Veeam Replication SAN Mode Target

[nunciate]

OK I know this was not supported in the past but I only found posts from like 2012 so I want to ask again.

I have 2 vCenters with independent hosts and SANs. Both are in the same data center. The plan is to migrate data from one to the other and then move the second setup to our DR location.
I want to do this with Veeam Replication as these 2 vCenters are currently independent of each other. So I can't simply clone a VM from one to the other and we don't use SRM or anything like that.

I have a single Windows 2019 physical backup server which is FC connected to both SANs and I have both Center configured in Veeam. The physical server can see all the volumes on both SANs.

I created a replication job using the same physical server as the Source & Target Proxy. When I run the replication job I do see the Source Proxy is registering in SAN mode but the Target still says NBD.

Can anyone confirm that this is the only option? Is there any way at all to get the Target into SAN mode so that I can transfer all my replication data over the 32 GB FC connections?
Otherwise, all I have is a couple of gigabit connections on the backup server and the transfer rates are absolutely horrible.

[Andreas Neufert]

Hello Alan,
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110
"Veeam Backup & Replication uses the Direct SAN access transport mode to read and write VM data only during the first session of the replication job. During subsequent replication job sessions, Veeam Backup & Replication will use the Virtual appliance or Network transport mode on the target side. The source side proxy will keep reading VM data from the source datastore in the Direct SAN access transport mode."

[nunciate]

Thanks for the reply.

It turns out the 2 SAN came with 8 25Gb ports for replication so I ended up interconnecting the 2 SAN and enabling volume replication to populate the SAN destined for DR.
What I will end up doing is bringing that SAN up in DR, enabling the Volumes, and bringing them into vCetner DR. Then I will bring up all the VM turned off and enable seeding replication jobs to sync things up. The SANs we purchase are extremely fast so don't thing it will take that long to sync up even with recalculating CBT.

With the replication cables plugged in I was able to copy over the entire 100Tb of data to the new SAN in less than 12 hours.