Direct San connection not available

[StixForBrains]

During direct san replication get the message "Direct SAN connection is not available. Failing over to network mode".

IBM san DS4700. My two esxi hosts see all san luns. vSphere 4.1. vCenter working fine. I can vStorage motion any vm to or from any lun. Veeam v5 is installed in a win 2003 VM on same SAN on same esxi hosts. Veeam sees the vcenter and recognizes all my vms and lets me pick any lun as a replication target. What step is missing? If the hosts and vcenter can see all datastores, why can't veeam in a vm? I've read i should be able to see all the luns in the veeam vm windows-disk-managent, but I do not. I'm running Veeam as a domain admin, same account as I'm able to do everything else in vcenter. is there some esxi setting in vcenter that I am missing? Is there some other step after adding vcenter to the veeam console. I don't see anything in the Veeam user guide specific to running Veeam in a vm other than adding the vcenter server to the tree? I understand the running Veeam in a vm is recommended sionce I can give it lots of cpu resources. I could do a physical server but I;d rather run it in a vm.
I'm only getting about 25 MB/s, understandable as a failover network transfer. But I know on this san I can vStorage motion a 100 gig vm from lun to lun in about 5 minutes so I expect to get something reasonable from veeam once this is working correctly?

[Gostev]

Hello, please review sticky FAQ topic for steps required to configure direct SAN access from backup server.

[StixForBrains]

Thanks. That sticky is not much help. There is no direct HBA here as the Veeam-backup-server IS a vm. The esxi hosts already have the hba configured and yes it sees all sees all luns and vms. But that doesn't mean the veeam vm sees all luns. The section on iscsi seems irrelevant as its not iscsi, its an FC san. It says "ensure luns are visible in windows disk management". But they are not visible. "ensure" doesn't suggest how one does "ensure". What next? There must be something that must be done in esxi to make all the luns visible, but i wouldnt know what as I'm only aware of typical datastore operations and creating vmdks for the vms. How does one "present all luns" to a vm? Sorry to be so dense.

[Gostev]

There is no direct HBA here as the Veeam-backup-server IS a vm.
The section on iscsi seems irrelevant as its not iscsi, its an FC san.

As FAQ explains, you cannot use direct SAN access mode with FC SAN when running Veeam Backup in a VM.

[StixForBrains]

Thanks for your patience Anton. I had mis-read that as well as some other statements. It says "can't do Direct SAN using NPIV" which I skipped right past because I didn't even know what NPIV was and certainly not using, so not applicable to me. I didn't read it to mean "can't do direct FC SAN with a VM aAT ALL" I had also read elsewhere several times that running veeam in a VM was actually a recommendation, and didn't see any caviats attached to that statement. Thanks for clarifying. Since i'm all esxi and not esx so I have target problem, so I think I will go with the physical windows veeam server to do the backups to backup lun and then spool to tape. And maybe also keep the veeam VM for doing the replication jobs to my remote site. The replications are more critical than the speed of the backups and my vm wl have far more processor poer than any physical server I have. I licensed the enterprise veeam so having more than one veeam server to monitor shouldn't be bad. I'll repost a new thread with design and see if anyone has comment about pros and cons of putting the veeam-vm at main or at remote.
Thank you again for your assistance

[Gostev]

Yep, there is really no way to connect VM directly to FC SAN rather than NPIV (you cannot plug-ing FC HBA into VM)... but NPIV is not suitable for backup. If you had iSCSI SAN, you could use "software HBA" (iSCSI Software Initiator), but unfortunately with FC SAN you do not get this luxury.

Physical server is fine, but have you also considered using Virtual Appliance mode instead, if you prefer running Veeam Backup in a VM?

[StixForBrains]

Physical server is fine, but have you also considered using Virtual Appliance mode instead, if you prefer running Veeam Backup in a VM?

Thought about it. If I understand correctly, to accomplish the vitual appliance mode I'd have to either:
1) still use NPIV in some way to give my veeam-vm direct access to a lun so it could be formated as an nfts target. Then later present that ntfs lun to physical server that can send the backups to tape. My tape library is not fibre, its scsi so it has to be connected to physical server.

OR
2) I guess I could use vm and attach a large vmdk to my vm as lettered drive to hold the backup targets, veeam vm see it as local. But then still need to figure out a way to make that visible externally when its time to spool to tape. And you've said a vfms voume is not a good spot to hold backups.

Since I'm going to need a physical server in my chain somewhere currently to handle the tape library, and I have some spare servers as I'm process of virtualizing many. So the physical might as well run veeam, as it seems that will make my life easier right now. Easier than dealing with NPIV. For #1 above everything I've read about NPIV since yesterday sounds very complicated and subject to cautions. I'm not very experienced with FC, I've usually had someone else "set it and forget it" and its worked great. I need to do something that works in a hurry. I'm getting by right now on replicas (since they work with esxi) and time consuming because its failing over to network mode. I have a server with hba that is already zoned for the FC san which I understand its current configuration. I don't understand NPIV and have also never used Raw disk mapping. I'll consider the virtual appliance mode in my next phase when I can afford to replace my tape library and more time to read and ask questions.

[Gostev]

Yes, you understand correctly. Agree, given all this physical server will probably a better option.
For (2) you can just create regular Windows share, and have your tape solution get files from this share.

[StixForBrains]

For (2) you can just create regular Windows share, and have your tape solution get files from this share.

True. But that would hit my network kind of hard and also slow the tape solution. But I could dedicate some esxi ethernet ports just to a segregated backup network I guess. I can do the physical veeam server now to get something working, and stil easily experiment with option (1) and option (2) on the vm copy of veeam.
Thanks again. Are there many(any) good "veeam design" papers available diagraming the pro's and con's of various san set ups and remote site setups?

[Gostev]

No papers, but this forum has a lot of very good threads with best practices direct from other Veeam customers...

[mteamjpy]

hi guys
it is improved now with vsphere 5.1 and veeam 6.2
I think it's a must have and i really need it !

[Gostev]

Glad to hear this, although on a fair note, neither vSphere 5.1 nor veeam 6.2 have been released yet

[mteamjpy]

true sorry would mean vpshere 5.0 and veeam 6.1
because it his really important for us , and like StixForBrains we did not understand it like not possible
i open an other post and ticket about this.

what i can imagine is to use hyperv on the host instead of ESX but i want to know if it his possible ?

[mteamjpy]

ok i completly forgot about the virtual apliance mode on the proxy
so all my appologies