SQL Server VM´s in a Cluster with iSCSI Target

[JaYaKaAzZ]

Hello,

we have a Problem to backup our SQL Servers. They are VM´s on different Hyper-V Hosts and they have iSCSI Lun´s connected because we put them into a Cluster.

Is there a possiblity to backup the VM´s with the iSCSI Luns ? I know with Hyper-V you can just add the iSCSI LUN only as .vhd to the VM´s to be sure that they will be backed up, but then we have no cluster anymore !? With ESX you dont have this problem because of RDM but is there a Solution for Hyper-V ???

Does anyone have the same Problem ??


Greetings

Jay

[foggy]

Artur, disks connected via in-guest iSCSI initiator are not supported and are automatically skipped from processing.

[Vitaliy S.]

Artur,

Can you please tell me why do you use such configuration? For high availability purpose?

Thanks!

[mate.ivanszky]

I also have a similar issue.
VEEAM does not support backing up in guest iSCSI mounted drives. You have to use RDM or Shared Virtual Disk. If your setup contains SQL Failover Cluster you cannot go with Shared Virtual Disk as it is not supported in Microsoft clustering.
Unfortunately RDM is not an option either for me as I am on iSCSI storage (3PAR) therefore I have to rely on SQL backup until a workaround is found (e.g. Storage snapshot on 3PAR iSCSI array - still not supported)

[matt306]

The OP probably has these iSCSI LUN's in the VM, as the standard advice from Microsoft for years has been to put SQL/Exchange workloads onto pass-through disks. Using iSCSI in the VM neatly gets around any HA problems using pass through.

All of our SQL, Exchange and File servers were setup the same way and we managed to convert these to VHD/VHDX without experiencing any performance degradation. We are a large-ish organisation with 1300 users (with mailboxes) running a number of financial and training DB's.

Microsoft in recent times have suggested that their VHDX format is now comparable in terms of performance with pass through and a number of MVP's have stated that keeping pass-through disks in a virtualised environment is counter intuitive and limits your options.

[matt306]

I should caveat my last statement by saying that this applies to Hyper-V Clusters not SQL Clusters.

[Mike Resseler]

Matthew is indeed right.
While pass-through has been pushed for many years by MSFT they are now changing that vision. Reasons enough, and one of them is that you cannot protect that data that's on the pass-through disk(s) through virtualiation protection unless you use workarounds such as windows server backup of that volume to "somewhere" or in application backups.
My advice here would be to look at your setup and see if the SQL configuration you have can be adapted to another strategy (like Always-on for example) so that you can use VHDX for your data volumes and not only profit from virtualization data protection but also have ALL the flexibility and functionality of virtualization at your hands for your SQL servers...
My 2 cents
Mike

[samh22a]

main problem with always-on is that it requires SQL enterprise. we have a lot of server cluster running on our hyper-v hosts and it seems we will have to keep another backup solution around just for this.
I would be willing to install an agent within my sql servers if it would allow veeam to back it up properly.

Thanks