Direct Storage Access FC - slow

[Delo123]

Are you guys on vSphere 6 yet? We just took our vCenter 6 Appliance (coming from Windows) in production and backups are flying..
http://s22.postimg.org/m3n37lqo1/Proxy.jpg
http://s29.postimg.org/uwlu1xgxj/Veeam.jpg
Was never able to max out network and all cpu cores with vCenter 5.5. Still have to do some testing and decrease workload a bit due to cpu usage but this is one big improvement which I didn't expect...

[lightsout]

I'm on vSphere 6 U2, but no difference. I am using Windows VC though, not the appliance.

I'd like to migrate though to the appliance.

[emachabert]

We have received the 8200, we are starting the installation. Therefore, I should have some numbers in a couple of weeks.

[m1kkel]

Looking forward

[emachabert]

Config: 8200, 20*480SSD, Veeam proxy is direct attached 2*16GB FC.
First test, a Windows VM with one disk, 22GB, so single read thread: the disk is processed at the speed of 290MB/s.
trying with a VM with two disks, got 564MB/S.

will do further tests when more VM will be created on the array.

[m1kkel]

That's funny, and interessting.
Please let us know as more vms come into play.

My case with veeam is still ongoing.
We discovered that if we create new disks thick provisioned eager zeroed, we will get speeds twice as fast as the disks with real data. Veeam level 2 support says it doesnt matter if they are empty.

So i restored one of the "slow" disks to the vm, and ran a new backup. Now the speed increased 30 %, but still not as fast as the new disks, and still operating faster than the "old" same disk with same data..

[emachabert]

to give more insight.
I use eager zeroed disks (as per best practices with 3par) and note that the VVs used in the test are thin deduped.

[emachabert]

So I have tested with 4 VM in a single job (3 windows: AD DC, AD PKI, AD Filer and a Linux machine serving web files).
Simultaneous tasks configured: 6 (proxy and repository)

Duration: 4:39
Processed: 440GB
Read : 105GB
Transfered : 46GB

VM1 disk 1: 13,9GB read at 302MB/s
VM1 disk 2: 212MB read at 212MB/s
VM2 disk 1: 18,1GB read at 324MB/s
VM3 disk 1: 13,8GB read at 267MB/s
VM3 disk 2: 9 GB read at 503MB/s
VM4 disk 1: 50GB read at 710MB/s

Top speed during backup job, shown at "processing rate" : 2GB/s

Bottleneck source 96%; proxy 62%, network 28%, target 2% (target is a local DAS 20*1TB SATA in RAID50 configuration, 4GB cache)

[m1kkel]

Interessting. The speeds of the disks vary a lot, as they do with my disks. You are in the range from 212 to 710 MB. In a job with a single disk you are restricted to the read speed of that disk. Would it be fun to create a new backup job with only VM4 in it, and notice if it still pushes 710 MB / SEC ?

[emachabert]

Results are the same.
After one week of usage, with more VM being created the speed is increasing.
I'll do more test when bigger VMs will be created/moved onto that array.

[m1kkel]

Thanks for sharing - it looks like your speeds vary aswell, however they are definately not capped somewhere.. How many cores does your proxy have?

[emachabert]

10
but limited use of 6 in Veeam because the proxy is also a hyper-v host which has 3 VM on it (Veeam One, Veeam B&R server and the 3par VSP)

[NightBird]

Eric do you know if backup from storage snapshot and Explorer from storage snapshot are compatible with 3par peer persistence and 3par virtual domain ?

Thx for reply

[Gostev]

Yes for Peer Persistence (as this feature has been around for a while), No for Virtual Domain (as this feature was only released recently).

[emachabert]

Anton is right, it is fully supported with peer persistence, just add the two arrays in Veeam configuration.

Regarding Virtual Domains, Anton is almost right, yes it is not supported by Veeam (you can't view VDs in Veeam nor apply segregation/isolation policy as VDs offer), but it is not a new feature as it exists since almost the begining of 3par (it was what made 3par popular at large hosting companies).

[NightBird]

Thanks for reply guys

Merci du retour Eric

[Gostev]

Anton is right, it is fully supported with peer persistence, just add the two arrays in Veeam configuration.

Moreover, few people know that you can even configure Veeam to backup from the secondary array with Hp3PARPeerPersistentUseSecondary registry key, thus taking the load from backup activities off the primary array!

Regarding Virtual Domains, Anton is almost right, yes it is not supported by Veeam (you can't view VDs in Veeam nor apply segregation/isolation policy as VDs offer), but it is not a new feature as it exists since almost the begining of 3par (it was what made 3par popular at large hosting companies).

You are correct, I was wrong. I confused Virtual Domains with the newly added iSCSI VLAN tagging due to working with HP on getting licenses for these features at the same time. Previously, we did not even have the ability to create domains due to lack of the corresponding license on our QA lab 3PAR! But we've got some requests through support recently, I've received the required licenses a few hours ago and we are going to start the research soon.

[emachabert]

I've received the required licenses a few hours ago and we are going to start the research soon.

This is great news, some Veeam/3Par awesomeness incoming

[Gostev]

Both Virtual Domains and iSCSI VLAN tagging features are supported in 9.5.
And as a bonus, backup from 3PAR snapshots is now 2 times faster

[emachabert]

I confirm, we are seeing 2x speed since 9.5.
Just awesome.

[asdf29871]

Both Virtual Domains and iSCSI VLAN tagging features are supported in 9.5.
And as a bonus, backup from 3PAR snapshots is now 2 times faster

Hello Gostev,
since the technical support of VEEAM doesn't know the answer to this and asked me to post on this forum, i am gonna do so.

We configured two virtual domains on our 3par. In version 9.0 it wasn't possible to access vvols in both domains, even though we had one fc hba (therefore one host in the 3par) for each domain. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes not, because he chose randomly the hba and used some time the right one. After creating a ticket i was told it's gonna be supported in 9.5.
Is it now supported?

[Gostev]

Yes, it should work now since we added Virtual Domains support in 9.5