Standalone backup agents for Linux, Mac, AIX & Solaris workloads on-premises or in the public cloud
Post Reply
derek
Novice
Posts: 3
Liked: never
Joined: Oct 28, 2016 5:05 pm

OCFS2 support

Post by derek »

I searched and found a few posts related to this:
veeam-agent-for-linux-f41/cluster-suppo ... 45824.html
veeam-agent-for-linux-f41/feature-reque ... 45164.html
I think my situation is similar to these, but with the VAL 2.0 being released, maybe it's different.

I have 5 Web Servers that all mount an iSCSI disk and use the OCFS2 file-system to create a shared disk between them.
The Disk is mounted to /srv/static in this case. It contains a lot of user uploaded images and website content.
The mount point is like any other folder in the linux system. All the regular command line tools work on it.
We are using borg to back it up currently, and we are occasionally having some Folder Locking issues.
We are not 100% sure that it's borg causing the locking, but it's the likely candidate now.
I'm searching for other options.

If I installed a VAL would it be able to do a backup of the data?
If I did a snapshot of it, it would not get the iSCSI attached volume because it's not "part" of the VM as VMware sees it.
What if it I used a VMware shared VMDK volume that was attached and then formatted with OCFS2?
I have not tried VAL before. I've used Veeam to do VM backup for many years.
What about doing the backup in File level mode? Will it be incremental?

We are trying to do a backup each hour.
It's around 60 Gigs of data now.
We could reduce the frequency if it makes Veeam a possible solution.

Any ideas from the community?
PTide
Product Manager
Posts: 6408
Liked: 724 times
Joined: May 19, 2015 1:46 pm
Contact:

Re: OCFS2 support

Post by PTide »

Hi,

Currently VAL 2.0 does not support cluster nodes. Even if you stick with file-level backup it is still required to take a snapshot of OCFS2, which is not supported by VAL snapshot driver too.
iSCSI disk and use the OCFS2 file-system to create a shared disk between them.
Where does the iSCSI target reside? Is it physical or virtual disk?

Thanks
derek
Novice
Posts: 3
Liked: never
Joined: Oct 28, 2016 5:05 pm

Re: OCFS2 support

Post by derek »

The iSCSI target is a volume on a Nimble SAN.

I don't think I will be able to confidently attach a snapshot to a temporary system to use it for restore purposes which is why i'm looking at ways to back this data up.
What options do I have? How can Veeam Help? Am I best off using a file based backup like borg or duplicity?
PTide
Product Manager
Posts: 6408
Liked: 724 times
Joined: May 19, 2015 1:46 pm
Contact:

Re: OCFS2 support

Post by PTide »

As far as I know, borg usues so-called "chunking" to keep track of changes between backup archives and pick only the changed pieces of data. So, if something works with a file while borg is chunking it, it might cause locking issues. If the file is not locked there is a possibility that the file will be saved in inconsistent state in the backup. I guess that a similar behaviour can be observed if you use some other utility that traverses through the list of source files.

Another thing to keep in mind - borg does not provide you with consistency at file system level, i.e. its your part of the job to ensure that data does not change across the filesystem during backup.

With all that said, the best option for you would be to mount Nimble snapshot to any machine of your choice and use it to perform backup with either borg, or other snapshotless tool.

Thanks
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: ThomasIkoula and 11 guests