Dell EMC Compellent for copy and archive jobs

[vladaluk]

Hello,

I am just wondering, how to set backups and copy jobs in all possible ways.

In case that we have two locations, both are with two Dell Compellent SAN's connected via iSCSI do VMware environment. First one SAN in location is used as production (with SSD tier) and second would be used mainly as archive for backups copied from SAN snapshots on the first SAN. But question is how to configure this environmnet in proper way because I can see all storages in Veeam storage infrastructure, but I'm not able to set particular SAN for copy job from SAN backup jobs, I can only see one Dell EMC SC Series Snapshot in Backup repository option, not particular Compellent SAN.

So final design would be:
1. Veeam + Compelent snapshots for point-in-time recovery from Veeam
2. Veeam backup copy job from one Compellent to cheaper (without SSD) Compellent in second location

It occurred to me that it would probably be possible to create a Linux repository in each site and connect it directly using iSCSI to the particular SAN. It also allows to lock backed up files in the latest version of Veeam what I know, so it would be good protection against malware.

Do anyone have some better ideas how deal with it?

Thank you.

[foggy]

Hi Vlada, not sure what do you mean by backup copy job in your planned setup. Is your plan to copy snapshots between the arrays? Veeam B&R backup copy job copies backups, not snapshots. Replication of snapshots between the Dell SC arrays is not possible with Veeam B&R, it should be configured on the storage itself - then you will be able to perform restores from those snapshots.

[vladaluk]

Hi foggy, thank you for quick answer.

To make it clear - In case that I will create a new backup job for a VM or a group of VMs -> use DELL EMC SC Series Snapshot backup repositories - a snapshot at the SAN level will be used and therefore it is not possible to copy it to another SAN - is it?

Okay, I get it. So to copy a VM for an archive, I need to create another backup job (which will not be at the SAN snapshot level). However, in this case I have to create new repositories in some way. So what is the best way to create a repository with DELL SC if I don't have physical Veeam proxies but only virtual Veeam proxies? Because of course it is not possible to create NFS or something like that on DELL EMC SC.

Thank you.

[foggy]

There are two types of jobs in Veeam B&R that can utilize storage snapshots: backup from storage snapshot that is targeted to a regular Veeam B&R backup repository and creates a backup file in Veeam format there and so-called snapshot-only job that just creates a snapshot on the storage (this is where you select DELL EMC SC Series Snapshot as the backup repository). But you can also combine both activities in a single backup job with the help of a secondary destination. Maybe this is what you would like to do.

Btw, are you saying you're using storage integration with the virtual proxy server? Not something that is typically recommended or even makes sense - as in that case you do not have a direct connection to the storage.