SAN or HOTADD?

[sergeadam]

I have a physical backup server controlling VM proxies. The proxies can access all the VMFS LUNs that are local to them. Right now the backups are using hotadd. Would there be an advantage to load the iSCSI initiator on the proxies to use SAN mode?
Using B&R 6.1

[Gostev]

Direct SAN may speed up overall job performance, because hot add process itself takes a while (up to 1-2 minutes). But from perspective of data moving speed, you will probably lose a little, as iSCSI initiator in ESXi is more polished. I'd say, little difference overall - but direct SAN is harder to setup.

This is general considerations though, your mileage may vary. I've seen environments where hot add performance was really bad for whatever reason, and direct SAN from within VM through Microsoft Software iSCSI initiator was flying. Best is to do limited scope testing, and decide based on results.