NFS datastores + virtual appliance mode = Win!

[schaffeb]

A little background:

We have 5 NFS servers running ubuntu linux serving as datastores. They've served us fairly well, however due to the nature of NFS datastores we can't perform SAN mode backups.

This has resulted in fairly slow backups with Veeam - around 11MB/s peak. We've been able to work around this, but it has been a nuisance because we have some fairly large VMs.

I've been testing using the new virtual appliance mode with Veeam 4 and the results have been outstanding, my first test peaked out at 33MB/s which is a great speed given the limitations of our storage servers (these are not enterprise SANs we're talking about).

I believe that virtual appliance mode is fantastic for anyone using NFS datastore servers.

My only problems have been:

The load on the datastore that is being backed up is fairly high because of how fast it's transferring data.

I have an issue where hotadded drives seem to leave a phantom of themselves within the Veeam VM (I've posted about this in the virtual appliance thread as well).

I'm incredibly impressed so far with this release!

[Gostev]

Ben, this is very interesting, thank you very much for sharing. We were not aware of this benefit of using the Virtual Appliance mode!

[zeki]

hello
i have the same. normal network mode i get 11mb/s
now with virtual appliance modus i get better speeds (33mb/s)

have you traed to backup in hotplug mode your veeam appliance? i get an error, cant map....

greets
zeki

[Gostev]

Zeki, Veeam Backup cannot back itself, you've probably missed but this is actually documented in the release notes document.

Also, I have not tested this myself, but I am pretty sure that disabling automount on Veeam Backup VM and rebooting (similarly to how you configure VCB proxy) should help you to get read of these phantom drives.

[zeki]

okay thanks for the info.
so the best solution for vsphere4 with nfs storage is to run veeam in apliance mode, right?
or have you other methodes to do this? f.e mounting the NFS storage from another server and backup it directly.
i think vcb at the moment dont support mounting NFS storage...

[Personne]

My setting is pretty simple

3 ESX server with 4 NICS each, 2 NICS are teamed and go to my LAN (192.168.18.0/24), 2 NICS are teamed and go to my NFS 1GBs switch (192.168.21.0/24)
NAS: FAS 2050 / version 7.2.6.1 / 1 Aggregates / 17 Disks (1 spare, 0 failed)
This is of course in production.

My Veeam backup is a VM, and uses the Virtual Appliance method

Full Backup speed : 10 MB/s to 13 MB/s (pretty low I think)

I know it is a broad subject, but how can I find the bottle neck ?

[zeki]

my setup:

2 esx eachs 4 nics teamed to a fas2020 with 12 disks on 1 aggr (1 spare, 0 failed) with 1GB connected
the fas have 7.3.1.1P7

my speeds are too slow...

greets
zeki