SAN snapshot support ...Compellent?

[technerd]

Hi, longtime fan of Veeam here. Curious, the latest little video from the newsletter today mentions "other" storage providers.
Any chance there'll be any love for a user here who happens to have a Compellent?

I know Veeam probably can't say, due to contractual obligations, NDA's, etc., but it'd sure be great if there could be any kind of hint for those who do have a Compellent. Ours uses 8Gbps FibreChannel, and it'd sure be great to [strike]beam[/strike] Veeam that more "directly" to backups!

Anyone else here use a Compellent? If yes, do you also use their snapshot software?

[Gostev]

Hi, I can give you a hint. Dell is one of our biggest competitors, because they ended up acquiring most vendors we have historically competed the most with (at least in early days). We are talking vRanger, AppAssure, NetVault, various application-specific tools by Quest Software etc. So, we will have very tough time working with them on any joint projects.

[technerd]

I understand.

One thing I'm not fully up to speed on yet, but am curious about.

VASA support, and snapshots of VVols.

Is this possible, in a basic sense, to do what amounts to an "end run" around storage snapshots with Veeam?
In other words, if I have a VM using a VVol, a SAN with VASA support - can Veeam leverage all that to essentially use a SAN level snapshot?
If yes, that would be truly huge.

Again, I'm not 100% up to speed on all this, and have yet to try it all out in my environment, but wondered if this was a possibility.


For example, I've read things like this, which seem rather exciting: http://3pardude.com/2015/02/09/vvols-3par-vmware/
"Offloading to storage – VVOLs let the storage do what its best at, so snapshots clones etc. are performed by the storage on behalf of vSphere"

Of course, I don't have a 3PAR, I'm using a Compellent here. With VASA support, however, doesn't that essentially abstract everything to the point where the vendor and back-end hardware are mostly irrelevant?

Any thoughts on this subject greatly appreciated.

[Vitaliy S.]

Antonio, vVols support which is available in our latest update should work with any storage vendor, as the main logic/engine is provided via VASA provider. As to your question, regarding storage snapshots and vVols, then these are different technologies, so I'm not quite sure I understand it.

[technerd]

I recently watched a video ("sponsored" on FB) regarding vSphere 6 / Veeam.
In it, there was mention of how this means, essentially, that
1) since Veeam uses VMWare APIs, and
2) since VMWare can now talk more "directly" to the storage via vVols (using VASA "appliance" provided by vendor. In my case, Compellent), that
3) what's possible now is that, instead of a snapshot being committed in the "traditional" manner, a snapshot can basically be a SAN level snapshot, and thus
4) the "commit"/removal of it is basically instant, with little to no performance impact (nearly, if not exactly the same as a "normal SAN snapshot").

In other words, what we seem to have as a possibility is an "end run" around needing to have Veeam ("directly") do the SAN snapshot - since VMWare *can* handle it, and since VMWare can supposedly do a "SAN snapshot" of a vVol via the VASA, therefore...(it seems to me that) Veeam can.
......Is that at all close?

Maybe I have a case of too much wishful thinking here, and that's where I'd like to seek clarification.
Perhaps it's just not quite possible. If it is, though, this might make my year.

I'm curious because, as is referenced here, Compellent isn't on "the list" of supported SAN-snapshot-capable-vendors w/Veeam.
I'm still relying on VMWare level / VMDK level snapshots, which, as we all know, can take a bit of time to commit in some cases (though certainly not all).

Couple major examples for my environment, where "SAN Snapshot" would help a great deal:
1) We have a few systems which are very "sensitive" to snapshot commits. I've tried to work with the vendor on this, but that's a longer story.
In short, it comes down to this: I can't use Veeam for these systems, at least, not more often than during "downtime" over a weekend.
2) Large file servers. I am not comfortable having to wait potentially *days* for a backup, then potentially another day or more for the snapshot to commit once Veeam is done copying data.

I'm still spending time trying to understand what vVols can mean for me, as it relates to Veeam's integration with VMWare.
I've grasped the importance of the concepts from a "basic" standpoint, and understand where they can be beneficial in many ways.
They would have been a HUGE help for me about 2 years ago, when I had very little time to set up a large set of systems, with a correspondingly large set of LUNs behind them, but I digress.

I guess the "next step" for me is to spin up a fresh machine using vVol(s), or, storage vmotion a test one to a vVol (if that's possible) then see what Veeam does with it.

*IF* what I'm trying to understand here is possible - that Veeam can tell VMWare to take what amounts to a "SAN snapshot," then what we have here is nothing short of amazing.
Of course, what would be "really nice" is if I could then storage vmotion a machine into a new set of virtual volumes, and then fully leverage Veeam for these VMs that can't currently handle the "pause" upon snapshot removal/commit.

Another example: http://www.blueshiftblog.com/?p=3806
"...the whole snapshot process can be offloaded to the storage array itself in some cases, providing instant and non-disruptive snapshots.

This is a huge change from vSphere 5 which should allow for backups and snap close operations on highly transactional servers where this might not have been possible in the past. Impact free snapshot (and backuptennesse-vols-fans(2)) operations."

[technerd]

Well, after a bit of further research, it seems my hopes are currently dashed.
No VASA 2.0 support from Compellent yet. Equallogic, however, does have this. Crazy.

[Vitaliy S.]

Antonio, thanks for the detailed response. Yes, vVols should help you with this snapshot commit problem, as all the work will be offloaded to the storage array. Let's hope that Compellent introduces VASA support soon.

[dellock6]

Antonio, all true but there is still a major difference between VVOLs snapshots and our storage snapshot integration: even if the VVOL snapshot has a better architecture than the plain VM snapshot made at the hypervisor layer, both are still committed at the end of the backup job, while storage snapshots allow for the commitment of VM snapshots few seconds after the start of the job, regardless its duration.

[PMB_CTN]

Hi, I can give you a hint. Dell is one of our biggest competitors, because they ended up acquiring most vendors we have historically competed the most with (at least in early days). We are talking vRanger, AppAssure, NetVault, various application-specific tools by Quest Software etc. So, we will have very tough time working with them on any joint projects.

^^ THIS sucks!! Especially since Dell own VMware
I'm happy with Compellent snapshot [REPLAY] performance, if only Veeam could find a way to leverage these storage snapshots...

[fijiboy]

Spoke to Dell - SCOS v7 (Compellent OS) which is coming out later this year Q3 (hope they stick to their plans) , will support vvols.
NDA?

[fijiboy]

Antonio, all true but there is still a major difference between VVOLs snapshots and our storage snapshot integration: even if the VVOL snapshot has a better architecture than the plain VM snapshot made at the hypervisor layer, both are still committed at the end of the backup job, while storage snapshots allow for the commitment of VM snapshots few seconds after the start of the job, regardless its duration.

@delllock6 - Compllent have gone GA with vvol/VASA 2 on its array. Compellent's GA release could be compared to ESXI 6.9999 in terms of bugs/QA

More importantly: Will Veeam look to leverage VASA 2.0 and vvol to support SAN based application aware snapshots?

I have compellent arrays, but this would obviously work with any storage array that supports VASA2.0 and vvols, if this level of integration is achievable.

Appreciate the work and innovation by the Veeam team.

Fijiboy.

[dellock6]

If you can enable VVOLs on the compellent array and use them, we already support vvol v1 without any need to wait for v2. We cannot orchestrate replication of VVOL replication, but we can use vvol as source for our own replication.

[andyleellgc]

Since this post has already touched on the topic of Compellent integration. I was wandering is there an update from Veeam?
I know Dell have sold Netvault back to Quest if that changes anything?

[Vitaliy S.]

There are no updates on this topic.