Veeam working over iSCSI, but not fiber to EVA

[da1dp]

Hello all -

The issues I'm experiencing is not directly an issue with Veeam, but the sole purpose of resolving the issue/confusion is so we can run Veeam backups against our SAN. I have submitted a trouble ticket with Veeam with a response to check the presentation of the LUN. I understand this may be an issue, but we have attempted many different possibilities to get this working with not success. My hope is that the community may be able to shed some insight.

My issue, which I've spent several days working to resolve with HP and VMware, is that our Server 2003 VCB proxy server cannot see the EVA4400 LUN's properly because a vcbmounter test errors saying "Failed to open the disk: Cannot access a SAN/iSCSI LUN." I'm seeing the Server Disk Management showing the disk as "1000 GB Unallocated" and a color of black as if it's an non-formatted drive. Based from an iSCSI connection to a NetApp LUN hosting disk for other ESX servers, I'm expecting the disk to show up as blue in color saying "1000 GB Healthy (Unknown Partition)"????

My question is actually a question about the configuration we have and whether it should work?

We have (3) ESX 3.5 servers running their disks from an EVA4400 over a fiber fabric. I have a 2003 Server running VCB & Veeam connected via fiber to the EVA, which has a presentation from the same LUN that the 3 ESX servers run their disk from. I have played with many zoning options by myself along with the an engineer from VMware in attempt to get vcbmounter to connect properly.

Should this work?

A VMWare VCB engineer is telling me it's an issue with the EVA presenting its LUN. HP is hesitant to help and insists it doesn't support multiple platforms accessing a single LUN (which I've read differently) and won't troubleshoot LUN presentations without install HP MPIO tools, which I've heard VCB doesn't like.

Can anyone shed some solid light on the hardware set up that we have and whether it should work? I'm really hoping this Veeam forum because I'm not getting far with HP or VMWare.

Thanks in advance!

[sphilp]

We're using an EVA with fibre connection to the VCB / Veeam Backup server, so maybe we can compare settings and see what's going on...

Our VCB server is the Windows 2003 64-bit Storage Server Edition that HP previously shipped as the management server for the EVA array. It has a dual-port HBA that's connected to the fabric.

We did install the HP MPIO tools, but that was mostly to get rid of the doubled-up drives showing on the VCB server. We saw no performance increase from installing the MPIO tools.

In Windows Disk Management, we do see the drive in blue, as you expect, along with the size and Healthy (Active) info.

There were really only two steps to take on the EVA array to allow the VCB server to connect:

* Add the server to the Hosts list
* Add the new host to the Presentation list for the Virtual Disk

Once that was done, we could see the LUN on the VCB server, though it was doubled-up (it may have been black, I don't recall). We installed the MPIO tools (both the driver and the DSM Manager -- it allows you to set the queuing and load balancing). Once that was done, we had a single "blue" drive in Disk Management.

I can verify that the EVA connected via FC does work with Veeam Backup, and does a terrific job -- we backup about 1TB of guests each night and the 50 days worth of backups currently on-hand take up about 2.6TB.

[da1dp]

sphilp - Thanks for your response. Thanks for reassuring that I should see the LUN in blue color saying that it's healthy.

I have attempted the same configuration steps as you. The only thing I can see that's different is that we are running Win2003 SP2 rather than 2003 Storage Server, but I haven't seen anything that says it has to be storage server.

I have installed the MPIO utilities as you have. Along with presenting the LUN to be presented to "Windows" and "VMWARE" just for the sake of it. I have rebooted endless times and changed the Zoning on the SAN switch many times to try different things with no success.

Anther thing I just tried was building another Server 2003 box with a different HBA and MPIO. I got it all configured and presented the LUN....still the LUN shows up black stating it's "Unallocated" disk.

Unfortunately, I'm still getting the run around from VMware saying it's the EVA and HP saying "this is no way supported"

Not sure what I'm going to do next....

Any suggestions would be helpful!

Thanks again!