FLR from storage snapshots

[dcampregher]

Hello folks!

Keep in mind the following environment:

Storage: 3PAR iSCSI with Remote Copy+ Peer Persistence
Hypervisor: VMware 6.5 U2
Veeam: 9.5U4B
Note: This enviroment have the RMC ( recovery Manager Central ) to take snapshots every 15 minutes for the VMware LUNs ( oustide VMware, the RMC aren't integrated with the VMwar so the snapshots are created directly in the array ).

The request:

>> Use the Veeam Storage Integration to inventory the VMware enviroment and do the File Level Restore from storage snapshots. <<

The big question is if the Veeam will be understand the snapshots created for another software or manually on the array. Is possible and secure ?

[Andreas Neufert]

Yes, this will work as we „see„ all the snapshots.

Requirement is that all VM disks are on the Vm base disk (where the vmx file is) and that the VM disks are vmdk based.

You can just test wit a trial license if everything works as expected.

[dcampregher]

Hello Andreas!

There is one VM with 14 VMDK disks distributed into 07 VMFS. These VM is the Fileserver and all the 14 disks as Windows Basic disk from the Windows perspective, what i need i to the granular for the individual disks so you say that this is not possible because all the 14 disks need to be on the same VMFS ?

In case of one VM with single disk. The steps to do the FLR are the same and doesn't matter if the snapshot was create by the user or by the Veeam ?

[Andreas Neufert]

Correct we are missing the metadata information to keep the disks on the other VMFS storages together with the base VM. In this scenario you can restore from the OS disk only as it will be the only one on the same vmfs.

When you use our Software to orchestrate snapshot creation, we will keep additional metadata to know which disk is on what snapshot and then we can restore (image, file, application) from all of the data disks.

[dcampregher]

OK, i understand the limitations.

The reason why we don't use the Veeam to Orchestrate the snapshots is that is impossible to make VM snapshots every 15 minutes for all the VMs and for this same reason the RMC aren't integrated to the VMware. The only way in this scenario is use the snapshots on without any integration with the hypervisor.

[Andreas Neufert]

You can do this with Veeam as well by not using the guest processing. It is then Crash consistent as with your way.