Many ways to move a VM - What uses the least WAN traffic?

[johndoe123123]

I am having a hard time understanding what is the most efficient way, network bandwidth wise, to move a vmware guest from one location to another. I am also having a hard time finding clear documentation on how this works.

I have a scenario where I have this setup:

(site a)
Management workstation

(site b)
vsphere 1

(site c)
vsphere 2

All the sites are connected via a 3mbps multipoint network.

In this case, I have installed a vmware backup proxy at site b and c and Veeam on my workstation at site A. Ultimately my goal is to move many VMs from B to C. I am ok with moving a "clone" of the VMs (powered off) if need be.

There are obviously several methods to do this -- and I am having a hard time determining what each method does in the background for network transport efficiency optimizations with both compression, not transferring white space, and deduplication efforts

What I am observing is the data traffic transferred is inconsistent and not always logical.

For example, on one 30gb VM with 4gb of hard drive space in use I did the following operations:

vm copy (to management workstation): 1.1GB of traffic sent on the wire.

VM quick migration between B and C using a proxy at each side 5gb of traffic sent on the wire.

I have not set tried the veeamzip function but could not find where to specify the backup proxy in the context of veeamzip.

Other options I did not try yet also include a simple backup then restore to the remote host, although the downside is that would go by way of the mangement station.


Can you perhaps tell me which method would be the best for moving these VMs -- and which features take advantage of what compression, deduplication, and whitespace intelligence at the proxy level and/or prior to WAN transport in some manner?

Finally, knowing what options exist both now with the paid feature set, and after my trial expires in the free version. If it matters, it is anticipated that I will not use Veeam to truly perform backups, but will use it as a management tool to move machines around. The licensing is confusing for this purpose (it would only ever run on my laptop).

[dellock6]

Hi, from a licensing perspective, there is no difference between standard or enterprise for your goal, while during trial mode you are using enteprise features.

Are the moves a one-time activity, or something you would need to do several times? In any case, replica job is the best way to do it, since it replicates the VM from source to destination, without moving data to the management station, and offering you the shortest downtime when failing over to the replicated VM.

If you are experiencing long transfer times, you can seed the replica by shipping VM backups in a usb drive to destination site so you can load on the destination servers a full copy of the VM, and replicate only the differences occured meanwhile.

Luca.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi,

I have not set tried the veeamzip function but could not find where to specify the backup proxy in the context of veeamzip.

Yes, that's expected. VeeamZIP is using the default proxy server which is installed on your backup server. If you want to choose backup proxies, then you should be using either backup or replication jobs (available in the paid version only).

The licensing is confusing for this purpose (it would only ever run on my laptop).

It doesn't matter where you install Veeam B&R, you need to license all your source ESX(i) hosts to run backup/replication/migration jobs against these hosts.

Finally, knowing what options exist both now with the paid feature set, and after my trial expires in the free version.

Here is the list of all differences between paid and free product, please take a look: http://www.veeam.com/veeam_backup_and_r ... ull_ds.pdf

In order to migrate your VMs in the most efficient way over the WAN link, you should always have at least two proxy servers, one on the source side, another one on the target location. The traffic between source and target proxy servers will be compressed.

Hope this helps!

[johndoe123123]

A few more questions:

How come a vm copy operation, only took 1.1gb of data, while a quick migration took 5gb for the same VM, using proxies at both sites?

Will the "backup" function be roughly the same bandwidth usage as the "vm copy" operation?

Will using the vm copy operation again to restore the VM to the target (I don't this this is allowed?) use the same bandwidth as getting it here? I couldn't find out how to do this (select the VM) as it was just the raw vmdk.

Will using a file copy operation to do the same use the same bandwidth as a vm copy operation?

I understand there's no on the wire compression/deduplication with Veeamzip. However does veeam apply deduplication to the final "veeamzip" file on the hard drive?

Regarding veeamzip, since it does not use proxies, what efficiencies would it provide -- just not transferring white space and nothing more?

Finally is the license concurrent servers? So if I have one laptop, which I use for many small business locations for example, I can just add the servers -- do the copy -- and remove them from veeam and stay in compliance? So I really only ever need 2 server licenses? I'm essentially using it as a technicians tool.

[foggy]

How come a vm copy operation, only took 1.1gb of data, while a quick migration took 5gb for the same VM, using proxies at both sites?

The size of the transferred data should be comparable between different types of jobs in case of similar settings and architecture. I will check with our QC regarding Quick Migration though.

I understand there's no on the wire compression/deduplication with Veeamzip. However does veeam apply deduplication to the final "veeamzip" file on the hard drive?

Actually, VeeamZIP compresses processed VM data, removes zero-byte blocks, excludes swap file blocks, and deduplicates data in the backup. However, note that in Free Edition, where the backup is limited to a single VM, gain from deduplication is typically minimal.

Regarding veeamzip, since it does not use proxies, what efficiencies would it provide -- just not transferring white space and nothing more?

For further information about VeeamZIP, please check documents at the product page.

Finally is the license concurrent servers? So if I have one laptop, which I use for many small business locations for example, I can just add the servers -- do the copy -- and remove them from veeam and stay in compliance? So I really only ever need 2 server licenses? I'm essentially using it as a technicians tool.

Yes, you can revoke the license from hosts that do not require to be licensed anymore.

[Vitaliy S.]

How come a vm copy operation, only took 1.1gb of data, while a quick migration took 5gb for the same VM, using proxies at both sites?

We've been able to reproduce this behavior in our own labs, thanks for the heads up! This happens because currently Quick Migration is configured to use a different compression algorithm.