Slow Snapshot Creation

[michael.pescuma]

So, we are having an issue with some of our servers. They are SQL Servers and are in a cluster. When creating the snapshot, it takes over 3 minutes.. we've determined this is most likely because of the "backup" drive that is attached to them, which resides on a slower NAS and is a bit over a TB in size. This drive is where the hourly and daily SQL Backups are stored. Unfortunately, when it "freezes up" while taking this snapshot, it is detected as a failure, and the secondary server in the cluster tries to take over.

I've temporarily gotten past this by excluding the drive from the Veeam backups, but I was hoping someone would be able to come up with a method I am overlooking.
My thought was to run a file copy backup just after the drive-excluded backup, but I don't feel like that is the best option. Since there is no limit on retention, it would just keep filling up without doing any cleanup.

Is there anything anyone can think of that might be worth giving a shot?

mike

[foggy]

Hi Mike, you can switch to built-in SQL logs backup in Veeam B&R jobs instead of doing native SQL Server backups.

[michael.pescuma]

I've brought this up to our SQL DBA in the past, but he feels far more comfortable using the SQL-native backups. I suggested adding the Veeam SQL backups, but he is worried that in the case of a bug on either SQL or Veeam's side, the logs could end up truncated via the Veeam backup and then we would be hosed and customers could lose data.

The only solution I can think of right now is to spin up another server to store the SQL native backups on. We would then back up this server, not caring how long the snapshot takes since it isn't an active SQL Server, it's just storing the backup files.

[foggy]

Makes sense. Or at least store the volume on faster storage.

[jmmarton]

Is it the VMware snapshot or VSS snapshot that's slow? If it's the VMware snapshot, you could try backing up using the Veeam Agent for Windows rather than a VMware-level backup with Veeam Backup & Replication. That way no VMware snapshot is required.

Joe

[Gostev]

I've brought this up to our SQL DBA in the past, but he feels far more comfortable using the SQL-native backups.

Just wanted to add that Veeam does use native SQL Server functionality to create those log backups. We trigger SQL Server to create one, and then get the output file and store it in our backup file.