Integration with Storage Snapshots : Vendor Roadmap

[kte]

how did you restore 1,5 TB in 2 hours??
what is you're backups storage like?? ith a proxy VM or instant recovery?

K

[dellock6]

Ah ok, I'm talking with an EMC fanboi...

I quoted those storage arrays because Veeam always told (and makes perfect sense for them) storage snapshots are going to be supported on a market share base, and all those storages are well used among customers. Thankfully there is not only EMC around.
And honestly, if you like to compare to a Compellent, obviously its more expensive than a low-level vnx5100. Compare it to a 5500 or 5700. (Compellent Copilot support is known to be one of the best around btw).

Luca.

[dellock6]

how did you restore 1,5 TB in 2 hours??
what is you're backups storage like?? ith a proxy VM or instant recovery?K

Doing maths, 1500000 MB in 7200 seconds, that is 208 MBps. Regardless what is the backup storage, that speed restoring into a P2000 G3 ???

Luca.

[Peejay62]

This thread is almost ending up being a poll of which will be the next supported storage array for snapshot integration.. As a lot of people are putting in their thoughts on this one, what about IBM XIV? perfect example of redirect on write snapshot capability, solid vendor and big marketshare.. IBM V7000 would be welcome too.
But, i think the challenge lies within the level of granularity the hardware snapshot functionality offers. For example looking at a V7000 this happens volume-based. A volume might hold a complete datastor which might be holding a lot of vm's. I think this isn't gonna work or at least isn't going to be very practical at all. imagine a job with just one vm to process, enforcing a hardware snapshot for a complete volume.
As most storage arrays perform snapshot on a volume based level, I wonder about the real useability of the snapshot integration. Sure it can come in handy, but in my opinion it will bring along a lot of management effort to make effective use of it..

[Gostev]

Not sure I get the issue, Peter.

[dellock6]

Peter, you can always aggregate VMs that you want to backup via storage snapshots on some LUNs, and have only specific backup jobs taking advatange of this feature. The fact you can use storage snapshots does not means you have to.
We use this feature, but only for the most critical VMs (exchange, SQL....), we used storage vmotion to move them in some specific datastores, and that's it.
Obviously, a snapshot at the VM level is more efficient and granular than a snap of the whole LUN, but is nothing different than use the native snapshots coming with the storage array.

As all the features, even Storage Snapshots requires (at least some) planning.

Luca.

[Peejay62]

Not sure I get the issue, Peter.

I am merely pointing out that from a managementperspective it will need more effort and will be difficult making effective use of the whole storage snapshotting and managing your backups. Just as an example: I choose to use the integrated hardware snapshotting. As Luca states, you can always group certain machines that you want to process on specific luns. Well, you do that and I think that will be a solid use case for using storage snapshot. But, you get some kind of dedicated luns..limits you making effective use of your whole storagecapacity.
Then for whatever reason a vm gets storage vmotioned away from that lun or another machine not wanting to be storage snapshotted gets moved onto that lun. In case of a vm being moved away to another lun (but it had use storage snapshot set to on) this can result in a failing snapshot (for example on v7000 where you have to predefine "flashcopytargets" for the snapshot(flashcopy) process). I totally agree, it also requires planning but it also will work very restrictive using the feature. Not saying that it isn't a great feature, indeed, Veeam it is and thanks for that and hopefully one of our arrays will be supported soon.
It are yust some thoughts i have on that matter.

Peter

[dellock6]

A quick trick to avoid unwanted storage vmotion (already used internally): create storage profiles based on snapshots capabilities, and apply the profile to the VMs you want to protect with storage snapshots. In this way you can still have Storage DRS, and guarantee at the same time the target LUN is still usable with this feature.

For sure Veeam cannot solve design/operational limits of a given storage

Luca.

[NightBird]

how did you restore 1,5 TB in 2 hours??
what is you're backups storage like?? ith a proxy VM or instant recovery?

K

Don't forget that most of the VMDKs are not full of data and Veeam in restoration process skip empty block.

[NightBird]

Ah ok, I'm talking with an EMC fanboi...

I quoted those storage arrays because Veeam always told (and makes perfect sense for them) storage snapshots are going to be supported on a market share base, and all those storages are well used among customers. Thankfully there is not only EMC around.
And honestly, if you like to compare to a Compellent, obviously its more expensive than a low-level vnx5100. Compare it to a 5500 or 5700. (Compellent Copilot support is known to be one of the best around btw).

Luca.

Agree, but all customers don't need VNX 5500 or 5700 horse power...
Your talking to an EMC fanboy, but you are a Compellent one

And what do you think about the new VNX2 line ? VNX 5200 5400 5600 and so on

[dellock6]

Ah, not at all, not a Compellent fan. Tiering made on a 24 hrs cycle sounds pretty useless to me, it makes usage of fast tiers pretty useless for spike activities. Real time tiering is the only viable solution, like in the new StoreVirtual VSA 11 or other new gen storages .
If you want to tell me I'm a fan of something, quote Leftand - Nutanix - Nimble and such

New VNX2 sounds nice, they finally admitted single thread processors were no more useful. But I'm not a fan in general of monolythic arrays, I prefer scale-out storage systems.

[toni]

Love veeam, have many, many sockets, would love to see Dell EqualLogic Storge snapshot support to reduce load on our hosts and improve backup times.

Thanks

Toni

[gakecs]

I think iSCSI support for HP 3PAR Storeservs is a must. It really is the better solution. The storage snapshot integration for this is the only thing keeping me from really feeling like my Veeam infrastructure is completed. My StoreServ 7200 would really love some integration to bring my backup speeds below 4 hours.

[Gostev]

We are now planning to add iSCSI connectivity support for HP 3PAR Storeserv down the road, based on all the feedback we have received in the past few months.

[bcunningham]

Any ETA or is it even on the short list?

[Vitaliy S.]

There is no ETA for this storage vendor support, but these criteria can you give a better understanding on the short list and next vendors.

[scott.anderson]

Another vote for the IBM v range please. Support one and you get all 3 models covered as its the same feature code base for the v3700, v5000 and v7000 (4 if you are in China and have a v3500!).

[phil.ambro]

Case: 00519102

"It would be awesome if SAN Infrastructure support was expanded to include Nimble Storage devices (in addition to the HP products) for backups directly from storage snapshots."

[Gostev]

"It would be awesome if people searched the forum before they post"

[scott.anderson]

Way to cryptic Anton! Is there another storage plugin available? If so which?

[foggy]

Currently, Veeam B&R supports only HP StoreServ (3PAR) and HP StoreVirtual (LeftHand/P4000 series and VSA) storage systems.

In addition to that, here's the Anton's reply from earlier in this thread:

Just to reiterate my announcement at our VMworld session on the storage integration roadmap, the integration for the next major storage vendor is feature complete and is currently in testing. This should be a part of the next minor release. I don't know when we will announce the vendor name though, this is not up to me.

[Gostev]

Way to cryptic Anton!

Sorry, this was a message to Philip and nothing more

[nathan.capper]

Hi Veeam,

I wanted to raise a query in relation to what your plans were to expand on the SAN Infrastructure you currently support, for example Nimble or Dell Equalogic? Veeam v7 currently offers the ability to take storage level snapshots of HP storage models only, which is a great idea but I'm sure that I am not a loan in hoping that you guys will be looking to offer other storage platforms that your backup product is able to plugin to so that we can leverage SAN snapshot capabilities across other storage platforms?

Thanks,

Nate

[foggy]

Nathan, this question has been asked several times before, so you can review this topic for our plans and position regarding supporting storage vendors. Thanks.

[klin8251]

Wish List:

-Ability for Veeam to support NetApp storage snapshots
-Ability for Veeam to use NetApp storage snapshots to backup NetApp CIFS shares (including NTFS permissions)

[foggy]

Peter, thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.

[ICarter]

Though I realise no-one at Veeam is able to comment on this, I'd like to add a +1 for HDS support, specifically the HUS range. I realise we may be a slightly odd demographic, in that we use Hitachi storage and use Veeam, whereas most HDS houses tend to use Simpana or similar, but we can live in hope

Cheers, Ian

[lorengordon]

I'd like to see this feature support Tintri storage snapshots. They're already per-VM, just like VMware snapshots, seems like a great integration point for a backup solution! I'm not looking for any timelines as I understand Veeam's position on that. I submitted the request to our sales team as well...

[Gostev]

Ability for Veeam to support NetApp storage snapshots

Done
http://go.veeam.com/v8-netapp

[darryl.crossley]

I'd like to add some more weight to the following vendors for integration with Storage Snapshots:
Nutanix
Tintri

BEarena work heavily with both technologies and Veeam, it's like a marriage made in heaven - delivering integrated solutions and not just products.

I understand Veeam will be looking at storage vendors with the largest footprint in the marketplace and I completely understand this approach. I believe it's now time to work with a storage vendor which are doing innovative things, much like Veeam. Forget about the traditional LUN / Volume players like Nimble for your next vendor, VM-aware storage + VM-aware backups = simplified, modern solutions for the enterprise.

Great work on the NetApp integration guys.

Rant over!