Nimble backup replication question

[brlomba1]

Hello all

We currently have 4 nimbles in 2 active data centers. Each data center has a "production" nimble and a "backup repository" nimble.
We currently have a Veeam virtual machine at each site with several iscsi volumes as backup repositories
We run nightly backup snapshots with veeam

We then have volume snapshots enabled on the Nimble backup repositories (30 days) and then we replicate those snapshots to the other data center's backup repository which keeps 30 days as well of those snapshots

The question:
With veeam integration with nimble... is it faster or are there any actual benefits to configuring veeam to backup to storage snapshots directly or continue to use veeam in the traditional sense as we are now?
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... tml?ver=95

Is there any actual difference... technically we are currently backing up to iscsi volumes, which nimble takes snapshots of daily and replicates
versus
backing up to volumes directly on the nimble which veeam then handles snapshots of those volumes and configures replication on them

[MichaelCade]

Hi Briomba1,

From your question it looks like you are using the native Nimble crash consistent snapshots today? then every night you are using Veeam to create a backup to the secondary Nimble storage?

What licensing do you have for Veeam?

Enterprise Plus opens up the magic with our storage integration, it will allow for those snapshots you are taking to be application consistent should you want that, but also Veeam can handle and drive the crash consistent schedule through the Veeam interface.

The other benefits would be around the Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots this will allow you to use Veeam to open up those historic snapshots that were not even created by Veeam and be able to perform a level of recovery from them.

The key aspect though and this is why i ask what licening you have, if you are not on Enterprise Plus then you should be able to take advantage of Direct SAN mode which has its benefits however alone https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... tml?ver=95

Backup from Storage Snapshots though is going to reduce the impact on your production environment, its going to reduce the time for that VMware snapshot to be open which may allow you to create more regular backups of your data. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... tml?ver=95

Happy to help further there are further benefits of using the Veeam peice to drive Nimble storage snapshots, On-Demand Sandbox from Storage Snapshots is another really cool feature that is opened with the integration - https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... tml?ver=95

[brlomba1]

From your question it looks like you are using the native Nimble crash consistent snapshots today? then every night you are using Veeam to create a backup to the secondary Nimble storage?

Yes. We use veeam to handle all VM snapshots including application aware settings for SQL, AD, Exchange, etc.
Nimble takes nightly snapshots of the datastore volumes
The backup repositories are attached via Nimble connection manager via direct iSCSI connection

What licensing do you have for Veeam?

Enterprise Plus

We currently have the Nimble added to veem and i can see the nightly datastore snapshots

The key aspect though and this is why i ask what licening you have, if you are not on Enterprise Plus then you should be able to take advantage of Direct SAN mode which has its benefits however alone https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... tml?ver=95

Backup from Storage Snapshots though is going to reduce the impact on your production environment, its going to reduce the time for that VMware snapshot to be open which may allow you to create more regular backups of your data. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... tml?ver=95

So if we configure this but have the application aware configured on the veeam snapshot nimble backups, does it still move faster/more efficient than our current setup?
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[MichaelCade]

Yes I am not sure to be honest what transport mode you are currently using if you go into your latest backup job and look through you will see the transport mode listed in the job run it will be either (NBD, Hot-Add, SAN or BfSS or if the integration is being used it will look like the following: