Backup, Restore, Instant Recovery Optimisation

[markfellows]

We currently have a NAS device which we use as the destination for our VMs on a daily basis (connected as a mapped drive). This device is also mapped as a NFS datastore in our virtualisation infrastructure.

As v5 offers instant recovery is this setup ok or is there a more fast and efficient connection method.

I would also welcome any suggested improvements to the above config that could increase the speed of our backup & restores (speed is not too bad, around 45Mbs when processing actual data). Our backup server is a VM and we currently backup using Network Mode. I did try Appliance Mode but this didn’t seem to improve the speed much.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Mark,

Your setup looks ok for me, by the way what was the load on your backup server when you were runnig backup jobs in Virtual Appliance mode? Also are you using ESX or ESXi hosts in your environment? Provided that you have ESX hosts installed, don't forget to specify service console credentials for a better restore speed.

[markfellows]

Vitaliy,

We're running ESXi server with only around 6 VMs (very small infrastructure).

Mark.

[Vitaliy S.]

And what about Virtual Appliance mode? Have you granted your backup server with 4 vCPU as it is advised in our F.A.Q. topic?
Actually, NFS + Virtual Appliance mode should give pretty good results compared to just Network backup mode, though you say it didn't improve much...

[markfellows]

It's currently using 2 vCPUs but I did try 4 vCPUs a while back, not sure I tried this in conjunction with Virtual Appliance Mode, I'll give this a go.

My NFS datastore is only for templates at the moment, the ESXi server is currently using local storage for the VMs. I as I said the VMs are then backup overnight with Veeam to the NAS via a mapped drive (would this improve if I backed up via NFS using Windows NFS Services?).

[Vitaliy S.]

Mark, I'm not sure I'm following you with Windows NFS Services... I was trying to say why not to deploy a VM from one of your templates to this NFS datastore and try to backup it with Virtual Appliance mode just to compare the results. Hope it helps!