Hyper V Off-host Proxy with VNXe 3300

[nathan^2]

Does anyone have any experience setting up an off-host hyper v proxy with a EMC VNXe 330 using the EMC VSS Hardware provider? We have a hyper-v cluster with CSVs hosted on 3 EMC VNXe 3300s. We'd like to perform off host backups to a backup repository that connects to another EMC VNXe 3300 that is not a member of the cluster storage. All EMCs are connected via iSCSI. The issue I had initially was the EMC VSS Hardware Provider did not show up in Veeam when managing the volumes of a server that is a member of the cluster. This KB fixed that: http://www.veeam.com/kb1861. But now I am encountering this error when performing a backup with the off-host proxy.

Code: Select all

6/12/2014 5:30:23 AM :: Unable to allocate processing resources. Error: Provider [{04aaf00b-f272-4449-ae63-e8ac935a102c}] does not support shadow copies of volume [\\?\Volume{bacbfecd-105b-4cb4-8455-efe0593efd4f}\].
--tr:Failed to add volumes to the snapshot set.
--tr:Failed to perform pre-backup tasks.

The same backup job works fine with on-host backup. The 04aaf00b-f272-4449-ae63-e8ac935a102c referenced above corresponds with the EMC VSS Hardware Provider installed on the off-host proxy. All hosts in the cluster have the EMC VSS Hardware Provider installed also.

Any help or insight would be appreciated. I have a support ticket already opened with Veeam, but thought I'd try my luck on the forum also.

Thanks in advance.

[Gostev]

Nathan, can you please include support case ID for our reference. Thanks.

[nathan^2]

Case # 00580892

[nathan^2]

I made some progress on solving this. The VNXe 3300 requires an older version of the VSS Provider software which was used on the older Celerra models EMCs, which I believe now are the VNXe's. Specifically the VSS version is 1.8.22.1 which can be found on the EMC downloads site.

But now I get this error when attempting an off-host backup.

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6/12/2014 8:16:06 AM :: Unable to allocate processing resources. Error: Unknown status of async operation
The shadow copy provider had an error. Check the System and Application event logs for more information.
--tr:Failed to create VSS snapshot.
--tr:Failed to perform pre-backup tasks.

Anyone ever encounter this?

[veremin]

Might be a silly question, but have you already checked the referenced Windows logs? Do you see any messages there that might shed a light on the root cause of the issue? Thanks.

[nathan^2]

Might be a silly question, but have you already checked the referenced Windows logs? Do you see any messages there that might shed a light on the root cause of the issue? Thanks.

I reviewed the logs on the off-host proxy and there was nothing useful in them.

[nathan^2]

I was finally able to get things working with Veeam, Windows 2012 R2 Hyper-V, and my EMC VNXe 3300 after working with the very helpful Veeam support team and EMC's support.

Here is a recap of things that needed to be done and notes in order to get things working:

1. Use the correct VSS hardware provider from EMC: VSS-windows-64-english-1.8.22.1.exe. This must be installed on all of the Hyper-V hosts.

   March 07, 2011 - DL31713 - Volume Shadow Service (VSS - Windows 64-bit)
   https://download.emc.com/downloads/DL31 ... 4-bit).exe
   Enables VSS hardware snapshots using iSCSI volumes.

2. Deleted and recreated LUNs on the EMC with Protection Size. Simply adding Protection Size to an existing LUN did not work. It has to be added during the creation of the LUN. EMC requires you to use 105% of the LUN size for the Protection Size in order for snapshots to work. Which sucks since it effectively halves your usable storage space. EMC's response to this was "you can order more drives." Clever EMC, I see what you're doing here.
   In addition, even though the EMC documentation states

   To support third-party backup applications that may require datastores, VNXe automatically reserves a minimum percentage (5%) of its allocated storage for protection - even when protection is not enabled.

   it is still requited to create the Protection Size on the LUN.
3. In our case, even though Jumbo Frame was enabled on the iSCSI interface on our off-host proxy, it wasn't working. I had to toggle it on again in order for the Veeam backup work.
4. If you intend on backing up linux VMs with Veeam running under Hyper-V, install the Microsoft VSS on them if you want to perform application-aware image processing or gust file system indexing. You'll have to add linux admin account to the Guest OS credentials in Veeam.

I hope someone can find this information useful if they intend on using EMC VNXe series with Veeam and Hyper-V.

[Gostev]

Hi, Nathan. Thanks a lot for taking time to post this guide!

[flaren]

1. If you intend on backing up linux VMs with Veeam running under Hyper-V, install the Microsoft VSS on them if you want to perform application-aware image processing or gust file system indexing. You'll have to add linux admin account to the Guest OS credentials in Veeam.

Can you please elaborate on this? It doesn't sound something that can be really done.