I have a requirement to back-up VMDK's on shared storage, and am looking for a mechanism whereby I can put all VM's in my Virtual Center into snapshot mode and then access the VMFS datastore through an individual ESX server.
Currently the individual VM's are put into snapshot mode via their respective ESX server, and the entire shared datastore is backed up through all ESX servers (datastores are accessed as Linux file system through the service console). The drawback here is that there is duplicity in the entire back-up, which I would obviously like to eliminate. What I want is thus to be able to snapshot all VM's through the VC server using a single command as pre-exec to the back-up job, and then access the read-only VMDK's for the back-up. Once again, a single command as a post-exec to the back-up job should revert all VM's from snapshot mode.
My configuration is a physical VC v2.5 server, 3 ESX v3.5 servers and 3 shared datastores. The virtual infrastructure is configured for HA & DRS.
I use Data Protector v6 as the back-up suite (from a separate physical server).
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Best wishes,
Nick