Can XFS Fast Clone work via NFS?

[aj_potc]

I've successfully used XFS Fast Clone on a CentOS 8 repository in which the XFS storage is available to the host as a locally mounted disk. This works as expected.

However, what if I'd like to use storage mounted from another system? If I mount that storage via NFS, will I lose XFS Fast Clone capability? Or, if the destination system and storage supports it, will I still be able to take advantage of Fast Clone despite the NFS layer?

Thanks very much for any advice!

[Mildur]

If you add this Storage directly as a NFS Backup Repo to the VBR Server, Fast Clone will no be used. It‘s not possible.

You find all supported Backup Repos Types here:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

If you mount this „other system storage“ per iscsi or FC to your centos server, then you can format the LUN with xfs. Then it‘s possible to use FAST Clone with the help of the centos 8 backup repo

[aj_potc]

Hi Fabian,

Thanks for your reply.

If you add this Storage directly as a NFS Backup Repo to the VBR Server, Fast Clone will no be used. It‘s not possible.

No, I don't mean that I would add the NFS storage in that manner. I mean that I would mount it from one CentOS 8 system (which has XFS-formatted storage) onto another CentOS 8 system (the repository). Then I would point the VBR server to the repository where I've mounted the volume.

If you mount this „other system storage“ per iscsi or FC to your centos server...

Unfortunately I don't have either of those options available. I can only mount it via NFS. I assume the XFS Fast Clone wouldn't be available because it can't work over the NFS layer, right?

Thank you.

[Mildur]

I‘m not a Linux Expert, but in my opinion, your plan will not work. Veeam needs direct access to the xfs filesystem for the fastclone commands. If you have an NFS Mount, then the OS will use native NFS Commands.
Can someone from Veeam confirm that?

With NFS 4.2, there was released a feature called server side copy. For me, it looks like what you are looking for. But I think, veeams doesn‘t have developed or planned to support nfs v4.2 Server Side Copy Feature. I‘m not sure if this NFS feature can work with blocks. I have found some text from Netapp, which says, that partial file copy will work. For FastClone, veeam needs access to the blocks.
https://linux-nfs.org/wiki/index.php/Server_Side_Copy

[ND40oz]

No, I don't mean that I would add the NFS storage in that manner. I mean that I would mount it from one CentOS 8 system (which has XFS-formatted storage) onto another CentOS 8 system (the repository). Then I would point the VBR server to the repository where I've mounted the volume.

Why not just add the second CentOS 8 system as another repository?

[aj_potc]

Unfortunately, the CentOS 8 system with the storage doesn't have much CPU horsepower or memory. So I'm trying to see if I can mount it via NFS onto a more capable system, and then use that system as the Veeam repository.