VEEAM chooses wrong Proxy when doing a Restore Job

[pacegmbh]

Hi there,

we've got following setup:

One vCenter Standard Server named vCSA with three hosts attached (Enterprise Plus licenses) with shared storage attached.
One VEEAM Proxy server. because the proxy server can serve all three hosts and has access to all datastores the hosts have got.

One vCenter Essentials Server named vCSAe with three hosts attached (Essentials license) each host has got only local storage.
One VEEAM Proxy server for each Host.

Backups are working like a charm.

Today I had to restore one VM which belongs to vCSA.
After starting the restore job I first received an error. This forum helped me to get rid of it, switching the Backup Proxy on VCSA from Appliance to Network mode.
Now the VM is getting restored.

A couple of minutes after starting the job users complained about poor performance of VM running on one of the essentials hosts.
Because they shouldn't have something to do with the restore job I first thought one of the users would've been using lots of resources.
After starting vCenter and connected to vCSAe i noticed one of the backup proxies claiming a huge amount of of resources.

As it appears VEEAM restores the VM for vCSA over the backup proxy on vCSAe.

Has anyone got an idea how this can happen or how I can make sure VEEAM is going to chose the right proxy in future?

Thanks for your support
John

[foggy]

John, basically, proxy selection algorithm is as follows. If automatic proxy selection is used, Veeam B&R selects the most efficient proxy in terms of source data retrieval transport mode (direct SAN is preferred over hotadd, which is, in its turn, preferred over network mode). Network access mode backup proxy servers are selected based on their subnet (proxy located on the same subnet as the processed host is preferable). If no such backup proxy is found, the first least-busy proxy is selected (the one with least tasks currently assigned). Hope, this explains why the wrong proxy was selected in your case.

You can manually select the proxies that are available for the particular restore task while going through the Restore Wizard ('Restore Mode' step, 'Pick proxy to use' link).

[pacegmbh]

Hi Foggy,

thanks for your help.
I missed the Proxy selection.
After choosing the right Proxy for the right host everythings works as expected.

Brgds,
John

[veremin]

Glad to hear that you’ve nailed down your issue. Should any additional help be needed, don’t hesitate to let us know. Thanks.

[Nilsn]

Hi
Sorry for draging a old thread up like this but we have the same issue, the "automatic select" does not understand more complex setups.
In our environment it mostly picks the wrong proxy.
We have set static proxys on every job to handle the load and access to networks in a correct way.
The best would be if the "autmatic proxy selection" took one of the proxys that is used in the job for the VM when restored, would solve it for us at least.
As it is now we have to check what job the vm is in, and not the proxy, then pick the proxy when restoring.

[SyNtAxx]

I think it would be nice if the veeam services could query AD sites and services to locate a veeam proxy. Register a service record then Use sites n services to locate the proxies. Maybe more trouble than its worth though.

-NIck

[Gostev]

Well, the thing is - I can only see potential issues when using Network (NBD) transport for restores. I don't see how wrong proxy can possibly be picked when using Hot Add or Direct SAN transport. And we always recommend having at least one hot add capable backup proxy per cluster, specifically for handling restores efficiently.

Nils, can you confirm if you are using Network transport? Because in that case, I think I have an idea for a more robust solution than relying on AD sites (especially since AD is not always present anyway).