Suppress misleading vStorage Warning for DAS

[Felix]

Hi,

I use Veeam Backup 4.0 to backup vCenter with two vSphere servers in vStorage SAN/NBD with failback mode.

The virtual machines VMDKs are located both on SAN and direct attached storage (swap partitions and database logs are on server local storage for better performance).

The physical backup host running Veeam Backup is connected via MS iSCSI Clint to the SAN and SAN based backup works fine.

Now for every backup of a VMDK that resides on server local storage, Veeam Backup issues a warning message, that fills the logs:

Unable to establish direct connection to the shared storage (SAN). Please ensure that: [...]

Of course VMDKs on local attached storage cannot be backed up using SAN based backup and need to go through NBD. But couldn't Veeam Backup detect this and suppress the warning message?

The datastores on SAN are named sanstor1 and sanstor2 and the local storage vmhst1:storage1 and vmhst2:storage1 with the server hostnames beeing vmhst1 and vmhst2.

Regards,
Felix

[Gostev]

Hello, parsing names is probably not reliable approach for a box product, who knows - may be someone else would put a host name in the shared storage name. But I will investigate if there is another way to figure out if the certain storage is shared or local (hopefully there is some VMware API property available for each datastore).

[Felix]

I could differentiate between local and san stroage through vimsh.

Using command /hostsvc/storage/fs_info get the diskName property:

Code: Select all

volume.name = "vmhst2:storage1"
volume.extent.diskName = "mpx.vmhba0:C0:T0:L0"

volume.name = "sanstor2"
volume.extent.diskName = "naa.600c0ff000d5e43da0104d4901000000"

volume.name = "sanstor1"
volume.extent.diskName = "naa.600c0ff000d5e43d8b104d4901000000"

Then do a lookup of the diskName through /hostsvc/storage/scsilun_info and look at displayName or vendor/model:

Code: Select all

canonicalName = "naa.600c0ff000d5e43d8b104d4901000000", 
displayName = "HP iSCSI Disk (naa.600c0ff000d5e43d8b104d4901000000)"
vendor = "HP      ", 
model = "MSA2012i        ", 
revision = "J210",

canonicalName = "naa.600c0ff000d5e43da0104d4901000000", 
displayName = "HP iSCSI Disk (naa.600c0ff000d5e43da0104d4901000000)", 
vendor = "HP      ", 
model = "MSA2012i        ", 
revision = "J210",

canonicalName = "mpx.vmhba0:C0:T0:L0", 
displayName = "Local VMware Disk (mpx.vmhba0:C0:T0:L0)", 
vendor = "VMware  ", 
model = "Block device    ", 
revision = "1.0 ",

So as can be seen above, local storage is identified through vendor VMware, model Block Device.

Hope this helps.

[Gostev]

Felix, this change request has been implemented in Veeam Backup 4.1.
Thank you for your feedback!