Veeam 5 --> Full Backups and Error on only 1 VM

[dave2k7]

Hi,

I got two questions:

1. On Veeam 4 we just did Full Backups daily (to Filesystem) and copied them to tape later.
How can i do simple Full Backups without any incremental backups? Just 1 File -- 1 Full Backup per VM, which will be overwritten daily.

2. We got over 70 VMs. Just one VM has a following Error:
=====
Unable to establish direct connection to the shared storage (SAN).
Please ensure that:
- HBA is properly installed in the Veeam Backup server computer, or software iSCSI initiator is configured correctly.
- SAN volume can be seen by operating system in the Windows Disk Management snap-in on the Veeam Backup server.
- Read access is allowed for the Veeam Backup server computer on the corresponding LUN (refer to your SAN documentation).
====

I have to say, that this VM which may have a problem, was cloned from a other VM. The Original VM is ok (normal backup speed --> SAN) but the cloned just got the Network Speed.
After Clone i did NewSID and reenter into the Company Domain.

Regards

[Alexey D.]

Hello Dave,

1) Just go to job's Advanced settings, Backup tab, and tick the checkbox "Perform active full backups periodically". Then click Days and check every day of week. It should make a trick.

2) One straightforward question. Are you sure that cloned VM is still located on the SAN LUN which is presented to the backup server?

[dave2k7]

1) We got 70 Jobs.... i have to do this Setting for each job? Isn´t there an easy way to set the same options on many jobs?
Which Backup mode do i have to activate? Reverse incremental or incremental? or will the Active full backup setting overwrite the settings of the Backup Mode?

2) Its located on the same ESX-Host and Datastore as other VMs. All work with SAN except this one....

Thanks and Regards

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Dave,

There is no way to mass configure advanced settings for the backup/replication jobs. Could you please elaborate why do use so many backup jobs, rather than grouping similar VMs into a single job?

Also if you choose to "Perfrom active full backups periodically" and schedule your jobs to run once a day, there will be no difference in what backup mode to use.

As for the SAN connection issue, please refer to our support team and let them assist you with the troubleshooting.

[Vitaliy S.]

Besides, you may use PowerShell scripting to trigger only Full backup job runs:
http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... run#p15317

[dave2k7]

Well if i group my vms, i cant restore them directly to Veeam. We backup our vbk files to tape with data protector. Unfortunatly the vbk file is named like the job and i cant just restore a special vm out of the vbk file. I always have to restore the complete vbk files from tape to import the file into veeam...

Or i am wrong?

Regards

[Gostev]

Hi Dave, you are correct in the above statement, but your overall thinking is wrong - because you are not considering deduplication. If you group similar VM together in the same jobs, then your backup files will only become slightly larger (so time to restore backup file from tape and import it into Veeam Backup will still remain approximately the same), but on the other hand you will use 10x less tapes and wil have 10x less jobs to manage. This white paper goes in more details on how we implemented deduplication (we specifically designed it to make tape archival possible).

[dave2k7]

Hi thx so far...

So how many backups i should backup in one Job? We got round about 70 ----- 7 Jobs a´10 VMs?
Or asked in a other way: How much GB should be backuped in one Job?

Regards

[Vitaliy S.]

Dave, there is no limitation for the number of VMs in 1 job. If I were you would group VMs from the similar template to one job and that's it. If you happen to have different Windows version in your virtual environment, you may also group those VMs to one job (single OS version per job).

[dave2k7]

Hi,

i yesterday tried 4 Jobs á 20 VMs. Seems that some Jobs are very slow, 2 jobs remains on 62 %. If i do one job for each VM, all jobs are done in the morning.

And: One Job stopped with message "xxx.vbk is missing on host "my computer"" .... why? he should do full backups which dont need a related backup like incremental....?!

Regards

[Vitaliy S.]

The processing rate of the first (full) run doesn't depend on whether you group your VMs to a single job or spread them among multiple jobs. But please note that all your subsequent runs will be much faster while using CBT. Anyway, If you backup window is still overlapped, you may reduce the number of VMs per job.

As to the error message... have you deleted VBK file manually? You need to delete it using backup console in order to delete the corresponding SQL database records which trigger such warning messages.

[dave2k7]

hi,

now we solved the san problem: Our maximum speed with SAN is now is 40 MB/s. Shouldn´t i expect more ? i read about 75 -150 MB/s

[Vitaliy S.]

Well...it depends on the hardware (SAN) you use, if it is a new modern SAN than I would expect to see even higher rates. Besides the speed may vary depending on your target storage performance. By the way, do you see 40 MB/s on the full run or incremental job pass?

[dave2k7]

we always need full backups.... 70 VMs --> 70 vbk files, which we overwrite daily. (Backup on Tape before overwriting in the night)

[Vitaliy S.]

In this case could you please tell us more about your setup (SAN model/ connection to VBR server/ VBR server's hardware/ CPU load on the VRB server during job run/ target storage)?

[dave2k7]

well, we are switching the san model the next month, so i think we could leave at this point.
After that i will look again

[Vitaliy S.]

Got it, I bet you'll see much higher results with a new SAN model