SAN MODE Replication from ISCSI to NFS Destination

[davidhood]

Two questions. Any help appreciated

1) SAN Mode Backups

My understanding is that SAN mode backups read over the storage network direct from the ISCSI source but write the data back over the LAN.

If that is the case can I use SAN mode backup/replication with ISCSI as a source and NFS as the destination. I'm running a backup just now and it says in the job stats "SAN with changed block tracking" but I'm only getting 11Mbs

When I look at network card activity in task manager during a backup the LAN Nic and ISCSI Nic (both 1Gb) are around the same level of utilisation. That would indicate to me that it was indeed backing up in SAN mode; reading data through the ISCSI network, and writing it back on the LAN. Am I correct in the assumption?

2) CPU Utilisation

Our veeam box is only dual core and when I watch a backup the first core looks at pretty much full utilisation. Should I turn off de-dup and compression. Will that help in this instance.

Suggestions Welcome.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello David,

When VM data reaches backup server, all the traffic flows through a network stack to the destination target. If you want to backup directly to SAN, you may present a SAN LUN to the backup server and format it with NTFS, after that you would be able to use this LUN as a destination disk drive for your backups.

I'm running a backup just now and it says in the job stats "SAN with changed block tracking" but I'm only getting 11Mbs

Is it your first backup job run? Have you tried running an incremental one? What performance rates do you get?

If you backup server is starving on CPU resources when the job is running, you may want reduce compression ratio, should help.

In addition, I would try installing Veeam Backup server on the VM with 4 vCPU and then choose Virtual Appliance mode to perform replication jobs. By the way, could you please clarify if you're using full-blown ESX host or ESXi server as a replication destination?

Hope it helps!