VEEAM and the P2000 G3 iSCSI

[mooky32]

Hi All,

Quick scenario.
I have a hyper-v 2012R2 cluster and a standalone 2012R2 host (Hyper-V Replica target). These are connected with 1GB fibre.

No extra budget for a standalone Veeam off-site proxy so my plan is to use the Hyper-V standalone host as a VEEAM backup server/proxy. Its not too stressed and is of reasonable spec.

My understanding is that the standalone host will need to be able to gain read access to the P2000 production Hyper-V volumes. The P2000 G3 is iSCSI so this should be possible.
What I cannot confirm anywhere through my many searches is if the P2000 G3 snapshot capability supports transportable snaps as I believe is required.
Does anyone have any experience of this kind of setup?
If so do I need to reserve additional space on my production SAN to support these snaps before they backup data is sucked back to my standalone Hyper-V proxy?
Not too sure how that hangs together.
Really loving what the product is capable of but can't get over this hurdle.

Many thanks

M

[foggy]

Paul, you understanding is correct, offhost backup proxy must be connected to the shared storage in the same way you connect production hosts. I recommend contacting storage vendor regarding hardware VSS provider availability (however, quick googling shows they are available for this model).

[alchemist47]

I was wondering, did you never get this work. I have the same setup, but it doesn't work for me. I have tried everything.

[Vitaliy S.]

Can you please clarify what exactly doesn't work in your scenario?

[alchemist47]

This is my setup.

I have a three computers with Hyper-V 2012 R2 called DC1, DC2, and DC3.
I have two computers for backup Proxies and Repositories called, backup1, backup2 with hyper-v 2012 R2.

We are using HP P2000 G3 10GB as our storage and they are connected from the DC1, DC2, and DC3 via Broadcom BCM57800 iSCSI HBA 10GB.

The issue is we try to backup. Regarding Microsoft VSS Software and using Veeam's On-host solution. We can complete the backup without any problems.

The issue starts if we try to use Backup1 and Backup2 off-site Proxy instead of the on-host proxy service. We are using Microsoft iSCSI to connect to HP P2000 G3 10GB Storage unit and we have HP CAPI Proxy, HP VDS, and HP Hardware VSS provider installed on all machines.

there is no error that shows up in Backup2.

If i monitor the HP P2000 G3 storage, it does generate the VSS. I do see it. The issue that I think is that either the backup2 doesn't see that the VSS was generated and doesn't grab it, or dc that the machine is on, doesn't realized and detect the VSS has been created on the HP P2000 G3 because of the Broadcom iSCSI HBA doesn't detect it. While the HP P2000 G3 VSS snapshot is active, the HP P2000 G3 doesn't have any LUN attached to the VSS.

Futhermore my configuration is as follows

LUN 1 is for dc1
LUN 2 is for dc2
LUN 3 is for dc3
LUN 99 is for Quorum Disk
LUN 100 is for Cluster Data
LUN 101 is for Cluster Data
LUN 110 is for Cluster Data
LUN 111 is for Cluster Data

The Volume that is being VSS has as a snap-pool that is greater then 20% of the volume, so there shouldn't be any reason why there will not be enough space to generate a VSS Snapshot.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[Vitaliy S.]

Please avoid posting log snippets as it is described in our forum rules.

As to the your issue, I might sound stupid, but I would recommend to confirm that you're running on the latest firmware (VSS provider and broadcom drivers). BTW, did you configure your off-host proxy in the same way as your Hyper-V hosts are configured in terms of connection to your SAN?

[alchemist47]

I updated to the latest Broadcom drivers that I could find on dell.com for my server. The error message did change in the log files, but the same error still appears in to the event view. Now it shows that the sendSCSIcommand is successful, but still it is deleting the volume before it gets to backup2.

the dc1,dc2, and dc3 have the broadcom BCM 57800 iSCSI HBA card. the new driver is clearly detecting this and actually providing IP Address information within windows to see.

regarding backup1 and backup2, we are using microsoft iSCSI to connect to the HP P2000 G3. At this present time it doesn't appear that it never gets there because I can't find any logs files to show that it was transferred from on-host to off-host.

[Vitaliy S.]

Have you tried using hardware VSS provider with an on-host proxy server? Does it have any issues?

[alchemist47]

Yes I am trying hardware VSS provider with the on-host proxy server as well. Same results.

Also, for your reference veeam case # is 0574634. My co-worker is also in the process of sending the latest log files as it appears that we made some process, but it is still not working properly.

[Vitaliy S.]

Can you create the volume snapshot using the installed hardware VSS provider? Please keep us updated on your support engineer findings.

[alchemist47]

What do you mean doing a snapshot without using veeam? How do that?

[Vitaliy S.]

Since Veeam trigger VSS snapshot on the volume, there should be a way to reproduce this behavior manually. I have found this screenshot for Windows Server 2003 (this option should also be available for Windows Server 2012).

BTW, are there any errors in the Windows Event log regarding your storage VSS provider? Also do you have any software from your storage vendor installed on this host? Probably you can initiate the snapshot via their snap-in.