Large single VM disk

[ferrus]

I have a question regarding how people are configuring their large VM disks.
(Relevance) asking on Veeam forum, because it's the Veeam backup that causes us the pain with our config.

We have several large Windows File Servers, that are breaking past 12TB, 16TB etc in single shares. They are single OS disks backed by single VMware .vmdk disks.

This works absolutely fine in this configuration, even in the nightly incremental backups - until they need expanding.
At this point a full backup of the entire 16TB disk is initiated, which with our admittedly slow storage, can stretch out over the next day or two.
Subsequest Backup Copies/Replicas can also be affected.

Having disks this size is unwieldy on the backup infrastructure, even if they're fine at the hypervisor and guest level.

So my question is - what are Veeam users doing with the large single MS volumes?
In Linux VMs we just use LVM or ZFS, and never have problems. It's just an issue for us with Windows.

Is Storage Spaces (standalone) the solution, and are people using it? Is it stable enough on VMs, and for backups?

[wishr]

Hi Ferrus,

May I ask you why you are not considering use our NAS backup technology? The major benefits of it are:
1. Forever incremental backup mode - only changed files are backed up. When you expand the storage, it will not affect the backup at all.
2. Faster backup of file shares, in comparison with VM backup.
3. Ability to granularly restore any version of any backed up file. And, you won't need to restore the entire VMDK in case of a DR, thus getting better RTO timings.

Thanks

[ferrus]

Errr, have I missed an important feature release there?!
My eyes just browsed straight past anything mentioning NAS, becuase I thought it was for Small/Remote Office setups

Our file server backups have just evolved from simple VM backups, later with SAN storage integration added - but they've growing far too large as single .vmdk backups.
Are the majority of customers transitioning to NAS backups for file servers?

[wishr]

Seems so We added NAS backup in v10. Since that, customers are mostly transitioning to this capability to protect their file shares. I would suggest giving it a try and measure the backup and restore speeds - I'm sure you'll be impressed.

[ferrus]

Well I feel silly!
Serves me right not not reading the entire release notes, and just skipping to the parts we use

I'll take a look, it sounds ideal.

[wishr]

Great! Please let us know if you have any questions around it.