Testing Veeam in our environment, Direct SAN Access help?

[cerberus]

Hello,

We are in the process of evaluating Veeam Essentials, which includes Backup & Replication.

We have a VMware environment (ESXi 5.1) with 3 hypervisors in a cluster with VMFS data stores that reside on a SAN storage array.

The 3 hypervisors are connected to a FC fabric. The SAN is a Dell Compellent SC40 which is also connected to our FC fabric. We have created the necessary zones in place so the Cluster can see the SAN, etc.

Our backup server is a standalone Windows 2012 R2 Dell R730xd server with local storage (20TB of internal storage) and we have a FC Tape Library (Dell ML6020) connected to it via fibre-channel, we currently use Microsoft DPM to do our VM backups via agents/LAN, and we're looking to replace this with Veeam.

What I wanted to do is instead of the traditional LAN based backup, is to leverage the Direct SAN Access method because from what I've read it does the initial backup via the FC network then switches to LAN for changed blocks backup. I am only looking to make this work one way, being able to do the initial backup via FC (at this time we are not looking for the ability to be able to restore via FC to SAN, from what i've read this is more difficult to archive).

So to get this working, I assume I need to make the following changes...

- Plug Tape Library into FC fabric
- Plug Dell 730xd (backup server) into FC fabric
- Zone Tape Library + Backup Server
- Zone Backup Server + Storage Array
- Add the backup server in our SAN
- Map LUNs to backup server
- ??

In Compellent, I can map the LUNs as "read-only", I am thinking of doing this for an additional level of support so that there is no chance that the backup server can write to the LUN, I read that Windows 2012 R2 will not by default "auto-mount" storage, but I don't trust it so I'd like to block it at the SAN level.

Now what I am confused about is, first I want to make sure the above steps are correct and that this will work in the planned configured?

Also, what else do I need to do on the backup server where we have Veeam installed after mapping the volumes?

Thanks for your help.

[foggy]

Hello Mirza, your understanding is correct. Basically, everything you need is to ensure that your backup server has access to VMFS volumes and you can see them in the Windows Disk Management snap-in on the backup server.

What I wanted to do is instead of the traditional LAN based backup, is to leverage the Direct SAN Access method because from what I've read it does the initial backup via the FC network then switches to LAN for changed blocks backup.

I just wanted to note that this statement is not fully correct, since there's no switch to LAN for incremental backups (unless direct SAN becomes not available for some reason). If you're able to perform initial full via direct SAN, incremental backups will also be performed using this transport mode.