Backup with VCB fails

[mc100]

Hi,
after my last week's questions (see http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... ilit=ESXi2) I created my test environment.
Windows 2003 server (192.168.113.1)
Openfiler (192.168.113.2)
ESXi (192.168.113.3)
Connection is through a HP gigabit switch.
In Openfiler I shared a folder (NFS).
Win 2003 server can read and write on the share. On the server I have VCB and Veeam (trial) installed.

Questions are:
1- Backup of a VM from ESXi succeedes if In Veeam I choose VCB mode NBD
Backup fails if I choose VCB mode / SAN.
This is the error log: "Completing current object backup process VCB error: No path to device LVID:4a166f
f6-e443adb9-7adb-00145e6907ae/4a166ff4-9cc58ad8-5337-00145e6907ae/1 found. Error: Failed to open the disk: Cannot access a SAN/iSCSI LUN backing this virtual disk. (Hint: If you are using vcbMounter you can use the option "-m ndb" to switch to network based disk access if this is what you want.) If you were attempting file-level access, stop the vmount Service by typing "net stop vmount2" on a command prompt to force vmount to re-scan for SAN LUNs and re-try the command. An error occurred, cleaning up.."


2- If I choose VCB / NBD performance is horrible (2MB/s).


Thanks

[Gostev]

Marco,

VCB SAN mode requires that your physical VCB proxy server is connected directly into SAN fabric via FC HBA (physically), or iSCSI HBA (physically) or via software iSCSI initiator (the latter can also be used when Veeam Backup is installed in a VM, if your storage supports iSCSI). However, from your description you are not even using SAN storage, so you cannot use VCB SAN mode at all.

Software-based storage solutions provide pretty poor perfromance in general. I recommend that you get hardware storage device, or use local ESXi hard drives as a storage instead (not applicable to your scenario though).

Thank you.

[mc100]

I will buy an HW storage, but I'm testing at the moment...
I guess that if I install MS iSCSI on win2003 server and activate iSCSI on Openfiler I could use VCB SAN mode, correct?

So, no way to have a fast backup using NFS? Even with an HW storage?

[Gostev]

Correct, you can do this and then you will be able to use VCB SAN mode. This way data will not have to go through ESXi server, rather Veeam Backup will work directly with storage device via VCB framework.

All I know according to all the feedback I have is that with OpenFiler, you will not get good storage and backup speed. As for HW NFS storage, I do not have any feedback or speed reports at all at this time, so I'd rather won't speculate.

What you can do though, is ask the storage device vendor what speed they are getting when downloading a large file from their storage device connected to ESXi server as NFS storage over 1Gb network, using VIC Datastore Browser. And this will be your maximum backup speed.