Direct SAN Access - EMC VNX 5100 + Veeam + Vcenter

[amerretz@cdm]

Hi,

We recently pruchased a VNX 5100 SAN. I have added a Fibre HBA into the Veeam server and my ESXi 5.1 servers. Everything is working from a VMware perspective. Now I am trying to get direct SAN access to Veeam for quick backups.

When configuring the LUNs for ESX, I was told by EMC that I should create 1TB luns and the stick them together to make a bigger disk using VMFS extents. That is what I have done and have a VMFS datastore that is 3TB in size; 3 x 1 tb luns jouned together with the extents expansion feature.

On the veeam server I am able to see that the HBA is installed correctly in device manager. EMC told me to install 'Powerpath for winddows" on the veeam server. Disk manager shows me each 1 tb disk (not the 3tb disk that was glued together via extents), all the disks appear offline with a red down arrow, if I right click I can make them online.

In veeam I have modified my backup proxy, selected direct san access transport mode and unticked failover to network. I have manual specified the 3tb VMFS datastore. In my backup job > storage I have selected the correct backup proxy.

I am unable to get the backup job to use the fibre network. It seems to somehow find my old iSCSI direct SAN access network and backup through it instead of the new fibre. What worries me is that in Windows the disks are sperated into 1tb luns rather than appearing as a 3tb datastore; not sure if this is expected. Maybe EMC's advice to use extents is not going to work out....

Any ideas what I might be doing wrong here?

Thanks.

[veremin]

I’m wondering whether backup proxy being used and VB&R server are separate physical machines. If so, please be aware that it’s backup proxy that should be configured for using Direct SAN mode. In other words, all of necessary actions, like installing and configuring HBA card, disabling automount, etc. should be performed on proxy side, not on VB&R’s one.

Can you also confirm that you’ve followed the described procedure correctly?

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[Vitaliy S.]

There is an existing topic that should help you in the troubleshooting process, please check it out: Direct SAN access failure troubleshooting