HotAdd falling back to Slow Network mode ?

[albertwt]

Folks,

Does anyone here know why the backup of my SQL server is taking way too long after upgrading to VBR 9.5 Update 1 ?

It took me more than 4 days+ to backup 3 VMs with the total data of 7.2 TB.

Here it is the logs as per VBR console:

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6/05/2017 6:19:37 PM :: Using backup proxy PRODBKP01-VM for disk Hard disk 2 [hotadd]  
6/05/2017 6:19:37 PM :: Using backup proxy PRODBKP01-VM for disk Hard disk 1 [hotadd]  
6/05/2017 6:22:54 PM :: Unable to hot add source disk, failing over to network mode...  
6/05/2017 6:26:11 PM :: Unable to hot add source disk, failing over to network mode...  

Note: The PRODBKP01-VM is the Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5.0.823 VM running Win 2012 R2.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Albert,

Update 1 or 2 couldn't be the reason for this failover. Can you please tell us if you're able to hot add this VM manually? Did you possibly migrate source VM to the host where proxy couldn't hot add the virtual disk of that VM?

Thanks!

[albertwt]

Hi Vitaliy,

Yes, I can hotAdd the HDD to this VM and any VM with no downtime.

Does this mean that I need to deploy 4x Veeam Backup proxy VMs for each VCenter Data Center container?

[Vitaliy S.]

If you're doing hotadd for VMs hosted in different datacenters (compared to the proxy), then it might not work, see this existing topic. Try to install the proxy to the same datacenter as the backed up VM and see if the hotadd works or not.

[albertwt]

Vitaliy,

So does it means I need to deploy 4x VM backup proxy in each data center so that the backup job can finish faster ?
At the moment I'm having issue with VMware CBT record missing due to VCenter rebuild.

[Vitaliy S.]

First, you need to wait till CBT gets enabled once again. After that, if hotadd mode keeps failing over to the network mode, then yes, you need to deploy virtual proxy server in each datacenter.

[albertwt]

Vitaliy,

So if I deploy more than 4x Veeam Backup Proxy per Data Center object, would that reduce the backup window significantly ?

I guess there is nothing I can do to improve the backup CBT speed for all VMs managed by the new VCenter server ?

[Vitaliy S.]

The proxy servers you have, the more concurrent backup jobs you can run until you hit the repository bottleneck. First run of your jobs will be full, then CBT will be leveraged.

[albertwt]

Ok that sounds great.
So how do I know the maximum limit of my backup repo ?
Is there any way to find it out so that I can understand how many VM backup Proxy or something else ?

[Vitaliy S.]

You can start increasing concurrent tasks step by step and monitor job stats. Repository performance depends on the hardware you use for that server.

[albertwt]

Ok, so what about the Veeam Backup server itself ?
Do I need to deploy one Veeam Backup server on each physical Data center or I can just deploy the Veeam Backup repository only to save up the VBR license ?

[Vitaliy S.]

You can deploy only the proxy server to be able to use hotadd, no need to have a separate backup server.

[albertwt]

Do you mean like this one will work?

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Head Office:
Veeam Server: HOBKP01 [Physical]
Backup Proxy: HOVBP01-VM, HOVBP02-VM and HOVBP03-VM
Backup Repository: iSCSI LUNs from QNAP NAS to hold backup copy from Site Office 
VCenter Server: HOVCSA01-VM

Data Center 1:
Veeam Server: none
Backup Proxy: PROD1VBP01-VM, PROD1VBP01-VM and PROD1VBP01-VM
Backup Repository: iSCSI LUNs from QNAP NAS or maybe NFS share ? to hold backup copy from Data Center 2
VCenter Server: none

Data Center 2:
Veeam Server: none
Backup Proxy: PROD2VBP01-VM, PROD2VBP01-VM and PROD2VBP01-VM
Backup Repository: iSCSI LUNs from QNAP NAS or maybe NFS share ? to hold backup copy from Data Center 1
VCenter Server: none

Site Office:
Veeam Server: SOBKP01 [Physical]
Backup Proxy: SOVBP01-VM, SOVBP02-VM and SOVBP03-VM
Backup Repository: iSCSI LUNs from QNAP NAS to hold backup copy from Head Office 
VCenter Server: SOVCSA01-VM

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, you can deploy just proxy servers (assuming there is network connection between different sites).

[albertwt]

Yes Vitaliy,

there is dark fiber 1 GBps between the sites.

So the proxy servers here is the Veeam backup proxy with no Veeam Backup & Replication installed [physical or VM] on each Data Center?

[Vitaliy S.]

Correct.

[albertwt]

Many thanks for the clarification Vitaliy
This forum is very helpful.