Direct SAN and Automount question

[Pagey]

Hi,

I am currently in the process of testing Veeam, I have two questions really.

Site Info
We have a vsphere essentials plus 4.1 U1 deployment with about 30 VM's on 3 x Dell R710 (Dual 6core, 48GB) using two Open-E DSS iSCSI Targets for storage.

I am currently doing the backups in LAN Mode, however I am looking at using a spare HP ML370G5 as the backup server and using Direct SAN Mode.

Question 1 - Automount
We currently use a removable sata hotswap disk in the front drive bay of our backup server, if I perform the diskpart->disable automount which I understand to be a pre-req before direct attaching to the iSCSI targets of my vSphere hosts, will this prevent my hotswap sata disk appearing for backups?

Question 2 - Existing Veeam Backup Server required in DR?
We currently just use a robocopy script to copy our VM backups onto the removable sata disk to go offsite (We copy the full and all incremental every day and have a disk rotation). Assuming a DR scenario, do I just need the .vbk and .vib backup files to recreate my VM's at a DR site? Or do I have to have the Veeam Backup Server as well? Or can I copy some addition data (The SQL Database, or VBRCatalog dir) and be up and running?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Rowan,

1.Yes, automount disabled prevents Windows host from automatically mounting any new basic and dynamic volumes that are added to the system.

2. In a DR scenario, all you need is a chain of backup files (VBK+VIB or VBK+VRB), however to initiate a restore you would need to deploy a new backup server, import backup files and start the restore. You can even use a standalone utility called extract.exe we provide that can be used to restore VMs from VBK file even if you do not have backup console present.

Thank you.

[1-0-1]

Hello Rowan,

1.Yes, automount disabled prevents Windows host from automatically mounting any new basic and dynamic volumes that are added to the system.

2. In a DR scenario, all you need is a chain of backup files (VBK+VIB or VBK+VRB), however to initiate a restore you would need to deploy a new backup server, import backup files and start the restore. You can even use a standalone utility called extract.exe we provide that can be used to restore VMs from VBK file even if you do not have backup console present.

Thank you.

This is interesting - cannot believe I missed that one. In the User Guide is states that it can only restore to the latest restore point. Is this still applicable or is there a workaround to choose which restore point to use?

EDIT: Just thought about it and if I just backup the VBK files I can then easily restore the respective VM(s) with the extract utility. Still would be great if one would be able to choose which restore point to use.

[Gostev]

extract.exe can restore from any VBK file (no matter what restore point is stored there, latest or not)... and since VBK always contain a single restore point, there is really nothing to choose from.

[Pagey]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the info

Creating a new backup server at the DR site after an event and importing the files is fine for our scenario, management are happy with a cold site and 24 Hours to recover

Regarding the automount, I was hoping to use the same physical box to robocopy the Veeam backup files from our NAS to the removable disk, but with automount disabled this will be problematic. If I use a VM to do the VeamBackups in DirectSAN mode, can I back the Veeam Backup Server VM using itself? Just not sure I wanted the traffic for backups to go through the host at all, using DirectSAN mode while using a VM for the server kind of redundant, might just fire up another small physical box to do the robocopies to removable disk and keep the existing backup server doing the Veeam Role.

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, you can backup Veeam server with SAN mode but with application aware image processing and VMware Tools Quiescence disabled. If you prefer to go with a VM for the backup server, make sure you've configured this VM with 4 vCPU for a better performance.