At work we use vRanger to take DR snapshots of all our VM’s (more than 370).
We decided that we would only snapshot drive 0 and use a TSM client to backup tha data in each VM and that the snapshots were only to be taken outside working hours.
These choices gave us some problems when running vRanger because we couldn’t schedule the snapshots from vRanger.
The solution was to make our own script that would handle the logic and just use vRanger to do the actual snapshotting.
We created a VBS script to hold the logic.
1.
Create a log file
2.
Delete snapshots from the day before (do to lack of storage space on the server)
3.
Call the .cmd file that holds the information on witch VM’s to snapshot (Based on weekday – one file for each day).
4.
Start TSM (send the VM’s snapshots to tape)
5.
Send a status mail
We then created 7 .cmd files (one for each weekday) in witch we add a line for each VM to snapshot that day.
(You have to use vRanger GUI to choose witch drives to snapshot – changed from 3.17 -> 3.20)
I know this solution isn’t very dynamic but i works.
I’m in the process of upgrading the script so that it dynamicly creates a list of witch VM’s to snapshot based on a custom field in VC.
Furthermore i also want to create a script to update the vRanger database with witch drives to snapshot based on a custom field in VC.
I will upload the updated script as soon as it is done.
You can download the current script here.