Design and best practice

[osloweel]

Hi,

I`m new to Veeam, and I have some questions regarding best pratice.

We have 2 ESX hosts connected to a DELL SAN and want to backup these VM.
We are going to implement a SAN box that has hardware deduplication implemented
and i`m not sure if we are going to install Veeam Backup on a VM or a dedicated
physical server. What is the best practice ?
Any documents and help to clear my mind is good :) I have read the Veeam Backup User Guide, but
a more clear information is good :)

Regards
Ole

[Gostev]

Hi - it does not really matter, as we support both. Since you have iSCSI SAN, you can use direct SAN access mode from both physical and virtual server. And there will be little to no performance difference if both servers meet the system requirements.

[osloweel]

Hi,

Thanks for reply, when you say direct SAN mode, what do you really mean by this? Do you mean that the server can see the LUN`s ?

Regards
Ole

[Gostev]

Correct. See stickied v4 FAQ topic for more information about this mode.

[joergr]

Yes, you expose your luns to the Win OS. Don´t whine, it´s OK. The most important thing you have to care about is to disable automount. If you follow the rules this mode is extremely stable and incredibly fast. Please read the docs provided by Anton.

best regards,
Joerg

[Gostev]

By the way, because no one reads docs (not even myself), I asked our setup developers to disable automount automatically in v5 during the setup process just one nice little enhancement to make sure our customers are safe using the product.

[withanh]

Great idea Anton, thanks for taking care of us!

[osloweel]

Thanks for all answers. Another question, if im using a vm as Veeam Backup Console and my ESX hosts are using shared storage, what is the recommended transport mode, should it be SAN with failover or Virtual Appliance ?

Regards
Ole

[Vitaliy S.]

In this case, I would recommend using Virtual Appliance mode, and don't forget to grant this VM with 4 vCPU to get the best performance rates.

[osloweel]

Can you explain why you recommend using Virtual Appliance mode ?

Regards
Ole

[Vitaliy S.]

If you compare Virtual Appliance and SAN modes then both modes are not using network stack to pull the VM data. In VA mode, VM data is retrieved directly from storage through the ESX I/O stack, which improves performance. And you don't need to configure an iSCSI initiator/present LUNs to make it work, it just works out-of-the-box.

I would recommend using SAN mode If you deploy a backup server into a physical machine with direct FC/iSCSI connection to the SAN box.

[Gostev]

Virtual Appliance mode is easy setup (there is no setup), but more picky to VMs, so will not work for some VMs (pretty fresh technology from VMware).
Direct SAN access mode is harder to setup, but is less picky and more reliable - will process everything. Can use it from within VM with iSCSI SAN.

Performance is going to be about the same.

Existing customers are using them 50/50, so really up to you.

[osloweel]

Ok, thanks for clearing my mind Gostev you say "will not work for some VMs", is there any special configuration on these VMs, what you are saying is that I can not
be 100% sure that im able to backup my vm..... that doesnt sound good.

Regards
Ole

[Gostev]

Yes, we have that documented in the Release Notes under Known Issues... you can also check my earlier post here for the complete list. It is really not that bad, all are pretty rare situations. If nothing applies to you, then you will be just fine with Virtual Appliance mode - and can be 100% sure about your backups.

Just to make it clear, these are all current vStorage API limitations, not Veeam-specific issues. And VMware has been working on removing issues like this with each vStorage update (and Known Issues section for HotAdd in vStorage API release notes has been getting shorter and shorter each time), so I think it is just a matter of few updates until they clean up most limitations. But this is what I mean when I say that hotadd backups technology is still young comparing to direct SAN access that has been around since early VCB days, for many years.

[osloweel]

Ok ill check it out, thanks for fast reply

Regards
Ole