Impact of several simultaneous VSS Hardware Snapshots on Storage

[angelokbabi1987]

Hello All,

I am using an off-host proxy to Backup VMs hosted in a Hyper-V cluster of 15 nodes.

All the 15 nodes and the off-Host Proxy are connected to an HPE 3PAR storage array, via 2 x 10 GbE switches.

As per Off-Host Proxy process :

• Veeam Backup & Replication triggers a snapshot of the necessary volume on the Microsoft Hyper-V host

• The created snapshot is detached from the host and mounted to the off-host backup proxy

• Veeam Data Mover running on the off-host backup proxy uses the mounted volume snapshot as a data source. It retrieves VM data from the volume snapshot, processes it and transports data to the destination

• After the backup process is complete, the snapshot is dismounted from the off-host backup proxy and deleted on the storage system

I am using HPE 3PAR VSS Hardware Provider and I am worrying about the amount of storage consumed by the snapshot of the volume; the snapshot of the volume has the same size as the original volume ?

In my case, I have one job that contains 10 VMs stored on four (04) different volumes. So, as per Off-Host Proxy process, I will have 4 simultaneous snapshots (1 snapshot per volume), if these snapshots have the same size as their original volume, It could happen that the Storage become insufficient.

Please tell me more about the size of snapshots that are performed in Off-Host Proxy Mode.

Thanks.

[HannesK]

Hello,
snapshots (in general) have the size of the changed data during the snapshot is open. If they would use the full amount of storage that would be a "full copy".

It could happen that the Storage become insufficient.

that's a challenge for every type of snapshot. If a snapshot stays open for days or weeks, it's pretty easy to fill up storage. For backup with minutes / hours this should normally be fine (except your storage is already almost full).

Best regards,
Hannes

PS: I strongly recommend using on-host proxies as they are much more stable in most environments