Hitachi VSP Plugin

[mkretzer]

I saw Antons Newletter about the Hitachi SVP plugin - is it common that for a Veeam Storage Plugin there must be a dedicated snapshot pool (dedicated disks) just for Veeam?

Or is that something that will get "fixed" in V2?

My contacts at Hitachi do not seem to know this...

Markus

[Andreas Neufert]

Hitachi deсided to give the Administrators full control about what is happening within the stroage system. Yes, there are plans to automate things better, but in this first version Hitachi went the conservative path to give the admin full control.

Please send here feedback or share the feedback with the plug-in creator Hitachi.

Within the week they will release their deep dive documentation on a Veeam landing page. It should be as well today available on their regular support portal after login.
Here is a summary of the needed configuration steps:

01. Setup and install the Veeam Infrastructure including Proxy Server
02. Check that "VBR_" has not been used for Resource Groups or Dynamic Provisioning pools
03. It is recommended to create a new independent parity group for backup and create a placeholder volume with an LDEV in that parity group to allow the usage of a separate work area for backup to minimize impact of failure.
04. Create a Dynamic Provisioning Pool for backup with the name "VBR_<yourcustomname>". If you have created a LDEV in step 3, then allocate it as pool volume.
05. Create a host group with the iSCSI initiators of the Veeam Proxy Servers.
- Use the name format "VBR_<proxycustomname>"
- Set host mode "21 [Vmware Extension]"
- Set host mode options 2, 22, 25, 40, 54, 63, 68, 91 and 110
06. Create a host group with the iSCSI initiators of any VMware ESXi host that is used for restore. This step is for example needed when you face a disaster and the existing ESXi hosts are gone, and new ones are used for restore.
07. Create iSCSI targets without registering a host. Total iSCSI targets required are the number of iSCSI initiators used for Veeam Proxy and any ESXi host that is added in case of a disaster. Each Veeam Proxy has 2 iSCSI initiators.
08. For FibreChannel create needed Switch Zoning
09. For FibreChannel usage: Create a Host Group for all Veeam Proxy FibreChannel WWNs after FibreChannel Switch Zoning and add all Veeam Proxy Servers and their WWNs.
10. For FibreChannel: Make sure that all ESXi hosts are part of a host group. This step is specifically needed if you add new ESXi hosts in case of a disaster.
11. Create a resource group with name "VBR_<yourcustomname>"Allocate the following resources:
12. The party group and LDEV created in step 3
13. The host groups or iSCSI targets created above
14. Unused LDEV IDs (Create up to 8192. You need one per any secondary volume or cloned volume that is used with Veeam)
15. Create a backup operation user group and user account for this group and assign:
- Storage Administrator (View Only)
- Storage Administrator (Provisioning)
- Storage Administrator (Local Copy)
16. Assign all resource groups with LDEVs from the ESXi hosts and Windows Server that you want to process to the above created user group. Add the backup resource group.
17. Check all Veeam Backup Server and Proxy time zones. They need to match with the time zone defined on the Storage.

[mkretzer]

"It is recommended to create a new independent parity group for backup and create a placeholder volume with an LDEV in that parity group to allow the usage of a separate work area for backup to minimize impact of failure."

Isn't this kind of an hard requirement? I never saw a configuration where a parity group was providing storage for two pools...

[Andreas Neufert]

We are following the wording of the Hitachi own guide.
I will ask them about this.