How to determine Direct NFS Access is used

[bbibber]

Hi guys

Maybe there's a very short answer to this long question

I was very anxious to see the difference between v8 and 9 in back-up time, because of Direct NFS Access.
But I'm unable to determine Veeam is using this mode.

- I rescanned the storage after the upgrade to v9, just to be sure.

I got the message:

Code: Select all

Successfully determined NFS exports supported for backup from storage snapshots on storage xxx using NFS client from proxy <ip address of proxy>

- I checked for existing snapshots in the VM's to the backupped, there were none

After the backup:

I go to Backup & replication > Jobs > Backup
I select a job (vmware tools quiescence is disabled, enable backup from storage snapshots enabled), I click on one of the backupped VM's in the job.

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Action: "Creating snapshot"
Action: "Releasing guest"
...
Action: "Removing VM snapshot"
...
Action: "Network traffic will be encrypted"
Action: "Saving [<datastore name>] <VM name>.vmx"
Action: "Saving [<datastore name>] <VM name>.vmxf"
Action: "Saving [<datastore name>] <VM name>.nvram"
Action:  "Using backup proxy <ip address of proxy> for retrieving Hard disk 1 data from storage snapshot"
Action: "Hard disk 1 (500 GB) 2.2 GB read at 5MB/s [CBT]"

So how can I determine which mode is been used by Veeam?

Thanks!
Guy

[nielsengelen]

After running the job you can select the job and view the statistics. If you then select a VM it will show processings disks and which method (nbd, nfs, san, hotadd). Example: http://randomhints.com/wp-content/uploa ... 7/nbd1.png

[bbibber]

Hi Niels

Thanks for your swift reply.
Here's a view of our statistics in v9. Doesn't seem to show any method but I could be missing something.

[nielsengelen]

The method here being used is via a storage snapshot. If a VM is hosted on NFS storage and it isn't possible to use a storage snapshot then it will fall back to DirectNFS.

Basically the steps of backing up are as following:
Try storage snapshot (working here)
Try DirectNFS
Try NBD

Your production storage is one of the supported vendors for storage snapshots (see https://www.veeam.com/backup-from-stora ... shots.html).

[dellock6]

Basically, if you have Enterprise Plus licenses and the backup infrastructure is correctly configured, Veeam accesses your (NetApp I guess) NFS volumes via storage snapshots and not with DirectNFS. IF you want to see DirectNFS in action and maybe compare execution times, you need to disable storage integration for that specific backup job.

[bbibber]

Thanks for the info, Niels and Luca.

As we want to minimize the performance impact of a backup I think I'll just leave it like it is.

Sincerely
Guy