DAS hosts: Use datastore as D2D2T middleman?

[Doug.Butler]

Hi all and Happy Thanksgiving for those of us in the U.S.!

My question is about optimizing the backup window for my daily backups.

I am currently running three (soon to be four) ESXi hosts on LOCAL storage (no FC no iSCSI no NFS - all DAS on a big RAID10 array inside each host). (Definitely SMB here.)

Right now I'm running B&R V6.5. When I upgrade to V7, I intend to add a tape library and use D2D2T or possibly in some cases D2D2D. I had originally assumed/envisioned that I would do backups to the physical Veeam server (basic install, one server as the main Veeam server with a proxy as a VM inside each host). Then, use Backup Copy to copy to tape or to other disk for offsite storage. (D2D2T or D2D2T)

In this scenario I view the middle "D" as just a temporary storage area really. I am wondering about trying to do the first backup to the local storage on the server itself, just so that the snapshots don't have to be there any longer than necessary and the .vbk and .vrb files get written quicker - no network transport, all local on the controller. Then the Backup Copy job would copy those backup files out of the VMFS datastores on the host, and onto the storage on the Veeam physical server or onto tape.

The only motivation here is to speed up the initial backup, thinking that it can't get any faster than I/O to and from the same controller.

(A) Is this possible, and (B) Am I way off base here or possibly opening Pandora's Box?

[veremin]

You're correct in saying that primary repository in this scenario shouldn't be a beefy appliance or whatever as it's only supposed to hold short-term backup chain. Pair of local disks with enough space to hold the weekly worth backup data might answer your requirements.

(A) Is this possible, and (B) Am I way off base here or possibly opening Pandora's Box?

The last one, as it's not recommended to store backups on VMFS.

Thanks.

[foggy]

Assuming VMFS is just a temporary storage, your scenario could be reasonable. However, I would test first, whether such setup actually decreases the time VM runs on snapshot during backup. Depending on the environment, there's a huge probability that network will not be the bottleneck and you can backup to the physical server over the network without affecting VMs performance.

[chrisdearden]

If you have local storage , you coudl always use some form of VSA to aggregate them - if you use the HP Storvirtual one , you can even look to make use of backup from storage snapshots ( subject to ent+ upgrade )