Is anyone backing up Riverbed Granite VMs?

[mschlott]

We are in the process of trying out a Riverbed Steelhead EX + Granite in a remote office. This device, along with a core in our datacenter, will run a local copy of ESX that we will run a windows VM on. This VM will be a local domain controller, file and print server. The storage for ESX will be iSCSI hosted from our data center. The Riverbed device has a local cache of the iSCSI LUN and is capable of "pinning" the entire LUN locally and sending updates back to the data center.

Our initiall understanding is that we would be able to use Veeam to perform ESX snapshots of this VM, and have an ESX host in the data center with access to the local copy of the the iSCSI LUN perform the data backup. As it turns out a local ESX host and the Riverbed device will not be able to access the LUN at the same time.

It would appear that my only option, using Veeam, is to back up the VM over the WAN. Do I have any other options using Veeam? Since the datastore for this file server could approach 1TB, My past experience with Synthetic Fulls are that the transformations can take a long time with large backup files. This can be a problem for me because no restores can be run while the transformation is occuring.

Is anyone else using Veeam in this sort of situation?

[dellock6]

Hi,
I went to a Granite presentation some months ago but I did not have the opportunity to ask this same question. The original idea of the solution is exactly to have a remote VM running, and the underlying LUN replicated at the datacenter, so I would eventually be able to backup the copy at datacenter and ignore tha one running in the branch office.
So, are you telling I cannot access the centralized copy while it is running at the branch office? This is a huge design failure if true. I would check this with Riverbed guys...

Luca.

[mschlott]

I plan on meetining with Riverbed next week to clarify my options. I am going by this document that they gave me. https://splash.riverbed.com/docs/DOC-1284

Per the document, the description you gave is possible, but it depends on storage snapshots, scripting and ndmp or classic backup software to accomplish. As far as I can tell, to perform "Veeam Type" backups. Data must be passed across the WAN.

It appears that they have a plugin, that will quiesse the writes and commit changes back to the core device. The core device acts as a pass a sort of iSCSI proxy. I'm hoping, but I can't find it documented, that I can mount the iSCSI LUN that is presented to the remote Riverbed Edge device to a local ESX host so that I may use Veeam to back it up.

If there are no furthur responses here, I'll report my findings when I am done with the proof of concept.

[dellock6]

Mike,
I briefly seen the paper. The first two methods are useless, I cannot see any advantage in deploying a Granite if at the end I need to do backups at branch and ship them via WAN connection.
Methods 3 to 5 sound good, but you are right the require some manual activities and configurations that may impact the final solution. Also because the support for example EMC, NetApp and EQL storage, so you cannot use for example Veeam Explorer for San Snapshots right now.
I'm curious to know how the PoC will go on.

Luca.

[mschlott]

It looks like my only current option for Veeam and Riverbed is to run a typical Veeam backup using a proxy at the remote site to a target in my data center. Currently there is no advantage to using the Riverbed Edge device with ISCSI served from a Core in the data center in an attempt to backup data at the datacenter instead of at the remote site. It would require manual scripting, hardware snapshots, mounting of LUNs, and only supports full backups.

We will likely still use the Riverbed for WAN optimization, but will either put a sepperate ESX host at each site, or run the VMs on the Riverbed without ISCSI to the datacenter. If they come out with some feature enhancements we may look at it again next year.

[JaquesC]

Hi all,

So I wanted to get a feel and see who else in the community has an environment that they administer that possibly has the Veeam/Riverbed combination.

That would be a mix of office consolidation and Riverbed Steelhead(WAN Optimization) and Riverbed Granite(Office consolidation)

I am not going to explain the technology as I am sure if there is an individual that has this currently in their environment they would know how this works.

My question is, I would like to gain an understanding in terms of what is "best Practice" and how do you "backup" or "protect" the data for the remote office that is in essence living on your SAN that is sitting right next to your Veeam physical tin?

The Granite technology basically has the full load of the actual data sitting in your SAN in your main DC, and through the WAN caches the "Hot Deltas" back to the granite appliance in the remote office, so your data doesn't really reside there its sitting nice and safe in your DC right next to you, and your Veeam box is sitting there as well.

If any of you have this and you do use this, I would like some insight please and if you can share your way of protecting this scenario and how you have made the two technology's fit in with each other.

Regards,
JC

[JaquesC]

Hi all,

Just as a note and I will return to provide my findings, we have Veeam tech resource and also Riverbed resource sitting in the room with us later today, to flesh out the entire thing and gain better understanding, I will provide feedback once I have seen what these chaps have to offer/answer.

Veeam confirmed to me on mail that they sat down with Riverbed not to long ago for the EMEA region as focus to put all the cards on the table and to basically be cohesive and understand how these two technology's are going to work together in the real world. hopefully the gentlemen that are onsite with me today can provide more details around what was discussed, because I would like to be aware of these things, especially if I am going to be responsible for the Veeam/EQL/Riverbed fields respectively.

Regards,
JC

[smitchell]

Any good word from the sit downs between Riverbed and Veeam, JaquesC?