Veeam Direct SAN Replication Performance / Configuration

[Treeeman]

Hello,

i have following physical Veeam Server:
- 2x 12-Core Intel Xeon CPU
- 24GB RAM
- 2x 10GB Ethernet Ports teamed to a 20GB/s Team
- 2x 8GB/s FC HBA

I have two different FC Storages:
- EVA FC Storage
- VIOLIN VMA Storage

My ESXi Server also have two 10GB/s Ethernet Ports and two FC 8GB/s FC Ports.

I presented all LUNs to my Veeam-Server. I can see this LUNs in my Windows Diskmanagement. They are shown as "Offline".
If i create a Replication Job the Jobs Performance is about 41MB/s. Bottleneck Target.
After that i changed the Transport Mode on my "Backup Proxy" to "Direct SAN Access" and selected my Datastores manually.
But this also did not solved my Performance issue.

Now i don't know where my Problem is.

Thank!

Best Regards
Marco

[foggy]

If i create a Replication Job the Jobs Performance is about 41MB/s. Bottleneck Target.

Marco, that means that the issue is not in the backup transport mode but in your target storage.

[dellock6]

Marco,
are you using the same proxy as both source and target? Remember directsan is available only for reads operations, not writes, so even if you retrieve data at high speed (for example from the Violin array) with this design you are writing to the other array via the management interface of the destination ESXi server (even if they are 10GB so they should be fast...). Could you confirm this design?
You can first check the bottleneck stats, and then maybe add a virtual proxy into the destination so it can use hotadd mode, that is faster then network mode.

Luca.

[Treeeman]

Hello Luca,

many thanks for your reply.
Yes, i'm using the same proxy.

Meanwhile i add a Network Card to my Veeam Server in the same Network as the Management Network of my ESXi Servers. Unfortunatelly this did not speed up my performance.

So yes, i could confirm this design.
Do i understand right that i should add a virtual Proxy for my VMware Cluster? Or do i have add a virtual Proxy for every ESXi Server in my Cluster?
Will i have an advantages to add more physicaly Veeam Proxys? I dont think so.

Many Thanks!

Regards
Marco

[Treeeman]

Hello Luca again,

i can give you a update.
I added a Virtual Proxy to my VMware Cluster (virtual Windows Server).
Now it reads over SAN and writes over HotAdd. The Performance Boost came with seperating the Source VM and the VMware Proxy on different ESXi Server.
But in fact i did not understand why...
I thought the physical Proxy read the Information over SAN and sends it to the VMware Proxy over Ethernet who writes the data over "hotadd" to the target VMDK File. In this secenario i thought it should not matter if the Source VM is on the same ESXi Host as the VMware Proxy. Please can you demistify this. Thanks.

A litte bit more performance i got after add the Proxys in the same VLAN as the ESXi Servers.
Now i have a "Processing Rate" of 200 - 230MB/s.

Are there any more Tips to optimize the Repliaction? More Veeam VMware Proxy equals more Performance?
Is this a normal behavior the separate Source VMs and Veeam VMware Proxy?

Many Thanks!

Best Regards
Marco

[foggy]

I thought the physical Proxy read the Information over SAN and sends it to the VMware Proxy over Ethernet who writes the data over "hotadd" to the target VMDK File. In this secenario i thought it should not matter if the Source VM is on the same ESXi Host as the VMware Proxy. Please can you demistify this. Thanks.

The thing is that the target proxy should have access to the target datastore to be able to use hotadd. Placing it on the target host allows this. Otherwise network mode is used.

Are there any more Tips to optimize the Repliaction? More Veeam VMware Proxy equals more Performance?

Not necessarily, since a single proxy can process multiple VMs/disks in parallel, according to the allowed number of tasks specified in its settings. In case of large amount of tasks more proxy servers indeed can help to optimize performance.

[Treeeman]

Hi foggy,

thanks.
Meanwhile the performance goes up and down. I think there is another Problem (SAN or Ethernet).

But back to my Config:
Now i have my physical VEEAM Server and two VMware Proxys (for HotAdd). The VMware Proxies have access to the target Datastore and in my Replication Task i can see SAN and HotAdd Replication. My Replication Jobs are set to "Automatic Selection" of the Proxy Server. I thinks this should be fine.

One interesesting Thing is, which performance/throughput i can expect (without any SAN or Ethernet Problems) with this Configuration and 8GB/s SAN Connection and 10GB/s Ethernet Connection. Does somebody have any reference values?

Many Thanks!

Best Regards
Marco

[foggy]

It's really hard to estimate, too many environmental factors are involved, besides the ones you already listed. You can search the forum for what other users typically get for their replication jobs.