Help with local storage for backup repository

[michael_woodward]

I have 7TB of VMFS5 local disk storage on one of my ESX 5 hosts. I wish to present this to my Veeam v6 backup server VM (Windows 2008R2), which runs on this host, as the backup repository.
Can someone advise how I should go about this. The only way I can think of is to create a (really) large disk and mount it on the Veeam VM as a drive. Not ideal I'm sure.
Many thanks in advance.
Mick.

[Vitaliy S.]

Michael,

Basically, there are three options available options to achieve that:

1. Format this LUN as NTFS, and present it through iSCSI to Veeam B&R backup repository. This is most common and recommended approach.
2. Add this LUN as a pRDM or vRDM virtual disk to a Veeam B&R VM (your backup repository).
3. Create multiple virtual disks (VMDK) on this datastore for Veeam B&R VM to use.

I would strongly recommend against option 3 as storing backup files on VMFS volumes is not a good practice for a number of reasons.

Thanks.

[chrisdearden]

If its local storage to the hosts ( DAS array or similar ? ) I'm not sure you could use anything but option 3 ?

[Gostev]

Uh, I did not catch the fact that it is local either. No iSCSI then.
Option 2 may still work though, depending on what type of local storage is there.

[michael_woodward]

Thanks Gents. I have a RAID 5 array of 10 x 1TB drives installed locally into one of my hosts, specifically to be the backup repository for Veeam.
So, my best (only?) option is to mount the space directly on the Veeam B&R server, either as RDM or NTFS drives ?

[Vitaliy S.]

Please see this KB article for more information on how to configure RDMs. If this is not possible, then the only choice for you would be to use the 3rd option.

[michael_woodward]

Thanks all, at this stage I've gone with 2 x 2TB virtual disks and stripped them together under Win2008R2 to give me 4TB usable. Cheers

[isaaktnt]

[merged]

I have Veeam running in a VM. I have enabled MS iSCSI iniator in the VM to attach to directly to the vmfs datastore. From my understanding I was to not format it and Veeam would be able to access the vmfs for backups and not ever need to even use the network. What about the backup target where Veeam stores the vbk file? Do I create a drive in esxi, assign it to the Veeam VM and format it as a drive or create another iSCSI target, connect to it using the MS iSCSi initiator and format it as NTFS and present it to Veeam? Which is the correct way or fastest way? Because I am sure both would work.

[dellock6]

If you use local storage for the Veeam Backup server, since it runs on a Windows OS, it is able to read the kind of file systems that Windows is able to use. So if you attach the disks to Veeam in local mode (regardless via local vmdk, RDM or iscsi initiator in the VM) these partitions needs to be formatted in NTFS.

Another option, not mentioned in this thread, is to create a VSA (virtual storage appliance) that uses the local datastores of the ESXi hosting it, and exports then that space via iscsi. In this way, Veeam can also be run in another ESXi or in a physical server.

[michael_woodward]

Hey Luca, Thanks for the reply. Actually, that's what I ended up doing. I ran up an Openfiler VM and made the space available via iSCSI. Worked a treat.

[bhwong]

For local ESXi storage, you can map them into a VM and convert them into iSCSI SAN storage with either www.openfiler.com or www.open-e.com

This way, you can map the storage to Veeam Backup server and other VMs located on another ESXi host.