Creating a snapshot while a backup is in progress

[rowdy]

A small question:
If a VeeAm backup is in progress and someone else uses vSphere client to create a snapshot, what happens then?
The snapshot can be created, vSphere doesn't really know anything about the VeeAm backup of course, but if someone hits the 'delete all snapshots' button 5 minutes later, because he wants all snapshots deleted, what then? I guess something will go wrong then.
But if he just deletes the snapshot he created, what happens then?

I can of course try all these scenario's, but if there's someone who has already tried and is willing to share, it saves me some time

Thanks,
Rowdy

[rowdy]

Surely someone has the answer to this?
Or is this a stupid / illogical question? If so, I would like to know why.
I am a fairly advanced sysadmin (if I may say so), but relatively new to VMWare and VeeAm...

[Gostev]

I have not had a chance yet to try this myself, but I am 99% sure that:
1. You can create additional snapshot while backup job is running.
2. You will not be able to accidentally delete Veeam snapshot, because it will be "locked" during backup.

[epruess]

I am also curious on how these types of scenarios might play out. I am currently using VEEAM to do replications off site for DR purposes. I have a hunch that the VEEAM replication may be more efficent than array based replication however I would still like to do array based snapshots locally. We would be using either Auto Snapshot Manger from Dell or Replication Manager from EMC to take snaps at the VM level before the array based snaps were taken.

If I want to use VEEAM for off site replication and one of the above array based snapshot methods will we run into issues if both VEEAM replication and array snapshots occur at the same time?

Scenario 1: VEEAM replication takes snap. Array takes snap. VEEAM replication finishes. VEEAM can't remove snap because array snap is still in use? What happens to VEEAM? Array finishes and deletes snap. VEEAM snap remains.

Scenario 2: Array snaps first. Then VEEAM snaps. Array finishes but can't remove snap because VEEAM is still running. VEEAM finishes and removes snap. Array snap remains.

We would be snapping and replicating hourly so I'm guessing this would likely happen at some point. The VEEAM replications don't consistently run at the same time so it may be hard to schedule the array snaps around the replications. Would we have to manually monitor these snaps and remove the leftovers? Would this cause any inconsistency with the VEEAM replications?

Thanks,
Eric

[Gostev]

Array based snapshots happen on different, lower level (on actual storage device) and do not affect VEEAM and snapshots we create anyhow.

[epruess]

Yes, however ASM and Replication Manager integrate with VMware to snap the virtual machine before the array based snap for consistency which could conflict with VEEAM's VM snaps.

[Gostev]

Do they actually create snapshot, or possibly just freeze OS before hardware snapshot is created? Because for example Veeam VSS module just freezes OS, but does not manage actual snapshot operation (backup job does that).

In all cases, extra VMware snapshots on the processed VM should not affect VEEAM either. We fully support backups of VM which have existing snapshots. Creating additional snapshot while backup is running should not affect us either, as this does not affect actual VMDKs (which is what we are backing up).