Multiple NIC for VM backup

[MAA]

Hello,

I have two hosts:

HOST1: ESXi 5.x, local RAID storage, 4x1G NIC
VM (FILESERV): Windows Server 2008 R2

HOST2: ESXi 5.x, local RAID storage, 4x1G NIC
VM (BACKUPSERV): Windows Server 2008 R2, Veeam B&R 8


It is possible to backup VM-FILESERV to VM-BACKUPSERV using all 4 NICs?

[dellock6]

Did you already executed some backup and the speed hit the limit of 125MB/s of a single NIC? Otherwise there's no need to complicate the design with multipathing.

[MAA]

HOST1 can read 400 MB/s
HOST2 can write 400 MB/s

[dellock6]

During a Veeam backup, or with some local IO test?

Also, without a third VM local to HOST1 acting as Veeam proxy, you will never go above 40-50 MB/s, because in the actual design you will use VMware network mode, that is limited to that speed and does not leverage any bandwidth aggregation. You would need a Veeam proxy installed into HOST1 to leverage hotadd mode and try to go faster.

[MAA]

During a Veeam backup, or with some local IO test?
During backup Veeam show Read Speed up to 300 MB/s

You would need a Veeam proxy installed into HOST1
I have proxy on all hosts

without a third VM local to HOST1 acting as Veeam proxy, you will never go above 40-50 MB/s, because in the actual design you will use VMware network mode, that is limited to that speed
Its Vmware limitation(bug)? Its documented on Vmware site?

[dellock6]

- ok so you setup the job to use the proxy on host1 to backup fileserv so it will use hotadd. If the proxy is installed on fileserv it cannot use hotadd since a proxy cannot hotadd itself
- there's no official documentation but is common knowledge the management interface is throttle, so in 1G links you cannot really go above that values

[MAA]

My question is:
It is possible to backup VM-FILESERV to VM-BACKUPSERV using all 4 NICs?

[dellock6]

Yes, you can use MPIO inside the Guest OS.

[MAA]

I simply need install "Multipath I/O" feature on VM with B&R8?

[dellock6]

On the proxy hosted into host1, and also host1 needs proper portgroup configuration to allow MPIO on the guest, basically creating 4 porgroups, all on the same vlan, and override network aggregation in the portgroup to have for each 1 nic active and all other 3 disabled.

[MAA]

It is too difficult to set up if you have multiple hosts and multiple proxy...

Maybe, simply assign four IP-addresses to NIC in VM(BACKUPSERV), and set on all ESXi hosts Load Balancing mode to "Route based on IP hash"?
In this case it is necessary to force a B&R to distribute packets to all ip-addresses in Round-Robin mode (or distribute threads/connections to all ip-addresses). How can I do this?

[MAA]

any comments?

[dellock6]

I've personally never done such a setup, let's see if any other users will jump in and explain how they do on their similar environments.

[MAA]

But it is a question about the possibilities of B&R8.
Whether the B&R8 can use multiple IP addresses?

[michaelryancook]

We use distributed virtual switches with load balancing set to "source and destination IP address and TCP/UDP port" connected to a LACP LAG of 8 x 1 GB NICs. If we run a job with 8 concurrent tasks we get up to the 800 MB/s range.