Netapp Flexgroups

[225enginner]

Netapp introduced Flexgroups in Oct. 2017. Veeam integration can see the old Flexvol but does not show any Flexgroup volumes. I need a developer to look at the logic of the SAN Scan function and see how FlexGroups can be detected. This Flexgroup is an NFS export just like my other Flexvol's.

[melissapalmer]

What are you using FlexGroups for?

[rennerstefan]

Hello,

NetApp FlexGroups as of today are not supported and recommended for any other workload than scale-out NAS.
That said, using FlexGroups to store VMs is nothing we would recommend to do as of today.
More infos here: http://docs.netapp.com/ontap-9/index.js ... 05146.html

Furthermore, most of the features used for backup and restore tasks such as FlexClone are not available with FlexGoups today.
See the Supported and unsupported configurations for FlexGroup volumes here: http://docs.netapp.com/ontap-9/index.js ... 7BE0C.html

So my questions is, like as what Melissa asked, for which use case are u using FlexGroups today?

[evilaedmin]

Snapshots but not FlexClone means restores can only be done in a read-only fashion, manually copying out the read-only VM to a regular datastore volume?

[rennerstefan]

There is no general statement here.
I personally would say, FlexClone is a must if you want to use the full feature set veeam offers.

All other use cases in terms of licensing are documented here: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... tml?ver=95

Too much to write here.

[Andreas Neufert]

Please understand that this sitaution is unsupported as NetApp do not support it and do not give us needed APIs or functionallity for it.

NetApp can help I guess with the manual VM restore tasks. It would maybe make sense as well to place a feature request at NetApp to support VMs on it if there is a usecase for it.
As I was told the FlexGroups was introduced for billions of files unstructured data volumes to optimize metadata handling.

Overall I suggest to bring the NetApp in a NetApp (and therefore Veeam) supported configuration to not run into unplanned issues where nobody can help you with issues.

[225enginner]

Certain NetApp models have a 100tb volume limit. I need flexgroups so I can retain more than 100tb of snapvault snapshots.

[Andreas Neufert]

Thanks this is valuable feedback and we will discuss with NetApp in our call.

Nevertheless it is an unsupported situation from NetApp side and you should contact them to discuss. If NetApp change this and support full stack of features with it then we can support it.

In the meantime you can use the standard VMware backup methods (DirectSAN/HotAdd/DirectSAN/DirectNFS) to backup the VMs with Veeam without storage integration.

[EMPB]

What about storing the Veeam backup files (Backup Repository) on NetApp NFS share with underlying FlexGroup?

Is that supported?

[Andreas Neufert]

We support all storages behind cifs/nfs as long they fulfill standard requirements for random read/write processing.

But anyway please double check that this configuration is supported by NetApp.

[dasfliege]

I have installed a brandnew Netapp and tried to set it up in veeam. I was wondering why i it does not discover the NFS volumes until i have found our, that veeam does not support FlexGroups. Is there any news when this will be supported? It's actually NetApp best practice to serve Flexgroup NFS datastores to VMWare now, so i think there also must be proper API to handle it backup vise?

[foggy]

I cannot share any particular ETA but we have FlexGroups support logged as a requirement for future versions.

[dasfliege]

So just to clarify: NetApp has the API ready and it's now on veeam to implement them? Im just asking because i was thinking about migrating everything to standard volumes if there is no support for flexgroups in the next few months.

[foggy]

We haven't done the API research yet so I cannot assure you there's everything we need from the API perspective. But I can say that it is definitely not a question of the next few months (not a v12 scope).

[dasfliege]

Any news regarding Flexgroup support?
I just found out that veeam does not support Nimble peer persistance configurations aswell. Even though i know that integrating new storage features needs heavy development and testing effort, i think veeam should pay more attention to add support for such features as fast as possible. It's quite annoying if you can't leverage all possibilities of a new infrastructure just because your backup-software does not support them.

[rennerstefan]

Hi,
no update for FlexGroup support, it is something we are looking into but no guarantee yet on ETA.
As for Nimble Peer Persistance, it is something we do expect to happen in v12 release
Thanks

[dasfliege]

As v12 RTM is out now, can you tell us which features are included?
- Nimble peer persistance support?
- NetApp flexgroup support?

[Andreas Neufert]

For Nimble it is in the v12 release.
We work with NetApp on various updates of the plug-in with no ETA yet available (can be released independent of any Veeam Backup & Replication release).

[bkelsch]

This issue with Netapp has stopped my Veeam backups. I am researching alternative backup solutions at this time. Please make it a priority to find out when Netapp will be available with Flexgroups. I have been speaking with Netapp engineering and I cannot get a clear answer as to who needs to do what. Netapp seems to be under the impression that Veeam has all of the API information they need but have not gotten a firm reply yet.

[foggy]

That's because there's no firm reply atm. This is definitely on the table and we see the demand for FlexGroup volumes support. As mentioned, we have ongoing discussions with NetApp with this in mind.

[eric.van.boven]

Ran into this too on new netapp setup, was not expecting this due to flex groups been around for quite some time now. Can still backup vms, just would not be using the netapp snapshots but the vmware. Hope it gets added sooner than later as the initial request is over 4 years old. I can see some of the delay before flex group was recommended for vms but after that no excuse.

[Andreas Neufert]

All, please report this demand as well to your Netapp Sales representative to strengthen the case for this feature within the USAPI plug-ins. Remember that the vendors are defining the scope for their plug-ins.