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dominicsilvia
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UUID instead of registration handle for LUN detection?

Post by dominicsilvia »

Hello all -

I am attempting to test using Veeam to backup copies of my original LUNs on dedicated servers using re-constituted VSS snapshots on different hardware from the original server, and the Veeam software will only allow me to perform a full backup each time, even though the promoted snapshot is merely an incremental change from the last backup. My understanding is that Veeam relies on the registration handle and not UUID to track a vm. Unfortunately, this registration handle changes on every unmount/mount operation. As a result, the Veeam software does not recognize the copy of the LUN as the original LUN. Would it be possible to override the auto-detection of lun or to allow selection of UUID for detection in lieu of registration handle?

Thanks,
Dolm
Vitaliy S.
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Re: UUID instead of registration handle for LUN detection?

Post by Vitaliy S. »

Hi Dolm,

For vSphere hosts Veeam backup is using moref ID to track VMs, this ID is always refreshed for re-registered VMs, so Veeam backup jobs are treating these VMs as new ones. As to the Hyper-V infrastructure then as far as I remember Veeam backup server is using VM UUIDs. This VM tracking mechanism cannot be adjusted or changed.

Can you please give us a bit more information on your scenario? Are you on Hyper-v or VMware vSphere? Why aren't you backing up VMs from the production storage directly? And what make and model of source storage you have?

Thanks!
dominicsilvia
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Re: UUID instead of registration handle for LUN detection?

Post by dominicsilvia »

Hey Vitaliy -

We are using VMWare with Dell EQL storage, and are doing a PoC for Riverbed SteelFusion (previously Granite). For backups, the granite core takes the snapshot and mounts it on a proxy server, which refreshes the IDs. Therefore, it appears as a new LUN and can only do full backups. Not being able to do incremental backups on large file servers or databases is a big issue, and I think they only have this problem with Veeam, not a lot of the other backup solutions.. I was hoping there was a workaround for this issue..

Dom
Vitaliy S.
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Re: UUID instead of registration handle for LUN detection?

Post by Vitaliy S. »

The most reliable way to track VMs is to use their moref IDs, which are always unique. When you're referring to other solutions, I assume you're talking about agent based backup solutions, that do not use VMware API to retrieve VM backup data. As to possible workaround, then since file servers do not have that many changes (compared to Exchange, SQL Servers), then you may consider backing up only these VMs directly from production storage.
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Re: UUID instead of registration handle for LUN detection?

Post by Gostev »

UUID are often not unique in virtual world and VMware advices strongly against tracking VMs using those.
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