Comprehensive data protection for all workloads
Post Reply
segfault
Enthusiast
Posts: 48
Liked: 21 times
Joined: Dec 14, 2017 8:07 pm
Full Name: John Garner
Contact:

Feature Request: VM Startup groups in SureBackup

Post by segfault »

We have an application group at our DR site that contains 10 VM's for a SharePoint setup that we want to periodically validate. It currently takes about 50+ minutes to power them all on.

Within this application group are sub-groups of the VM's can be started in parallel. It would be nice to have a feature where we can specify a "startup group" attribute for each VM inside of the application group. VM's in the same group are started at the same time. This would drastically cut down on the time it takes to start the lab.

Using a linked job is not an option due to the lack of any start order with that method and the fact that we setup the replication policies by frequency and not application ("1 hour," "6 hour," and "daily" vs "Exchange", "SharePoint, "Wordpress," "JDE," etc), so each job will have dozens of unrelated VM's.
Dima P.
Product Manager
Posts: 14396
Liked: 1568 times
Joined: Feb 04, 2013 2:07 pm
Full Name: Dmitry Popov
Location: Prague
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: VM Startup groups in SureBackup

Post by Dima P. »

Hello John.

Sounds like a good idea. I've noted feature request based on this post and will discuss it with the team. Thank you for the input!
knut-weber
Influencer
Posts: 12
Liked: 2 times
Joined: Jul 20, 2015 11:21 am
Full Name: Knut Kristan Weber
Contact:

[MERGED] SureBackup Application Group Start only sequential possible?

Post by knut-weber »

Hello, we have an Exchange Application Group with some Exchange Servers and Domain Controllers. About 15 VMs.
We can only adjust the start order. But we would like to start ALL VMs simultaneously becauce they have no dependencies and the overall start takes a very long time (about 2 hours) - although we are running copmpletely from storage snapshots.
Lowering the wait time for boot from 600 sec to 180 sec leads to failing VMs and Application Group stop.

Any ideas here?
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: SureBackup Application Group Start only sequential possible?

Post by foggy »

Hi Knut, consider using linked jobs instead of the application group, there you can configure the number of simultaneously processed VMs.
knut-weber
Influencer
Posts: 12
Liked: 2 times
Joined: Jul 20, 2015 11:21 am
Full Name: Knut Kristan Weber
Contact:

Re: SureBackup Application Group Start only sequential possible?

Post by knut-weber »

That ist not possible to use linked jobs - and it makes no sense.
1.: we want to keep the VMs running for days because it is a TESTLAB for us.
2.: The linked jobs still need an application group
3.: Alle the resources come from different Backup jobs. All VMs from the jobs would be started, that would be dozens of servers.
4.: Some mashines are in NO backup job at all. These are DAG-members from Exchange coming from Pure Storage Snapshots only because they are not backed up. (We only backup Exchange systems with passive only DB copies)

We need no linked jobs, we need to start the defined resources in the group in parallel.
zadrian
Expert
Posts: 133
Liked: 4 times
Joined: Jul 14, 2015 8:26 am
Contact:

Re: SureBackup Application Group Start only sequential possible?

Post by zadrian »

I think by using linked jobs, it means the VMs will be powered on at the same time.
Then if the VMs are in no backup job, then is surebackup the right tool for the job ?

I would think that surebackup & surereplica are tools to verify the backups and/or replica respectively....this may not be the right tool to clone VMs into test labs ?
knut-weber
Influencer
Posts: 12
Liked: 2 times
Joined: Jul 20, 2015 11:21 am
Full Name: Knut Kristan Weber
Contact:

Re: SureBackup Application Group Start only sequential possible?

Post by knut-weber »

No, it is the perfect tool.
Linked jobs are stopped after testing - i want them keep on running. Application Groups do this. Replication would take endless hours.
It is OK to wait 2 hours until 15 VMs are up and running with 20 TB data in Exchange stores. It works great!

But there is no dependency, so there is no reason to wait for sequential start.
It could be running in 10 Minutes alltogether. That is the point.
zadrian
Expert
Posts: 133
Liked: 4 times
Joined: Jul 14, 2015 8:26 am
Contact:

Re: SureBackup Application Group Start only sequential possible?

Post by zadrian »

I do not get what you mean....
surebackup & surereplica is determined by all 3....the surebackup job that uses application group to determine the VMs to run on virtual labs. At the job properties, tick "keep VMs alive...."
With multiple application groups and virtual labs, I can boot up as many VMs as I need at the same time (as long I have the resources on ESXi or storage).
The link is on the running start of the surebackup jobs and not the shutting down....
knut-weber
Influencer
Posts: 12
Liked: 2 times
Joined: Jul 20, 2015 11:21 am
Full Name: Knut Kristan Weber
Contact:

Re: SureBackup Application Group Start only sequential possible?

Post by knut-weber »

I tell the AG to keep running. And the linked job is NONE. So I just start the job with no linked one and the application group.
I have several labs, several groups and several jobs.

It works all as desired! Evetything is OK. Our complete landscape is running fine inside. I can even send mail inside our lab to collegues working on a terminal server inside.

I just want to start *all* VMs in the application group in *parallel*. Thats the *only* thing I want. Everything else is great and working. I want 15 VMs be running in 10 minutes. I do not want to wait one after the other before starting. It would be just NICE to be able to select start-dependecies, dependencies in groups, sequential startup, parallel startup, ... ... ... . And not only move up / move down in sequential order.
ChrisGundry
Veteran
Posts: 258
Liked: 40 times
Joined: Aug 26, 2015 2:56 pm
Full Name: Chris Gundry
Contact:

Re: SureBackup Application Group Start only sequential possible?

Post by ChrisGundry »

I asked the same thing and was told it was done sequentially for several reasons:
1. If VM2 fails then there is no point in wasting time/resources booting VM3+ because VM2 failed as the overall job would fail because VM2 failed.
2. Powering up all VMs at the same time puts more load on the backup storage

I know neither of these issues apply in your case, but I think both are legacy issues from when labs was purely for SureBackup backup verification. Now that Veeam are pushing this as a virtual lab setup and have added options to run labs from storage snapshots and replicas I think they need to give us more options, like being able to power everything on at the same time.

Personally at the moment if I want to power up a larger lab and minimize the time it takes I turn off all the validation settings, all of the heartbeat, ping checks etc. This gets the lab up as quickly as possible and there is less time waiting between each VM booting.
knut-weber
Influencer
Posts: 12
Liked: 2 times
Joined: Jul 20, 2015 11:21 am
Full Name: Knut Kristan Weber
Contact:

Re: SureBackup Application Group Start only sequential possible?

Post by knut-weber »

Our PureStorage has some several 100000 I/O. That´s no point here. We use a dedicated ESX host. Load is no problem.
But indeed we unselect everything other startup options: VM heartbeat present.

I think not much people use it as a test lab. You need storage with snapshot providers to do this with acceptable overhead, so than no real disk blocks are transfered.
Of course it is cool to power up an Exchange DAG with 6 VMs, 24 CPU and 96 GB RAM each with 80 TB storage in 2 hours from backup - even if you have only backed up 2 of them with veeam and 4 are crash-consistent snapshots only. And everything runs fine! But when you *know* it should work in 10 minutes, you don´t want to wait longer.
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: SureBackup Application Group Start only sequential possible?

Post by foggy »

Ok, guys, thanks for the details. I see the use case. Let's take this as a feature request then.
segfault
Enthusiast
Posts: 48
Liked: 21 times
Joined: Dec 14, 2017 8:07 pm
Full Name: John Garner
Contact:

Re: SureBackup Application Group Start only sequential possible?

Post by segfault » 2 people like this post

Side note, I made this request almost exactly a year ago:
veeam-backup-replication-f2/feature-req ... 54995.html

Same reason: once the AD controller is up, we can bulk start everything else. No need to go slow, we are using replicas at our DR site and the array is dedicated to the task and has zero impact on production. A lab that currently takes 2-3 hours to boot would be done in 10 minutes or so.
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: VM Startup groups in SureBackup

Post by foggy »

Thanks, John, I've merged the threads for easier tracking of the number of requests.
ChrisGundry
Veteran
Posts: 258
Liked: 40 times
Joined: Aug 26, 2015 2:56 pm
Full Name: Chris Gundry
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: VM Startup groups in SureBackup

Post by ChrisGundry » 1 person likes this post

Out use case is similar, we use storage snapshots and have plenty of spare resource on storage and compute, so powering up a load of lab VMs at the same time would be no issue for us, but we have to wait for each to boot to heartbeat in turn before the next can boot, really slows the process down.
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot], Semrush [Bot] and 156 guests