Veeam B&R v7.0 Design Advice in a SAN replacement project

[massimiliano.rizzi]

Hello experts,

as part of a Server Consolidation project for an existing Veeam B&R 6.5 customer, we are also working on a project to replace a production 4 Gbit/s Fibre Channel Fujitsu ETERNUS DX80 S2 Disk Storage System with a new EMC VNX 5100.

In addition to being almost out of warranty, the Fujitsu ETERNUS DX80 S2 Storage is almost running out of disk space, so there is not enough room to run the additional virtual machines that will be resulting from the Server Consolidation project.

We are also working on improving the current Veeam B&R Backup Infrastructure because of the low writing speed of the Iomega NAS used as the primary target backup repository. Needless to say the Iomega NAS is the primary bottleneck in the data path.

Current production environment is relatively small and is described below:

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- 3x VMware ESXi 5.1 hosts with plenty of CPU and memory resources
- vSphere Enterprise Edition license
- 15 virtual machines (approximately 2 TB backup size)
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As a result of the Storage replacement and Server Consolidation projects, the customer will run 20/25 virtual machines (resulting in approximately 3.5 TB backup size) on the new EMC VNX 5100 Storage.

With regard to improving the current Veeam B&R Backup Infrastructure, in addition to upgrading to v7.0 we are planning to repurpose the “old” Fujitsu ETERNUS DX80 S2 Disk Storage System as a new high-speed primary backup repository in order to guarantee quicker backup and restore operations as well as having a faster storage for Instant VM Recovery and SureBackup Recovery Verification activities. Then we will use the new Veeam BackupCopy feature to copy data saved on the high-speed primary backup repository to the slower Iomega NAS.

Does our Veeam B&R upgrade to v7.0 and improvement plan make sense to you ? If it makes sense to you, would you recommend us to:

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1) Deploy Veeam B&R on a VM and use hot-add mode. The Veeam B&R VM’s boot disk will be placed on to the storage where virtual disks of the VMs to be backed up will be located (thus on the new EMC VNX 5100 Storage), while the Veeam B&R VM’s data disk hosting the Veeam high-speed primary backup repository will be placed on a LUN that resides on the Fujitsu ETERNUS DX80 S2 Storage.
2) Since as a result of the Server Consolidation project we will have a spare physical server with plenty of CPU and memory resources, it would be possible for us to install Veeam B&R on it and buy a couple of FC HBAs in order to guarantee direct FC access to both SANs. The backup proxy will retrieve VM data directly from the new EMC VNX 5100 Storage SAN LUNs and the Veeam high-speed primary backup repository will be hosted on a LUN that resides on the Fujitsu ETERNUS DX80 S2 Storage and that will be visible to the Veeam B&R physical backup proxy server only.
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It would be great if someone could kindly share his thoughts and help me validating the new Veeam B&R v7.0 Design.

Thanks and Regards,

Massimiliano

[foggy]

Massimiliano, your plan makes perfect sense to me. Regarding your question, direct SAN backups are generally preferable in terms of performance and also do not require host's resources fro data processing. Also, in the second case backup server and repository will be always available in case of a host crash. So I would probably go physical Veeam B&R way. Btw, does this customer also have a requirement to offload backups to tapes?

[massimiliano.rizzi]

Hi Foggy,

first of all thank you for taking the time to reply to my question.

Based on your reply, I understand that in this scenario direct SAN backups are the best way to go.

The customer does not have a requirement to offload backups to tapes, however I know for sure that one of the remaining physical servers that will be moved to virtual machine has a locally attached SAS Tape Autoloader that is currently being used to pull data from a couple of old physical servers with a legacy backup application. The physical server that has the locally attached SAS Tape Autoloader could easily be repurposed as physical Veeam B&R server giving the customer the opportunity to perform and manage both daily disk-based backups and periodic long-term archiving to tape using Veeam B&R only.

As part of redesigning the current Veeam B&R Backup Infrastructure in order to configure direct SAN backups, the physical Veeam B&R server will need to directly access the FC SAN LUNs.

Unless something has recently changed, I know that EMC does not ship a PowerPath for Windows license with VNX 5100 Disk Storage Systems. I also don’t know whether the “old” Fujitsu ETERNUS DX80 S2 Disk Storage System came with Multipathing software for Windows. It’s been a long time since we last configured a physical Veeam B&R server with direct access to SAN LUNs to both retrieve VM data and save it to disk-based storage connected into the SAN fabric. We still have a couple of customers that are currently using a physical Veeam B&R server running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with direct FC access to EMC SANs (one customer is using an old CLARiiON AX4 while the other is using a VNX 5100) and if I can remember correctly they’re both using native Windows 2008 R2 MPIO.

With the advent of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and Veeam B&R v7.0 would you recommend that we use native multipathing support provided by Microsoft Windows Server 2012 operating system or that that we install and use multipathing software sold by the SAN vendor ?

Thank you again for your support.

Massimiliano

[foggy]

I'll assume that multipath drivers provided by storage vendors are more common among our customers (at least I heard our system engineers recommending EMC PowerPath for EMC devices). If you have an opportunity to test both options, you could decide on what is best in terms of performance in your particular setup.

[massimiliano.rizzi]

Thanks again !

[foggy]

You're welcome. Feel free to ask any additional questions, should they come up.

[dellock6]

Only a warning, PowerPath does not comes for free, and I heard is really expensive (at least the VE edition). Since even the default MPIO driver can handle the connection, my suggestion is to test before with native MS MPIO driver, if performances are good enough, save money for other projects

Other than that, a complete FC data pipe source-proxy-target is an awesome kind of design, completely lan-free end to end.

[NightBird]

I have a lot of customers with Windows 2K8R2 native MPIO and Direct SAN access with VNX 5100/5300, it works flawless.
Just some tuning to do with mpclaim.exe (read EMC guide).

[massimiliano.rizzi]

@dellock6 @NightBird Thank you for your replies.

I agree with you Luca, PowerPath for Windows is expensive (less than VE edition, but still expensive).

So far our EMC customers too are successfully using native Microsoft Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 MPIO with direct FC access to their EMC SANs (CLARiiON AX4 and VNX 5100).

Like Tom Sightler said here:

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http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7716#p32165
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It is also possible to run Powerpath in an unlicensed (but completely free) mode (EMC refers to this mode as “Powerpath SE”). “Powerpath SE” limitations are described in the “PowerPath Family 5.7 Product Guide” available within EMC Powerlink. I have never used it, but I assume that it should give the same results as native Microsoft Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 MPIO without the need to perform the extra tuning with mpclaim.exe in order to have paths claimed by native Microsoft Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 MPIO.