[BETA] [HPE] iSCSI disks are being enumerated in guests

[dcolpitts]

Previously, in ESXi where we had a standalone host, we would deploy a Ubuntu VM, configure iSCSI on it, and present a LUN from a NAS or something as iSCSI to it. We would then turn this VM into our hardened repository, and write the Veeam backups to the iSCSI LUN. With Veeam and ESXi when we added the repository VM to the back up job, the total size of the VM was only what was actually in the VMDKs on the host. I just added our harden repository VM to a new backup job, and the size of the VM being shown is including the iSCSI volume (total 54.5TB), not just the sum of the virtual disk that makes it up (20GB).

When the backup runs, it does only grab the virtual disk. However it's a bit misleading and concerning when you see the size of your backup job is 54.5TB instead of the 10.1GB it actually should be.

dcc

[cody.ault]

Are you configuring iSCSI at the host level and presenting it as a RAW device or inside the guest OS?

[dcolpitts]

It's a mounted iSCSI LUN inside the VM, not the VME host. So basically, take the NAS, create an iSCSI volume on it, and present that volume to the VM. It would be no different than a Nimble or Alletra MP iSCSI volume. You create the volume on the array, and present the LUN to the VM's iSCSI initiator name, format the LUN as xfs from inside the VM once it is discovered and mount it via fstab after installing open-iscsi and multipath-tools.

I can confirm the backup only backups the virtual disk that is defined in the VM. But like I said, it appears VBR is enumerating the VM for all it's storage with the VME plugin. VBR doesn't do this under ESXi.

dcc

[cody.ault]

I'm guessing this might be related to a guest agent reporting size back to qemu/libvirt but I'll try to find out