Veeam and ExaGrid

[Daveyd]

I was wondering if anyone else out there was using an Exagrid appliance to act as a target for Veeam backups. I am curious to know what others configs are. In talking with Exagrid, it seems that you point your Veeam backups to it (which I do via CIFS share) and use it as only a dumping ground for the Veeam backup files.. Exagrid has no other intergration with Veeam in that it will not depupe or compress the Veeam backup files.

[Gostev]

AFAIK Exagrid is working on implementing tighter intergration with Veeam Backup.

[jamieorth]

Didn't they just release the integration with Veeam? http://www.exagrid.com/news_and_events/ ... _as400.asp

"Through ExaGrid’s support of Veeam, customers can now target their Veeam-based VMware virtual machine backups to the ExaGrid appliance," said Doug Hazelman Veeam Software’s Senior Director of Product Strategy. "We are very pleased that ExaGrid has added support for Veeam, giving customers more options to significantly streamline and speed the backup process for virtual machines. We are also pleased to have ExaGrid participating in our v5 beta program."

We are currently in the process of looking at Exagrid and DataDomain but have not made our final decision. Besides price, we are looking to make sure that each one will support all of the applications we may want to send to it. If Exagrid just accepts the Veeam backup and doesn't dedupe (which I know it won't in what they call their 'landing zone') then that is not very good. My concern is how would Veeam see the backup sets once they have moved from the landing zone into the dedupe zone.

[Gostev]

If you read 2 paragraphs above the quoted text, this is "utility share" level integration only (what Dave explained in his post), not full integration (which requires them to write some Veeam-specific code for their device, due to unique approach ExaGrid is taking with 3rd party software integration to achieve the best possible results).

[jamieorth]

Well, if that is truly the case it would be a deal breaker for us and Exagrid. At least DataDomain doesn't care what you send to it, just CIFS or an NFS share is all that is needed.....

[Gostev]

If you go with DataDomain, be sure that you test specific model well with Veeam Backup v5 before you commit to buying it. It appears that possibly, "DataDomain DDR" has pretty bad issues with random reads performance over CIFS, which affects just about every aspect of Veeam Backup negatively, from backup to recovery (read from this post onwards, including next page). This very well may be an issue with specific model or deployment, but I figured I should make you aware anyway. We have not done official testing of Veeam Backup v5 with DataDomain yet.

ExaGrid has been testing Veeam Backup v5 since late beta, and their current progress is essentially captured in this thread. Based on what I know, if they manage to implement what they are planning to, it will be huge win, and this will essentially make ExaGrid arguably best deduping backup target for Veeam Backup v5 (at least this is how it looks on paper).

We have also smoke tested Veeam Backup v5 with HP D2D device (G2, which is the newest generation) couple of weeks ago, and have not seen any issues there, works perfectly from our standpoint, and performance is great including vPower functionality. If you are not familiar, HP D2D is also deduplicating storage device similar to the above mentioned ones.

Hope this helps.

[Daveyd]

Well, if that is truly the case it would be a deal breaker for us and Exagrid. At least DataDomain doesn't care what you send to it, just CIFS or an NFS share is all that is needed.....

We have Exagrid in place and as of now you can only dump your Veeam backup files to the "Utility Share" (CIFS). Anything on the utility share does not get compressed/deduped or replicated automatically. We also have an offsite Exagrid that is used for the replication part for our BackupExec backups which intregrates with Exagrid.

This issue is, I have 1TB of Veeam backup files (Deduped and compressed by Veeam) that are dumped to the Exagrid's Utility share at our primary DataCenter. Since there is no automatic dedupe/compression/replication on the utility share, I somehow have to move 1TB of Veeam backups to our offsite Exagrid over a 50Mb link. Now thats funny.

ExaGrid has been testing Veeam Backup v5 since late beta, and their current progress is essentially captured in this thread. Based on what I know, if they manage to implement what they are planning to, it will be huge win, and this will essentially make ExaGrid arguably best deduping backup target for Veeam Backup v5 (at least this is how it looks on paper).

Hope this helps.

That would be AMAZING as we have already invested the $$$ into Exagrid

[ptmartin]

I spoke with my ExaGrid rep this morning about this topic and here was the reply he received from the VP of Product Management (he controls the roadmap for product releases):
"Will be available with full support (including replication) in March. He can use it to a Utility share today if he does not need replication."

So if you can hold out until March then my vote is for ExaGrid. I'm using it for vRanger backups currently and sendng my Veeam backups to a NAS device. Once supported, I will be upgrading the ExaGrid and sending all of my backups to a single repository and replicating to a second ExaGrid box at the DR location.

[Daveyd]

I spoke with my ExaGrid rep this morning about this topic and here was the reply he received from the VP of Product Management (he controls the roadmap for product releases):
"Will be available with full support (including replication) in March. He can use it to a Utility share today if he does not need replication."

So if you can hold out until March then my vote is for ExaGrid. I'm using it for vRanger backups currently and sendng my Veeam backups to a NAS device. Once supported, I will be upgrading the ExaGrid and sending all of my backups to a single repository and replicating to a second ExaGrid box at the DR location.

Cool. I hope March is a conservative estimate.

[jayoung]

Hi,

Can I request a further update on the status of this initiative. Will something be added to the Veeam GUI for this exagrid implementation.

Regards,

James

[Gostev]

Hi James, no - there will be no changes to the Veeam GUI, everything is done on ExaGrid size exclusively. Basically, they are changing ExaGrid appliance code to better leverage capabilities Veeam Backup & Replication provides. But I cannot really tell you any details without braking NDA at this point... Thanks!

[ptmartin]

I'm being told by my reps that the ExaGrid firmware update that Veeam requires will be released to the public on April 15th.

Here is a bit I was sent with that date along with a link to the March Press release:
ExaGrid Systems issued a press release today announcing expanded backup application support for Veeam Backup & Replication. Customers can now use Veeam Backup’s built-in source-side deduplication together with ExaGrid’s disk-based backup system to reduce the amount of data to backup and improve backup performance. Today we’re also the only disk backup appliance vendor that maintains intact copies of the most recent Veeam backups, so Veeam customers can now instantly recover an entire virtual machine (VM), individual application objects and individual files.

You can read the complete press release below and at:
http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20 ... sed-backup

[Daveyd]

I'm being told by my reps that the ExaGrid firmware update that Veeam requires will be released to the public on April 15th.

Here is a bit I was sent with that date along with a link to the March Press release:
ExaGrid Systems issued a press release today announcing expanded backup application support for Veeam Backup & Replication. Customers can now use Veeam Backup’s built-in source-side deduplication together with ExaGrid’s disk-based backup system to reduce the amount of data to backup and improve backup performance. Today we’re also the only disk backup appliance vendor that maintains intact copies of the most recent Veeam backups, so Veeam customers can now instantly recover an entire virtual machine (VM), individual application objects and individual files.

You can read the complete press release below and at:
http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20 ... sed-backup

I was told recently by our Exagrid rep that the release will be in another 2 weeks

[Gostev]

Dedupe storage firmware are better not rushed

[jgremillion]

I am looking at the HP dedupe appliance now and can say that I am very disappointed in it. ... The price was good and the recovery was fast, howerver, the injest rate and overall depude % is very low. The Hp device we are considering HP D2D4324 only takes in 15 threads and after dumping the same data to it in different fashion I am only getting 3.1:1 dedupe. However, if you wanted to use it as a VTL, it is very fast.

I am also looking at a Data Domain DD670. 90 streams and I am getting a dedupe rate of 26.1:1 with the same data. The IR may be a little slower but I am thinking we can live with that.

[ptmartin]

I have the new ExaGrid firmware release installed as of yesterday. It is now available so contact your reps!!! I ran a successful backup last night and today I made a few changes. Looks like the backup went well. We'll see how my changes work tonight and over the weekend. If all is well, back to SureBackup testing again next week.

[jamieorth]

We also have the new firmware as an early release - it works really well with Veeam as we have had 0 issues. We are backing up approximately 55 to 65 vms (we have some that we need to update the hardware version to 7 to utilize cbt). We have the EX10000 and are replicating to another EX10000 at our DR location. I am not sure of what method (synthetic full, etc) we are using but it was the one recommended by Gostev in another post. We are going to do a test restore later this evening but the speed is great. So far our dedupe ratios are about 3 to 1 and we have the Veeam dedupe on as well in the jobsets, so that doesnt seem to bad considering that a lot of our environment is images that don't dedupe at all.

[Gostev]

I am not sure of what method (synthetic full, etc) we are using but it was the one recommended by Gostev in another post.

This made me smile anyway, I always recommend the default backup mode when backing up to any deduping storage (incremental, synthetic fulls, no transform). Your dedupe ratio will of course grow significantly with time when you get multiple fulls created.

[Daveyd]

We are scheduled for the firmware upgrade tomorrow. Looking at the Exgarid/Veeam PDF, you HAVE to use incrementals with synthetic backups and you HAVE to disable the Veeam. I am interested in seeing if there is an increase in the Veeam job speed. RIght now I am doing reversed incrementals to the Exagrid's utility share and more times than not, the speeds are horrible coming from a Veeam VM. It gets worse when out Backup Exec jobs are also writing to the Exagrid. I am wondering if the Exagrid itself is the bottleneck when it has multiple jobs thrown at it.

I do have another Veeam server set up on a physical box that is using Direct SAN access mode and is backing up to an iSCSI drive that is presented to the Veeam server and resides on the same SAN. I have 2 jobs running each backing up 25 VMs. I average around 160MB/s for 1 job and 100MB/sec for the other job doing reversed incrementals.

[Gostev]

and you HAVE to disable the Veeam

Missing word here?

Looking at the Exgarid/Veeam PDF

Can you share this PDF please? Not sure I have seen it, which is strange (I usually sign off this kind of stuff).

[Daveyd]

Missing word here?
Can you share this PDF please? Not sure I have seen it, which is strange (I usually sign off this kind of stuff).

Oops...I meant to say you have to disable the Veeam integrity check

Where would you like for me to share the PDF? Email?

[Gostev]

Got it already from someone else, but thanks for the offer.

[Daveyd]

Got it already from someone else, but thanks for the offer.

No problem. Did you see it before? Everything in it make sense?

[Gostev]

I don't believe I have seen the actual document before, but we did discuss most of what is written there with ExaGrid folks over email and on conference calls. At a first glance this looks fine from recommended Veeam settings perspective (for deduping backup storage), except I am not sure of recommendation to disable integrity check.

Also, I am not familiar with some ExaGrid terms, and could not understand a few things, so I want to investigate a few things further.

[Daveyd]

I don't believe I have seen the actual document before, but we did discuss most of what is written there with ExaGrid folks over email and on conference calls. At a first glance this looks fine from recommended Veeam settings perspective (for deduping backup storage), except I am not sure of recommendation to disable integrity check.

Also, I am not familiar with some ExaGrid terms, and could not understand a few things, so I want to investigate a few things further.

Any comments on the disabling of the integrity check?

Any other Exagrid users care to chime in on your expieriences...

[MattG]

I am using an HP D2D 4106i with Veeam and only seeing a HP dedupe rate of 3:1. I am using weekly fulls and daily incrementals (no Synthetics).

What are others seeing with Veeam backups to their D2D devices (HP, DD, Exa, etc)?

-MattG

[jamieorth]

Hey Matt - I think your dedupe rate is really going to vary depending on what you are backing up and what your retention rate is. You also need to factor the dedupe rate that the Veeam backup jobs themselves are doing. We have a couple jobs that are getting between 25% to 50% dedupe rates and then our Exagrid takes those jobs and dedupes them another 3:1, but each week we increase our retention rate so the dedupe ration keeps going up, as expected. We have grouped our Veeam jobs according to type (Win 2003, Win 2008, SQL, etc) but they are all going to the same Exagrid share. As of today we have just over 17TB of Veeam backup data taking up just over 5TB of space on the Exagrid. Based on our change rate (for new data) we are using about 2% of the Exagrid space each full backup cycle (weekly) and with that we should be able to maintain somewhere between 4-6 months of backup data on disk in our environment.

[jpaul]

I've left integrity checking turned on and its fine.

[Daveyd]

Hey Matt - I think your dedupe rate is really going to vary depending on what you are backing up and what your retention rate is. You also need to factor the dedupe rate that the Veeam backup jobs themselves are doing. We have a couple jobs that are getting between 25% to 50% dedupe rates and then our Exagrid takes those jobs and dedupes them another 3:1, but each week we increase our retention rate so the dedupe ration keeps going up, as expected. We have grouped our Veeam jobs according to type (Win 2003, Win 2008, SQL, etc) but they are all going to the same Exagrid share. As of today we have just over 17TB of Veeam backup data taking up just over 5TB of space on the Exagrid. Based on our change rate (for new data) we are using about 2% of the Exagrid space each full backup cycle (weekly) and with that we should be able to maintain somewhere between 4-6 months of backup data on disk in our environment.

How big is your Exagrid? Do you backup anything elase to it besides Veeam?

We have a 5TB Exagrid Appliance and use it as a destination for our Backup Exec jobs for physical servers and our Veeam backups. I am getting a 4.6:1 dedupe/compression ratio with 4TB of data and a 7 day retention period doing forward incrementials and weekly synthetic fulls.

Also, why is it recommended that you do forward incrementals with synthjetic fulls as opposed to reversed incrementals. I do like the whole "only 7 files for a 7 day retention period" using reversed incrementals versus the 14 or so using the same retention period with forward incrementals

[Daveyd]

Also, is it common to have a very small dedupe ratio for .vib files? Why does it say 99% depupe ratio at 100% compress ratio? I assume that higher percentages are worse? I am not using compression as recommended when backing up to the Exagrid so I am confused by the 100% compress ratio.