Guest VM Windows 2012 Storage Spaces Support?

[jgrote]

Hello,

We are looking at deploying a new Windows 2012 file server with deduplication enabled. We have about 8TB of data we want to protect, and with 2012 we have a new option to deploy multiple 2TB disks and link them together with Windows Storage Spaces, which is preferential to us as opposed to, say, multiple lettered drives or . I know I can back up the server fine and do full-vm protection and 2012 is listed as a supported guest for Veeam 6.5, but this is a bit more expanded circumstance.

Primarily, we want to know if Veeam guest file-level restore is supported with Windows 2012 storage spaces and deduplication in the guest. Thanks.

Specifically:
1. Will guest file indexing still work with it?
2. Can we still restore individual files using the wizard (obviously we can mount the images and get to them that way assuming Veeam is 2012)

[Gostev]

Hi,

Deduplication is definitely supported for FLR, there are existing topics regarding that here on this forum.
However, storage spaces were not tested as a part of the latest release (aside of most basic configurations maybe).

Thanks!

[CofIAlan]

jgrote,
I was actually just testing this and noticed the Veeam does not understand Storage Spaces for FLR. My E: drive (Storage Spaces volume) is missing in the backup explorer, so it looks like Veeam does not yet have FLR support for Storage Spaces.

We'd also like to use Storage Spaces as they're much easier to grow versus traditional multi-volume setups.

Gostev,
Is there any word on when Veeam will fully support Storage Spaces for FLR? I'd think it must be in development or Veeam is really behind on supporting this extremely useful new feature.

[Gostev]

Hi Alan, basically right now "Veeam is really behind on supporting this extremely useful new feature" based on the amount of requests for this feature (which is the only measurement of true importance for us). Besides, Storage Spaces have completely different purpose: they are designed to create a redundant storage out of JBODs for hypervisor to use. They are not meant to be used from within VMs. Out of curiosity, can you share your use case for using Storage Spaces within the VM? Thanks!

[chrisdearden]

Is your Veeam server running on 2012? Aside from the storage spaces issue,you would need it to see the dedupe volume.

[CofIAlan]

Gostev,
I use Storage Spaces within a VM to provide a dynamic, multi-disk pool of storage for our users. By placing our fileshares inside a Storage Space, I can expand capacity on-the-fly with extra provisions for things like enhanced fault-tolerance and multiple SAN targets backing the same volume. I realize that I could technically accomplish some of these things with VMware extents or spanned disks in Windows, but Storage Spaces provides an easy way to add space and performance. In out small department, I can add to people's Windows knowledge but it's very hard to try to explain the finer points of disks and VMware.

Since your users apparently aren't asking for this feature, I don't expect it to be available anytime soon. However, you do have one user to add to the list.

Thanks!

[Gostev]

So, essentially, you are using Storage Spaces to overcome 2TB VMDK size limit?

[chrisdearden]

Just running some tests in the lab for 2 possible scenarios:
- Backup Repository on A Storage Spaces Volume
- FLR from a VM backup containing a Storage Spaces Volume.

will update with progress.

[chrisdearden]

I'm able to replicate the OP's issue - the FLR process does not mount the Storage space volumes. This was the same historically with Server 2008 Dynamic disk sets , so I would imagine its not beyond the bounds of possibility to bring in as a feature request.

[Delo123]

Any news on this? Will FLR from 2012 Storage Space will be supported in Veeam 7?
How about a Windows CSV Cluster?

[foggy]

Not in v7 as this was not specifically tested.

[neuropharm]

We are using storage spaces in W12 server, and wish to have FLR support. Unfortunately I spent hours with Veeam troubleshooting why we could not mount the drive, or only show unknown filesystem when using Other OS FLR. Reference Veeam Support Case# 00460816.

Please support FLR on storage spaces!

Live in Peace

[Gostev]

We are not planning to add support for FLR from Storage Spaces, as Microsoft itself does not support Storage Spaces within a VM.

[ncolt]

We made a Windows drive of 50000GB by merging 5 presented VMware hard disks into 1 using Storage Spaces - very exciting but I'm also required to back it up

This talk of Storage Spaces had piqued the curiosity of the storage guy who went away and did some reading. The next day he came up to me and says that Veeam probably will not be able to backup that drive at the file level. So I tested it and he looks to be right - unless you use Instant Recovery to restore the VM as per http://www.wiredinit.com/veeam-file-res ... orage-pool

The problem I have is that the test backup showed no errors but the data drive did not appear in the Guest file restore (the system drive did). If everything I'm saying is correct then shouldn't there be at least a warning in the job that the file system is not supported for Guest Files (Windows) restore?

[PTide]

Hi,

The main reason why you cannot perform an FLR from Storage Spaces Volume is that volumes from backup are mounted on backup server thus if your Veeam Server is not of the same Windows version as the VM being restored then it won't recognize the Storage Spaces file system, just like with HDDs that used to be behind RAID controller. The Instant-Recovery workaround is the way to go, indeed, and it's documented in our KB. Another way would be to have backup server with the same version of Windows as in VM and try to import Storage Spaces there, which is not convenient because you cannot have a separate backup server for all versions of Storage Spaces.

So, I agree with you that some sort of check should have been implemented in order to warn user about the difficulties described. Your post has been considered as a feature request, hopefully this will be addressed in future release.

Thanks for heads up!

[Gostev]

Please note that Microsoft does not support Storage Spaces within a VM (so consequently, we do not provide Storage Spaces support in FLR).

Quote from Microsoft FAQ for Storage Spaces:

What types of drives can I use with Storage Spaces?
You can use commodity drives attached via Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS), Serial ATA (SATA), or USB. Storage layers that abstract the physical disks are not compatible with Storage Spaces. This includes VHDs and pass-through disks in a virtual machine, and storage subsystems that layer a RAID implementation on top of the physical disks. iSCSI and Fibre Channel controllers are not supported by Storage Spaces.

Thanks!

[ncolt]

Thanks for the heads up on Storage Spaces not being supported within a VM. We are going to split the drives up into smaller chunks.

[Delo123]

Just create a dynamic disk instead of a storage pool in your vm's. we have been using These for years without issues upto 8TB

[Delo123]

Try to get rid of storage spaces and recreate the data with dynamic disks as Long as you can! Expending your 50TB Volume will be a Major issue, much easier with dynamic disks....
Also dynamic disks is supported in a file restore request etc... (also storage spaces is not supported in a vm by Microsoft)

[Andreas Neufert]

FYI.... Microsoft updated the from Gostev above quoted FAQ a month ago. Nothing changed:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wik ... age_Spaces

[mkretzer]

Thanks for the heads-up we are using storage spaces for our Veeam repository to bind together multiple FIBRE CHANNEL (nor supported) RAID 6 (not supported) volumes....

What i cannot understand: Windows sees that the volumes are Fibre Channel - why not warn the customer?

[Andreas Neufert]

Don´t know why Microsoft did this. Maybe they will change this with Win2016 release.

For your way of using Storage Spaces, we introduced Scale out Backup Repositories.

[mkretzer]

@Andreas Neufert
And we would be very happy to use this but we need per-VM backup chains for that which we cannot use because of the terrible DB deadlock issues which will be fixed in U2 hopefully... I hope this comes soon...

[Delo123]

Thanks for the heads-up we are using storage spaces for our Veeam repository to bind together multiple FIBRE CHANNEL (nor supported) RAID 6 (not supported) volumes....

What i cannot understand: Windows sees that the volumes are Fibre Channel - why not warn the customer?

You could put something like Starwind in between maybe?

@Andreas Neufert
And we would be very happy to use this but we need per-VM backup chains for that which we cannot use because of the terrible DB deadlock issues which will be fixed in U2 hopefully... I hope this comes soon...

Which Deadlock issues? Anything to worry about? We use scale out repositories a lot with enabled windows dedupe without issues until now...

[mkretzer]

You could put something like Starwind in between maybe?

I am not really sure this would be supported. Only the "real deal" if i understand correctly, so direct access to the disks.
Right now we have no issues whatsoever and we will change the config with the next backend storage change.

Which Deadlock issues? Anything to worry about? We use scale out repositories a lot with enabled windows dedupe without issues until now...

In our backup copy jobs we copy about 800 VMs in cabout 8 jobs. When they run in parallel we get DB deadlocks which one time corrupted the backup chain so bad that even Veeam support could not fix it. The problem is that the information which backup file is current does not get written to the DB correctly because at the time of the write a deadlock might happen. A hotfix could not be created because the change would be to big.

For us that was a total no-go and we canceled the switch to single vm backup files...

[Andreas Neufert]

Dynamic Disc Extends are the only from Microsoft and Veeam supported replacement.

Can you please post the support case number here so that the Veeam people can look at it and post an update regarding the deadlocks. Thanks in advance.

[mkretzer]

Case 01752760

[Delo123]

Ok, never heard of that, thanks for informing!
We "only" backup around 300 vm's but luckily haven't experienced this...Total Backup Size is around 60TB.
But if I read your post correctly you are using vm's for your backup repository? Why not switch to a physical machine / proxy so you can use much more resources and become independent from your production environment? (Just interested )

[Andreas Neufert]

@mkretzer
Thanks for the case.
When "File does not exist" happens at a Backup Copy Jobs with per VM chain, our support can fix the chain.
Workaround to avoid this completely is to disable per VM chain till Update 2 arrives.

I work with a lot of bigger customers but never ran into this. Sorry to hear that this hitted you.

Can you please send me answers to the following:
What Backup Target Storage do you use (including protocoll)?
Did you added the same path in 2 different Repository or Extends? This is not supported and can lead into blocked backup files when a repository scan and another job try to read/write data.

[mkretzer]

In one case metadata corruption seems to have happened. We removed the backup completely and re-scanned, still the backups did no longer work.

Storage target is a Fujitsu DX60 FC Block SAN, two spanned volumes no StorageSpaces is involved . No other application is using this device.

On this volume there is only one extend and the SOR has only one extend in general right now. So that cannot be the reason for the issues.