PS4100E Direct SAN Access Setup

[magmaviper]

I am using a PS4100E along with some VMware vSphere hosts I want to setup for Direct SAN Access.

It's my understanding that the PS4100E will not allow read only access per IP address as most other SANs will.

My question is, what is the best way to prevent data corruption?

My current strategy, is to connect all of my LUNs to my physical Veeam backup server but make sure automount is off. Am I safe if I do this as long as I do not attempt to mount or do anything with the LUNs connected to my phsyical server?

Does anyone else have a PS4100E that they have done this with successfully.

[Vitaliy S.]

Your strategy looks good. Btw, if you're running your proxy server on Windows 2008 R2, there is no need to disable "automount", as there is a more proper way to keep your SAN LUNs uninitialized - you need to set the SAN POLICY to "OfflineAll".

And finally, do not give random people access to high privilege accounts, this will keep you on the safe side

Thanks!

[magmaviper]

I am getting at a maximum around 25MBps through Direct SAN access with my PS4100E and a PowerConnect 5524. Is that about normal for Direct SAN access?

[Reimold]

Your strategy looks good. Btw, if you're running your proxy server on Windows 2008 R2, there is no need to disable "automount", as there is a more proper way to keep your SAN LUNs uninitialized - you need to set the SAN POLICY to "OfflineAll".

is that (or automount) done when the veeam Proxy component is installed ob a Server ? I thought i have read something when version 6 came Out.

Dirk

[habibalby]

I am getting at a maximum around 25MBps through Direct SAN access with my PS4100E and a PowerConnect 5524. Is that about normal for Direct SAN access?

Hi, how your proxy setup in Veeam Backup server? and how its configured to access the SAN Fabric? Is it a VM or Physical Servevr? Have you tried different mode such as HotAdd?

In an iSCSI environment, i have seen hotAdd works better than SAN Mode specially if your Proxy as a VM and communicate with esx hosts/vCenter via same interfaces.

Thanks,

[Vitaliy S.]

I am getting at a maximum around 25MBps through Direct SAN access with my PS4100E and a PowerConnect 5524. Is that about normal for Direct SAN access?

What does your bottleneck statistics show for the backup job in question (right-click the job and click Realtime Statistics)?

[foggy]

is that (or automount) done when the veeam Proxy component is installed ob a Server ? I thought i have read something when version 6 came Out.

Yes, automount is handled automatically during proxy component setup and since v6.1 the SAN Policy is also set to "OfflineAll" for Windows 2008 R2.

[gerg]

Yes, automount is handled automatically during proxy component setup and since v6.1 the SAN Policy is also set to "OfflineAll" for Windows 2008 R2.

Hi,

I run 6.1 using HotAdd on Windows 2008 R2 Datacentre VM's (VMware 4.1.0) and I've noticed that my target proxy is attempting to automount disks. The target proxy started out as a Backup Repository and was added as a Backup Proxy at a later date.

Any advice on how to stop the target backup Proxy from mounting the disks please?

Cheers
Greg

[foggy]

Сheck that the SAN policy is set to Offline Shared using diskpart and the "SAN" command.

[gerg]

Hi Foggy,

The SAN policy looks fine....
SAN Policy : Offline Shared

Just to make sure I'm not confusing matters the disk of the server that is currently being replicated seems to appear in Explorer on the target Backup Proxy.

Cheers
Greg

[foggy]

Do you mean the disks show up in Windows Explorer? If target proxy uses hotadd mode to populate replica VM disks on the host, then I would expect hotadded disks to show under Disk Manager (though this has nothing to do with automount, which typically displays disk initialization request), but not in Windows Explorer.

[gerg]

I have a replication job running that has 2 disks in it, one is 60GB and the other 250GB.
The 60 GB disk shows up in Disk Manager, it's status is online and it appears in explorer.
The 250 GB disk also shows up in Disk Manager, it's status is offline and doesn't show up in explorer.

While writing this the above job completed and the next one started. This time....
The 60 GB disk shows up in Disk Manager, it's status is online and doesn't show up in explorer.
The 250 GB disk also shows up in Disk Manager, it's status is offline and doesn't show up in explorer.


I noticed this in my event logs which I think is from around the same time I was getting pop ups about
The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume F:.

Should I create a ticket?

Thanks
Greg

[foggy]

Yes, better to contact support to investigate the reasons of such behavior. I'm confused that it differs from one job run to another and about the disk corruption as well.

[gerg]

Thanks Foggy, will do:-)
There appears to be no corruption but I am prompted to format the disk, to which I obviously cancel!