Speed of network-only backups?

[gshaw]

We're thinking of putting our VMs onto NFS storage for ease of storage management but it also comes at the penalty of not being able to use the direct-SAN backup method (if I've understood it correctly?)

That means we can either use the VM API method or go with the physical server but only being able to use the NBD mode. How much slower would NBD be, is it going to take something crazy like 12 hours to do about 12-15 VMs, <1TB total storage or will the difference be less noticeable than my worst case scenario thoughts?

[Gostev]

Correct. But NBD performance is terribly slow with NFS. Virtual Appliance mode will work a few times faster though, so consider this instead. Thanks.

[gshaw]

The main reason I wasn't keen on virtual appliance was that we'd lose out on vPower features, just to confirm do you mean performance reading from NFS datastores is slow or writing to them as a target?

I'd be putting the backup data on local SATA drives if we go with a physical server...

[Gostev]

The main reason I wasn't keen on virtual appliance was that we'd lose out on vPower features

Why is that? Or, you mean when ESX host running Veeam Backup VM is down?

just to confirm do you mean performance reading from NFS datastores is slow or writing to them as a target?

Reading. We do not support writing directly to NFS anyway.

[gshaw]

Assuming the storage hosting the VMs went down it would take the appliance with it, which is why the physical machine was a more attractive option as you've then got the data in a 2nd place to the SAN hosting the VM infrastructure. On top of that I don't have that kind of space spare on the SAN to store backups as well as live data so it has to go elsewhere.

How slow is very slow, 25% slower, 50% slower or worse than that? I understand you can only give a very rough estimate but just to get some idea of the difference...

What is the best solution for Veeam with NFS-based VMs in the case of a physical server or are we going to end up going back towards iSCSI?

[Gostev]

Assuming the storage hosting the VMs went down it would take the appliance with it, which is why the physical machine was a more attractive option as you've then got the data in a 2nd place to the SAN hosting the VM infrastructure.

You are perfectly correct here, just wanted to make sure that we are on the same page.

How slow is very slow, 25% slower, 50% slower or worse than that? I understand you can only give a very rough estimate but just to get some idea of the difference...

Over 60% slower based on numbers I saw other customers postings, like 10MB/s for NBD, but 30MB/s for virtual appliance mode (everything else is the same). But you should try it yourself, may be its better now with vSphere 4.1, numbers I have are from vSphere 4.0 times.

[gshaw]

Hmm could take quite a while at that speed... am I right in thinking I have two choices here...

- go iSCSI for datastores and use direct SAN connection... should be nice and quick

- go NFS for datastores and use virtual appliance mode... about the same speed but with the caveats above

As another point if I had a virtual appliance could I back up to remote storage via a share so I wouldn't have to use disks on the SAN but rather some cheaper storage I can put outside of the server room?

[Gostev]

Sure, with Veeam Backup installed in a VM you can still backup to a CIFS share, or a Linux server (and whatever storage is mounted there). Linux server is preferred in cases when connection to target is slower than 1Gb.