESX Server and ESXi Server where the latter has no service console and
is the thinnest version available. ESX Server has many optional features like VMotion
and VMHA and some built-in features like the VMFS file system. Most end users
purchase VMware ESX Server with some set of optional features in a package called
VMware Infrastructure. ESX Server is managed by the VMware Infrastructure Client. Its
centralized management platform is called Virtual Center.
Figure 1: ESX server in Enterprise (Virtual infrastructure)

What is the need of ESX Server?

If you are an idealist then ESX is just for you. It possesses best approaches to adopt the
hardware abstraction and most effective usage of your resources through vast available
tools and services so that you can maximize your infrastructure efficiency, reducing
operational cost by providing cost effective business continuity.

Technology behind ESX:

• Hypervisor – 1 (Bare Metal)

Bare Metal means no OS is required because it has its own kernel derived from linux
withit provides greater resources for the virtual machines, decreased cost of licensing
and increased utilization of servers.
 • Using Backup Exec 12.5 Agent for Virtual Infrastructure (AVVI)

Once the Backup exec agent for Vmware Virtual Infrastructure licenses has been installed on the
Backup Exec server, the easy-to-use Backup Exec interface can communicate with VMware’s
VirtualCenter or with individual ESX Servers to walk administrators through the process of
identifying the necessary ESX hosts, groups, and guest virtual machines for fast and simple
backup and recovery .
 The entire guest VM and all of its necessary components are automatically selected for
backup, including the guest VM’s .vmdk files, .vmx, .log files, and .nvram files.

Backup Process:

The primary VCB files are part of the ESX Server package, so no additional installation is
required on the ESX Server host. Nonetheless, a small VCB package, which includes a VLUN
driver to mount VM snapshots and an integration module for the backup software being used,
must be installed on a “proxy server.” The proxy server is a Windows Server host that has SAN
fabric access and networking connectivity with VirtualCenter, which is used to manage and report
on the state of all the virtual machines, as well as the backup server

The proxy server initiates a VMFS snapshot using the VMsnap command on the ESX Server host
to create a point-in-time copy of a VM’s disk files. In this process, all file-system buffers in the
VM’s OS are flushed to commit writes, and new writes to the VM’s file system are suspended.
Agents can also be invoked to quiesce specific applications, such as Microsoft’s Exchange
Server or SQL Server, running on the VM. The major advantage of using this VMFS snapshot
technique is that the VM remains online and continues to work for the few seconds that it takes to
complete the snapshot.

Once the snapshot is created, the VM resumes writes, but the data now goes to a special file
dubbed a delta disk file. The VM’s .vmdk file now represents the state of the virtual machine at
the time that the snapshot was created. ESX Server now creates a snap ID and a block list of the
VM’s .vmdk file. These are then sent to the VCB proxy server. The proxy server uses the snap ID
to identify the VM snapshot uniquely for backup processing, and the VLUN driver uses the block
list to mount a read-only drive within the Windows OS of the proxy server. This further minimizes
the disruptiveness of the backup process, as data is accessed via the storage network rather than
via the production network.

For image-based backups, full virtual machine images are presented as files to the proxy server.
The backup software agent then moves the data from this read-only drive or image file to
secondary storage. Finally, once the backup process has finished moving and checking the data,
the VCB integration module un-mounts the drive, and the ESX Server removes the snapshot and
consolidates the delta disk data back into the .vmdk file

Restoring guest VMs as shown in the above figure

* Alternatively, use Backup Exec’s built-in Granular Recovery Technology (GRT) to allow an
individual file or folder to be recovered from within a .vmdk file without having run a separate
backup of the file or folder

Restoring individual files and folders

Regards,
Charanjit Singh
E-mail: charanjitsingh_ajama@symantec.com