Set backup mode per job

[dellock6]

Hi all,
is correct right now the only place where I can choose the backup method (san, hotadd or nbd) is per proxy? I had some problems with snapshot commit using hotadd on some VMs (specifically, HP LeftHand FOM and sometimes VMware vCloud cells) and following this kb article

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=2010953

even if was referring to nfs and not iscsi as we use, the freezing problem went away.

So now I would like to have a specific job for NBD VMs, but at the moment the only solution seems to deploy a specific proxy and force it to run in NBD mode. Is it correct? Or there is a way to use NBD for a specific job even if proxy is configured for automatic selection?

Thanks,
Luca.

[Gostev]

the only solution seems to deploy a specific proxy and force it to run in NBD mode. Is it correct?

Hi Luca, correct - this is the only solution available today if you want a job to run in NBD mode. However, there is a better solution to the issue you are fighting with - just force the job to use hot add proxy located on the same host as the problematic VMs. This problem does not exist if proxy VM and processed VM are running on the same host.

By the way, I did not realize you are also using NFS storage... I thought you were using LeftHand and StoreVirtual VSA?

Thanks!

[dellock6]

No you are correct, we are using iscsi only, but the symptoms are the same even if the VMware KB talks about NFS.
I will try the other method, I was also thinking about a Powershell script that do these tasks:
- reconfigure a proxy for nbd mode only
- run the job
- reconfigure the proxy for automatic detection

since I can do backups of the FOM during the day, outside of the backup window.
Will let you know the results.

About this enhancement, since the proxies can already do failover to network mode, would be useful to have a flag in the job for forcing this failover even if the proxy can dedect direct san or hotadd.