Network Question for Veeam Machine

[NCIT]

Hi All,

I'm just in the process of sorting out my Veeam network now that I have seperated iSCSI traffic from the LAN and could use some advice on how to configure the network for the Veeam box.

I have the following:

3 x ESX Hosts (vCenter) with around 22 VM's ... with one VM being a Veeam VA.
iSCSI SAN with 6 NICs... 2 NICs being used for vCenter management on 192.168.20.0/24 and the remaining NICs being used for iSCSI traffic on 192.168.21.0/24

I'm about to install a QNAP NAS (2 NICs) into the rack to backup all of our 22 VM's on to so I can rsync to a remote site.

Obviously I plan to put the NAS into the iSCSI traffic switch... so the NAS would only see the 192.168.21.0/24 routing...

But what is the easiest way for the Veeam VA to connect to the iSCSI traffic switch? Obviously I want to keep iSCSI traffic for backup off our 192.168.20.0/24 production LAN!

Any help appreciated I'm running round in circles!

[Gostev]

Hello,

The only option to access iSCSI SAN from Veeam VA is via software iSCSI initiator. To do this, you should create a new vSwitch on your ESX host, and add physical ESX NIC looking into your iSCSI network to it. Then, create new portgroup on this switch (for example, "iSCSI Network"). Then, create additional vNIC on Veeam VA, and connect it to the iSCSI Network created earlier. Finally, configure software iSCSI initiator inside Veeam VA using your QNAP address in iSCSI network. If you never done this before - there are many guides available on internet for each step above, and iSCSI initiator configuration guide is referenced in v4 FAQ under 3rd party guides.

On a side note, I recall I heard some pretty bad things about iSCSI implementation on QNAP (but that was about a year ago, and may have been connected to using it as production storage for VMWare).

Hope this helps!

[Bunce]

On a side note, I recall I heard some pretty bad things about iSCSI implementation on QNAP (but that was about a year ago, and may have been connected to using it as production storage for VMWare).

It would have been me And no, they're not fixed yet -> check out the iSCSI forums at the QNAP site.

Stick with NFS if using the QNAP's.

Cheers,
A

[NCIT]

Cheers for the help!

I now have configured as advised and it works pretty well seeing some speeds of 60-70mbps ... but it got half way through the backup job and crashed saying 'task terminated unexpectately' ... re-running the job now although one of the vm 's is now saying 'locked' ...

As for the QNAP I am only using it for backup ... I've got a decent SAN for production

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Scott,

Could you tell me what is the complete error message with a "locked" state? But I think it might be worth contacting our support team if you need any assistance in resolving this.

[NCIT]

Hi Scott,

Could you tell me what is the complete error message with a "locked" state? But I think it might be worth contacting our support team if you need any assistance in resolving this.

Will do thanks. I could use some assistance anyway as it seems the backup is bogging down my network

[Gostev]

I would definitely recommend placing your NAS on a separate network (not main production network). Most of our larger customers are doing this. The required investment is minimal.

[NCIT]

The NAS is on the same network as the iSCSI network ... which is seperated from the production LAN. The NAS actually has one NIC attached to production and one NIC attached to iSCSI. The initiator on the Veeam server is forced to use the iSCSI NIC only to the NAS storage.

[NCIT]

Is it worth installing Veeam on a physical server with an iSCSI connection to the storage rather than running the software within a VM on the hosts?

I cant figure out why this software is stressing my network so much!

[Gostev]

What do you mean by stressing? Are you saying the backup is too fast and fully saturates your 1Gb iSCSI network, and so you would like it to be slower? Or something else?

[NCIT]

What do you mean by stressing? Are you saying the backup is too fast and fully saturates your 1Gb iSCSI network, and so you would like it to be slower? Or something else?

Well I ran the backup overnight (several jobs) and it was fine but getting speeds of between 70mbps and 200mbps ... obviously these speeds during the day on a production emvironment are a bit too fast

[Vitaliy S.]

Scott, have you observed those speeds during the incremental job runs by any chance?

[Gostev]

Increasing compression level to Best; not running multiple jobs in parallel; reducing number of vCPUs (in case of virtual server); downgrading your server or decreasing CPU frequency in BIOS settings (physical computers) will all reduce the processing performance, and in turn reduce network load.

If possible though, better idea would be to add multiple paths from Veeam server to backup storage (if storage supports multipathing), or upgrading to 10Gb Ethernet (again, if storage supports it).

[NCIT]

Increasing compression level to Best; not running multiple jobs in parallel; reducing number of vCPUs (in case of virtual server); downgrading your server or decreasing CPU frequency in BIOS settings (physical computers) will all reduce the processing performance, and in turn reduce network load.

If possible though, better idea would be to add multiple paths from Veeam server to backup storage (if storage supports multipathing), or upgrading to 10Gb Ethernet (again, if storage supports it).

I think I'm going to go down the route of MPIO for the Veeam box... we did have a switch problem on Friday so I'm wondering if that is to blame as performance over the weekend has been fine.

I now have a lot of backups on the new NAS so now need to look at backing up the Veeam VM and transfering the backups to remote site...

- For protecting the Veeam VM could I use VMware VDR? - I have tested it and it works fine! .. Although with the remote site also having Veeam backup installed in theory I should only need to import the backup jobs from the NAS?

- For remote site transfer I assume I should use rsync?

Thanks for all your help so far

[Gostev]

Hello, kindly please use forum Search to find answers to your questions quickly - most of the typical questions have been already asked and answered in the past years.

RSYNC - there are a few detailed discussions on this topic, for example:
Replicating .vbk Files Using DFS-R
off-site backup ideas

Backing up Veeam server:
What is the best way of protecting the Veeam Backup server?