Should I put a proxy on the Local ESXi drive?

[WellMark]

My configuration:

• EMC VNXe3300 SAN with NFS datastores
  
  5 ESXi 5.5 hosts that have 32GB - 132GB of RAM
  
  VMWare & vCenter 5.5
  
  Veeam Backup Server is on a Virtual Windows machine (on SAN datastore)
  
  
  Backup Respository is a physical Dell PowerEdge R815 16GB RAM, running Windows 2012 with 6x 2TB drives (5TB Storage) with RAID 10
  
  2x 1Gb switches
  
  The ESXi’s, SAN, and Dell PowerEdge are all in the same room.
  
  We backup 50 virtual machines using Veeam v9
  We backup 2-3TB of data total.

If I create a Proxy virtual machine on any of the SAN datastores, to backup other virtual machines on the same datastores, will this slow the backups, i.e. greatly increase IOPS?

Should I put the Proxy virtual machine on the Local drives of the ESXi machines instead, so they're not on the same datastores as the machines they are backing up?

I think Direct NFS Access will be the best transport for this environment? If the virtual proxies are on Local drives, will they have access to the SAN datastores, or do I have to add all of the SAN datastores to the proxies?


We rarely seem to get 20MB/s (usually 15MB/s)Processing speeds on our backups, (Source 99%) so I'm trying to configure this the best I can. It looks like the reading of the virtual machines from the SAN is the problem. Moving files outside of the SAN will transfer at 50-70MB/s. So, I'm wondering if the proxy was taken off the SAN, if it would help?

[PTide]

Hi,

If I create a Proxy virtual machine on any of the SAN datastores, to backup other virtual machines on the same datastores, will this slow the backups, i.e. greatly increase IOPS? Should I put the Proxy virtual machine on the Local drives of the ESXi machines instead, so they're not on the same datastores as the machines they are backing up?

Proxy activity does not consume much IOPS, however placing backup infrastructure VMs and production VMs to different datastores might make things a bit faster.

I think Direct NFS Access will be the best transport for this environment?

Yes, direct NFS will be a good choice.

If the virtual proxies are on Local drives, will they have access to the SAN datastores, or do I have to add all of the SAN datastores to the proxies?

The backup proxy must have access to the datastore.

Processing speeds on our backups, (Source 99%) so I'm trying to configure this the best I can.

Please describe you backup jobs schedule and connections between hosts and datastore.

Thank you.

[WellMark]

Thanks for replying PTide,

I put a proxy on the local esxi and it didn't make any difference.

Right now, I'm just doing 1 backup to test everything. I've tried different virtual machines on different datastores to different storage machines, but I can't seem to get more than around 15MB/s average. EXCEPT for when the virtual machine is on the Performance (15k rpm) drives in the SAN, then I get 65MB/s.

The Physical Dell storage Windows 2012 has 4 NICs Teamed with 1GB connection to the network switches.

The SAN (8NICs) and ESXi(4NICs each) hosts all connect to the same switches (everything is in the same room), 10 switches, all have 1 GB connections. I've tried moving between switches just in case.

The SAN datastores are NFS, We have 3 different ones. I've tried backing up virtual machines that are on different datastores than the Backup Server or the Backup Proxy. Originally, I had the Backup Respository as a virtual machine - got the same speeds. Moved the Repository to the physical Dell and no difference.




right now it's backing up a 75GB Virtual Machine at 12-13MB/s via Hotadd, 36% progress after 32 minutes.


The Proxy (vmproxy53) has Transport set to Automatic.

The Backup Job has the Backup proxy: vmproxy53 selected. Under Advanced > Storage All Data reductions are selected, Compression Level = Optimal, LAN target.

Enabling Application awareness doesn't make a difference.

[nielsengelen]

I guess the reason why it is slower is because you are backing up via hotadd. Could you try to use DirectNFS and see if it improves? Make sure the proxy has access via NFS to your datastores to make it work.

Also could you tell a bit more about your backup target? How many disks, which raid configuration,...?

[WellMark]

Hi vmniels,
Thanks for replying!

Veeam auto-chose to do the hotadd on that one. Maybe, I'm not doing it right? The proxy is on the Local ESXi datastore. That ESXi has all of the other datastores on the SAN. Am I suppose to mount the other datastores, or create NFS share folders?

The backup target is a physical Dell with six 2TB 10,000rpm hard drives, RAID 10 (so 5TB available for storage). 4 NICs teamed into one. 1GB connection. Windows 2012

[PTide]

Veeam auto-chose to do the hotadd on that one. Maybe, I'm not doing it right?

Have you selected "Direct storage access" option in the backup proxy settings?

Am I suppose to mount the other datastores, or create NFS share folders?

Please make sure that:

1. The backup proxy has access to the NFS datastore
2. The backup proxy has ReadOnly/Write permissions and root access to the NFS datastore.

Thank you.

[dellock6]

As part of Direct Storage Access, Direct NFS should be preferred rather than hotadd, so there's something preventing Veeam proxy to use that method. I'd check the other Direct NFS limits (https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... ccess.html) like for example VM's that have a snapshot.