mujzeptu wrote:
I am using 3PARs Recovery Manager, or at least trying to. It tells me it cannot make a virtual copy of the datastore due to a snapshot existing.
Right - in order to use RMV you'll have to delete the VMware snapshots from the vSphere client. Once you do that, RMV will take a 3PAR virtual copy of either a virtual machine or a datastore. If you are trying to snapshot an entire datastore, I believe all VMs in that datastore cannot have a VMware snapshot.
mujzeptu wrote:
Are you saying I have to use the option, "Quiesce guest file system" when making the VM snapshots? Then Recovery Manager will work?
After the VMware snapshots are removed, and you use RMV to create a 3PAR virtual copy, it will queisce the VM and take an application consistent snapshot. Note that VMware tools has to be installed on the guest OS. The process RMV will use is to take a VMware snapshot on it's own, then perform a 3PAR virtual copy, and then delete the VMware snapshot automatically. This is what gives you the consistent state of the virtual machine on the 3PAR side.
mujzeptu wrote:
Also you say vmware can only handle 32 VMFS snapshots? Do you mean 32 individual vm snapshots per datastore, or?
I'm talking about the VMware snapshot through the vSphere client, normally per virtual machine. The 3PAR can handle hundreds (if not thousands) of virtual copies, so there is extra scalability there. For more on the VMware snapshots see here:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=1025279