Transport mode for virtual appliance

[mephisto]

Hi guys,

I'm doing some tests and noticed the backups of VMs that are located on the same host as the proxy server use hotadd just fine, but VMs hosted on a different host without a proxy use nbt. Do I need one proxy server on each host to have hotadd feature? I'm testing here on 10GBIT network and I can barely get 180MB sec transfer rates from VMs that are running on SSDs that can do 1500MB/sec easily (RAID-10)

Do I need a proxy on each host to use hotadd? Is there any plan for a virtual appliance that works only as a proxy? It is a bit of waste to have one windows VM just to work as a proxy so I was wondering if there are alternatives.

Thanks!

[Shestakov]

Hi,
The ESX(i) host on which the backup proxy is deployed must have access to the datastore hosting disks of VMs that you plan to process. It`s among the Virtual Appliance requirements. Otherwise there is no point to use it as a proxy since data has to travel through network.
Thanks!

[mephisto]

But if the backup repository is located on another host over a 10gb network, data between proxy and repository is network based, will I have any benefit?

[Shestakov]

Yes, but it will not be a Virtual Appliance mode, since the data is transferred via network.
If you want to leverage Hot-Add(Virtual Appliance), you need either to connect the host to a datastore or grant Proxy role to another VM. Otherwise the mode will be failed over to Network Mode.
Thanks!

[mephisto]

I've been doing some tests now with a proxy deployed on each host and indeed the hotadd works fine and backup performance has increased a lot. My problem with this is, I need a Windows Server license for each proxy on each host, and considering the amount of VMs I have on each host the costs may end up being too high.

Are there any alternatives to this scenario?

I was thinking about getting proxy role installed on a existing production VM on each host, but this may be silly as one customer OS will be performing proxy roles for VMs that ma belong to someone else.

Not really sure what to do.

[Shestakov]

I see your point.
Do you have all hosts located in different sites (no chance to connect ESX(i) host with proxy VM to datastores hosting VMs of other hosts)?
Does it work much slower in Network Mode?

I was thinking about getting proxy role installed on a existing production VM on each host, but this may be silly as one customer OS will be performing proxy roles for VMs that ma belong to someone else.

You can choose backup proxy for each job separately, so you always know what job a proxy is used for.