[V13] Storage Snapshots with Nimble AF-Series?

[MomSpaghettiii]

Veeam Support Case ID # 07827694

I'm trying to decipher if storage snapshots are supported with the HPE Nimble AF-series, specifically the AF-20 model for v13? I see the Optional Components include HPE StoreOnce Libraries, but when adding the storage device, Nimble is definitely on the list.

We have the Software Appliance running along with two Veeam Infrastructure Appliances (JeOS) using the iSCSI install option and using them as proxies. Both proxies are allowed access via IQN on the Nimble side and Veeam storage scans show green checks across the board. When I look at the proxies, they are set to use Direct Storage Access transport mode, and the jobs are checked to Enable backup from storage snapshots but end up failing over to standard/VMware snapshots instead.

When adding the Storage, should we be adding it by management IP/Hostname, or by Storage iSCSI IP where the backups traffic will be taking place? We're getting tripped up a bit as we're moving from Windows Veeam to Linux Storage/Infrastructure Appliances with reduced, but more secure, capabilities.

[Gostev]

Not yet, storage vendors need to act to make plug-ins compatible with the software appliance. This is covered in good details in the V13 What's New document, please take a look.

[MomSpaghettiii]

Thank you, Gostev. Are those plug-ins used in the other direction, to send data to the appliance? We were able to get our snapshots working after finding a couple things; a misconfiguration on one of the proxies and also a wrong proxy selected in the job we were testing with. All jobs performed storage snapshots properly last night and things are looking great now. We're really liking v13 so well done by the team at Veeam!

[foggy]

Nimble is natively supported, including VSA, so no plug-ins are involved. Glad you were able to address the failover issues. Thanks!

[Gostev]

Right, there are a handful of historically-native integrations that do not leverage USAPI plug-ins at all. I did not know which ones are still left in the product as such vendors have been actively adopting USAPI to get better control of the integration lifecycle and compatibility with new offerings. But Alexander is the boss as it comes to primary storage integrations so his response is authoritative.

[ndaviscmm]

Pure Storage not having a plugin is holding me back from being able to deploy the VSA. Hopefully, they get something working eventually.

[MomSpaghettiii]

I'm also in the same boat with Pure storage. I posted on their forums too and received a response that Q4 2025 when v13.0.1 is released it will likely have it. That came from someone who claims to be on the testing side of their integration team. Our primary environment uses Pure and the secondary environment I posted about in this thread is using HPE Nimble.

[Gostev]

Folks just keep in mind that one of a few goals of the "early availability" VSA release (13.0.0) was specifically to give storage vendors production code a few months before GA release (13.0.1) so they could deliver Day 0 support if they wanted. So it's not like they are late to the party or anything like that.

Speaking of ourselves here, while we do always play with pre-release code and prototype integrations with upcoming major releases of various platforms we support, the full blown QA effort only starts when the vendor ships the code that is supported for production use. So we treat other vendors just like we want ourselves to be treated.

[ndaviscmm]

Absolutely, I love Pure Storage, I'm just excited to try the VSA.