Backing up SMB3 shares hosted on EMC VNX

[patrickeasters]

I recently found out in a support case that Veeam doesn't support backing up VMs that aren't hosted on a Windows server (meaning I can't use the native SMB3 share functionality on an EMC VNXe). The docs seemed to suggest the Veeam agent on the SMB3 servers was only required for CBT. I know V9 is supposed to have tighter integration with EMC, so will this allow using storage snapshots to back up VMs versus using the file share provider for accessing the VHDs? Not sure how much you guys are able to disclose before VeeamON.

Case ID: 01059266

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Patrick,

Not sure I fully understand the issue here, but VMs hosted on the SMB3 share can be backed up, assuming you have followed these guidelines > Backup of VMs on SMB3

Thanks!

[patrickeasters]

I followed those guidelines, but since those shares are hosted directly from the EMC array, I can't add the SMB3 servers to the Veeam console. I was told by support they had to be added in order for backups to work.

I added logs to the support case. Veeam appears to be able to take the snapshot, but it gets a "The system cannot find the file specified" error when attempting to read the VHD from the snapshot.

[Vitaliy S.]

Oh ok, since it is hosted on the EMC array directly, you will not be able to add this share to the backup console.

Please note that adding SMB3 share is only required to CBT data (you're correct in your original post), for regular backup/replication jobs adding this share is not needed. I would suggest to re-open the support case and verify the reason for this failure (could something be related to ACLs on the EMC storage).

I know V9 is supposed to have tighter integration with EMC, so will this allow using storage snapshots to back up VMs versus using the file share provider for accessing the VHDs?

As to the integration with EMC storage snapshots, then it is going to be for VMware only, cause in Hyper-V infrastructure these snapshots are already used via VSS writers/providers.

[patrickeasters]

Oh ok, since it is hosted on the EMC array directly, you will not be able to add this share to the backup console.

Please note that adding SMB3 share is only required to CBT data (you're correct in your original post), for regular backup/replication jobs adding this share is not needed. I would suggest to re-open the support case and verify the reason for this failure (could something be related to ACLs on the EMC storage).

Awesome. Thanks for confirming that. The documentation seemed to indicate it was only needed for CBT, so I was a bit surprised by that. I'll double-check ACLs again. I'll admit this is my first time doing Veeam backups on SMB3. It tends to "just work" with VMware.

As to the integration with EMC storage snapshots, then it is going to be for VMware only, cause in Hyper-V infrastructure these snapshots are already used via VSS writers/providers.

Thanks. I figured as much. I know Hyper-V doesn't have native CBT like VMware, so I sort of expected that to be the case.

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, we just had a quick dialog with your support engineer, he promised to review the logs with a higher tier engineer.

As to the CBT, then hopefully it will be addressed in their next release, see this topic for more info > Feature request : CBT support for non-windows SMB 3.0 sh

[patrickeasters]

Yes, we just had a quick dialog with your support engineer, he promised to review the logs with a higher tier engineer.

Cool. I updated the ticket as well, but I was able to narrow it down to an ACL issue. The Veeam service account was in the Backup Operators group on the EMC NAS Servers already, but once I added the machine accounts of the Hyper-V hosts (I'm using on-host proxies) to the group, it started transferring data. I stopped the test job since I didn't want all that IO occurring during business hours, but it looks like that did the trick.

As to the CBT, then hopefully it will be addressed in their next release, see this topic for more info > Feature request : CBT support for non-windows SMB 3.0 sh

Thanks for sharing that. I'm glad MS is working on that in Server 2016. A lot of my smaller customers don't necessarily need a full-blown SOFS deployment, but using the SMB3 implementation on the storage array still makes sense. I'm excited to see what you guys are able to do once that's implemented. I always have appreciated Veeam's early adoption of new vendor features.

[Vitaliy S.]

Good to know that we've nailed that the issue was caused by access list configuration, so again - it just works

[patrickeasters]

Good to know that we've nailed that the issue was caused by access list configuration, so again - it just works

I spoke too soon, unfortunately. After some testing last night, when application-aware processing is enabled, VMs on SMB3 storage fail with the same "The system cannot find the file specified" errors. VMs on local storage work great regardless. So I'm using crash-consistent backups for now until this gets sorted out.

I'll post back here once this gets resolved in case it helps anyone else.

[Vitaliy S.]

When AAIP is enabled backup server should have network access to the VMs being backed up. Can you please check that you do have it?