Virtual Appliance Mode

[ober72]

Hi Folks,

What exactly makes virtual appliance mode perform better than network mode? As I understand it there is still a vmware snapshot taking place and if your backup appliance is on the network the data will still have to be transferred over the network to it if your storage repository is on the appliance.

Off the top of my head the fact that it is using hot add would take the load off the vm being backed up and this would be moved to the vm acting as proxy. The documentation claims that when using virtual appliance mode it does not have to use the vmware network stack so I assume there must be a lot more overhead when going from backed up vm to the backup proxy on a veeam server appliance.

thanks

[PTide]

Hi,

In Hot-add mode backup proxy attaches the virtual disk snapshot directly to SCSI bus so no data is transferred via network (ESXi host --> mgmt interface --> network --> backup proxy NIC)

In Network mode the snapshot data is obtained via mgmt interface so the data path is ESXi host --> mgmt interface --> network --> backup proxy NIC

Thanks

[ober72]

Hi Ptide

Thanks, The paths above look the same, maybe that is just a typo Esxi host --> mgmt interface ---> network -->backup proxy NIC

I guess this still would not help with Esxi taking a long time to remove snapshots, but if it speeds up the backup then the overall time would decrease.

Is there anything to watch out for when switching to this mode? I am currently using network mode and the performance is not great (on a 1Gbs network unfortunately), but I don't want to try anything new that might create issues or down time obviously.

thanks again

[ober72]

Forgot one more question, how much load does this put on the vm that is performing the role of backup proxy, can I use and existing server that has another role or would it be better to dedicate a small server for this task?

cheers

[PTide]

The paths above look the same, maybe that is just a typo Esxi host --> mgmt interface ---> network -->backup proxy NIC

Not a typo but a sidenote showing how exactly would data travel in case of Network mode usage, sorry for confusion.

I guess this still would not help with Esxi taking a long time to remove snapshots, but if it speeds up the backup then the overall time would decrease.

Correct, faster snapshot data processing results in snapshot to be released sooner.

Is there anything to watch out for when switching to this mode? I am currently using network mode and the performance is not great (on a 1Gbs network unfortunately), but I don't want to try anything new that might create issues or down time obviously.

Please see this KB and feel free to ask additional questions, if any arise.

how much load does this put on the vm that is performing the role of backup proxy, can I use and existing server that has another role or would it be better to dedicate a small server for this task?

That depends on the amount of tasks that run concurrently, please check system requirements

[ober72]

Excellent thanks for the quick answer

cheers

[skrause]

Hot-add mode does add some processing time at the beginning and end of the job while the virtual disks are mounted/unmounted from the proxy VM. For jobs that take a short amount of time in Network mode you will likely see the jobs take 5-10 minutes longer when you switch to Hot-add.

[ober72]

Thanks Steve good to know.