Architecture VEEAM and NetApp Storage

[LudwigC]

Hello,

We have 2 ESX connected on Dedicated VLAN (DATA VLAN) with NFS Storage hosted by NETAPP.
VMDK files are hosted in the NFS Storage, and ESX communicate on DATA VLAN with the Netapp. At the same time ESX are connected on other VLAN (Work VLAN) where user using to access at their servers.

VEEAM server is installed in Works VLAN, and I want use a New CIFS or NFS Storage on NETAPP to store backup files of VEEAM with minimum impact over the network traffic (Work VLAN).

What's your best backup architecture choice ?

Thanks.

[dellock6]

Hi Ludwig,
when storage is NFS, VADP libraries does not allows you to do DirectSAN backup, so connecting Veeam backup to DATA VLAN is useless. Your best choice to reduce backup traffic is to use a virtualized Veeam server and use HotAdd capabilites.
Also, since it sounds like you want to store backup files in the same storage as production VMs, please think twice about it. If you loose the NetApp, you are going to loose both production VMs and their backups.
A separated backup storage is for sure to be considered.

Luca.

[LudwigC]

Hello Luca,

I created VEEAM Appliance on my ESX Server. I can see all LocalStorage of vSphere, but I can't See NFS storage.
My vSphere server is only connected on WorkVLAN and manage ESXi Server on WorkVLAN.

My solution is plug VEEAM Server on DATA VLAN & WorkVLAN and Create a Repository on VEEAM Server on Storage trough DataVLAN. If I doing backup (VEEAM & vSphere communicate on WorkVLAN) the Backup flow will be ESXi to VEEAM server (WorkVlan) and VEEAM server to the repository.
Could you please confirm this Backup Flow ?

How to use HotAdd capatiblites on VEEAM Appliance ? Are you sure this HotAdd mode will see NFS storage ?

Thanks.

[dellock6]

to use HotAdd you simply have to use a virtualized Veeam server, and be sure VM disks are all scsi based and not IDE. Veeam server will never see the LUNs, but will use directly the vmdk files of the VMs you are going to backup. After it will mount vmdks, backup will flow towards the backup destination, beeing it a local attached storage (weird if it's a virtualized veeam) or a network share exposed via CIFS. If you create a cifs share on the data vlan, and Veeam will be connected on the same vlan, data will flow from Veeam to cifs share on this vlan, and it will never go onto the work vlan.

Luca.