Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
Post Reply
MGT1981
Enthusiast
Posts: 39
Liked: 6 times
Joined: Nov 21, 2014 12:30 am
Contact:

Health Check question

Post by MGT1981 »

Hey everyone,

I know this has been asked before, but going back i see some conflicting answers and wanted to figure out what the current recommendation is.

Here is my scenario, I have a a total of about 40 TB of backups split up across a few jobs. They are all going to an Exagrid (10 GB connectivity grid is appropriately sized).

we have 4 jobs, one has 1 11 TB server (only server in the job) the other 3 consist of about 70 VM's. Per Exagrid best practices, we have 14 day retention for the nighties the after that we are using Backup Copy jobs back to the same storage for our long term retention (we have 4 different policies depending on the VM type)

We switched away from Synthetic fulls because they were just taking too long (yes we used the veeam accelerated data movers for Exagrid which worked fine but our data set just got too big and the synthetics were taking too long). So we switched to weekly active fulls which seem to run fine.

The ONLY problem we are currently having is the time it takes for the health checks to run. Right now they are enabled both on the nightly jobs as well as on the "retention" jobs (backup copy's) they will often take 48-72 hours or more to run.

So with that my question is this, If we are running weekly active fulls, can we shut off health checks on either the nightly or the copy job, or for that matter can we shut it off on both? My understanding is that as part of the copy job there is some verification in there that makes it less needed. but again i just want to confirm as there appear to be some different answers
HannesK
Product Manager
Posts: 14287
Liked: 2877 times
Joined: Sep 01, 2014 11:46 am
Full Name: Hannes Kasparick
Location: Austria
Contact:

Re: Health Check question

Post by HannesK »

Hello,
does Exagrid have built-in consistency checks? If there is a built-in health check, then the Veeam health check is just overhead.

I see two options: shut off or get faster hardware. With active full, I tend to go with "shut off".

Best regards,
Hannes
MGT1981
Enthusiast
Posts: 39
Liked: 6 times
Joined: Nov 21, 2014 12:30 am
Contact:

Re: Health Check question

Post by MGT1981 »

yes i believe it does, will verify though.

So are you saying i can shut it off for both the nightly and the copy jobs ?
HannesK
Product Manager
Posts: 14287
Liked: 2877 times
Joined: Sep 01, 2014 11:46 am
Full Name: Hannes Kasparick
Location: Austria
Contact:

Re: Health Check question

Post by HannesK »

just un-check the checkbox :-)
mkretzer
Veeam Legend
Posts: 1140
Liked: 387 times
Joined: Dec 17, 2015 7:17 am
Contact:

Re: Health Check question

Post by mkretzer »

Will REFS help with integrity streams? Or will REFS not check Integrity at any read operations? Furthermore, could Veeam leverage the Integrity Streams for a "light" and faster version of Health Checks?
csydas
Expert
Posts: 193
Liked: 47 times
Joined: Jan 16, 2018 5:14 pm
Full Name: Harvey Carel
Contact:

Re: Health Check question

Post by csydas »

mkretzer

By default integrity streams only really checks on the schedule set by the task scheduler on the refs volume, iirc. It's a pretty long interval by default but you can kick it up higher. I haven't really played with it much so no idea if it impacts backups like garbage collection would.
HannesK
Product Manager
Posts: 14287
Liked: 2877 times
Joined: Sep 01, 2014 11:46 am
Full Name: Hannes Kasparick
Location: Austria
Contact:

Re: Health Check question

Post by HannesK »

could Veeam leverage the Integrity Streams for a "light" and faster version of Health Checks?
currently not, but I count that as a +1 feature request
tgillispie
Technology Partner
Posts: 18
Liked: 5 times
Joined: Nov 16, 2010 10:52 pm
Full Name: Tom Gillipsie
Contact:

Re: Health Check question

Post by tgillispie »

ExaGrid does have built-in consistency checks, but of its own metadata used in the deduplication of the Veeam backups. Veeam's health checks have the benefit of knowing Veeam's internal format and can check for any problems due to faults in Veeam's software. In other words, if a Veeam operation has produced a problem, ExaGrid's build-in consistency checks will happily deduplicate that "problem" and consider it "good" inside of ExaGrid's storage.

That said, I've been supporting the Veeam and ExaGrid relationship all the way back to Veeam V4 and I've never seen a case of Veeam doing something incorrect inside its backups. So, I think you can rely on the high quality of Veeam's software and ExaGrid's (internal) consistency checking to either skip health checks, or change the interval to maybe do only 1 or 2 per year?

You are correct that an Active full will start a new chain of backups, whereas the synthetic full is of course highly dependent on what has come before. I know Veeam has a checksum on every block in the backup, and checksums on the two "index" areas it keeps (redundantly) in each backup. I cannot recall if Veeam verifies the checksum while doing the synthetic full, but it certainly generates the checksum when doing an active full.

Hope this helps - contact me or your ExaGrid support engineer if you have any additional questions or concerns. We also have a data sheet that covers more details about the ExaGrid consistency checking and "resiliency".

Tom
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: Health Check question

Post by foggy »

I cannot recall if Veeam verifies the checksum while doing the synthetic full
No, checksums are verified during health check only.
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 50 guests