Veeam Setup QUestion

[BrandonH]

So I originally started with Veeam as a VM, however it posed a problem with some logistics (I'll explain in a second).

I currently have Veeam installed on a Dell 2950 (Dual core with 8 gigs of Ram). I have the NIC's in a LAG across two Brocade VDX Switches (With 10Gb to the network). I have a Veeam Proxy installed on it's own VM (Server 2008 with 8 cores and 8 gigs of ram). We have four hosts, with around 90 VM's total. We currently have two EMC San's and three Drobo 1200i's.

When Veeam was virtual, I averaged around 300MB\S speeds. As a physical machine, I average around 19 MB\s. I tend to run around 19MB\S

I'm currently using iSCSI LUN's for backup storage, located on a couple Drobo 1200i's. I have connected the Drobo's to both servers via iSCSI with MPIO enabled. however I'm wondering if the Proxy is send files Via the iSCSI for SMB to my B&R Install. Is it possible to send the files via iSCSI that way?

Writing files directly to the Drobo's I average around 1100Mb\s (Roughly 135-140 MB\s). Veeam states the bottleneck is at the source however.

Any ideas? We are planning to move one of the EMC's off site soon, I would like to take the Physical Veeam server with it. We have a 10Gb connection to our backup data center, so I'm not worried about WAN speeds.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Brandon,

I'm currently using iSCSI LUN's for backup storage, located on a couple Drobo 1200i's. I have connected the Drobo's to both servers via iSCSI with MPIO enabled. however I'm wondering if the Proxy is send files Via the iSCSI for SMB to my B&R Install. Is it possible to send the files via iSCSI that way?

Given that your backup repository is installed on the machine where you've mounted Drobo LUNs via iSCSI and formatted these with NTFS, all VM backup data will be written via iSCSI.

Writing files directly to the Drobo's I average around 1100Mb\s (Roughly 135-140 MB\s). Veeam states the bottleneck is at the source however.

Then, it's worth looking at source data retrieval configuration.

Any ideas? We are planning to move one of the EMC's off site soon, I would like to take the Physical Veeam server with it. We have a 10Gb connection to our backup data center, so I'm not worried about WAN speeds.

Can you please tell me what backup mode is currently used by your backup job? Are you using network or direct SAN mode?

Thanks!

[BrandonH]

The physical server's Proxy is set to Appliance, the VM is set to Direct SAN access.

I've been setting the jobs to use the appliance proxy when creating the backup jobs. I'm also using 6.5

[Vitaliy S.]

Brandon,

HotAdd/Appliance backup mode can only be used with virtual proxy servers, while Direct SAN can be used by both physical and virtual proxy servers. Given that, I believe the jobs that are using physical proxy server are processed with network mode, so the performance is somewhat expected, though it is still a bit slow.

In order to get maximum performance out of your hardware, I would recommend configuring physical server to run in Direct SAN access mode.

If you need the instructions on how to do that, please take a look at our sticky F.A.Q. > VMware : [FAQ] FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

In addition to this, please consider deploying Veeam B&R v7 to leverage parallel VM/disk processing functionality, this should also boost your performance up.

Let me know if that helps!

[BrandonH]

Physical is set for Direct SAN now, Appliance is set for Appliance. I'm not using the physical proxy however.

[Vitaliy S.]

When Veeam was virtual, I averaged around 300MB\S speeds. As a physical machine, I average around 19 MB\s. I tend to run around 19MB\S

Ok, then I must have misunderstood you, as I thought you wanted to do something with backup job performance running through the physical proxy server.

Physical is set for Direct SAN now, Appliance is set for Appliance. I'm not using the physical proxy however.

So what are you current job performance stats?

Any ideas? We are planning to move one of the EMC's off site soon, I would like to take the Physical Veeam server with it. We have a 10Gb connection to our backup data center, so I'm not worried about WAN speeds.

If you're not using physical Veeam server/proxy, then I don't see any issues with moving this server offsite.

[BrandonH]

Now that I've set to it Appliance, it's adding the drives to the device.



It was a little faster




If I'm correct, I can install a second copy of Veeam with my current licences correct? Would it be better if I just install a copy of Veeam on the Proxy machine then back up as I am now? The reason for the physical machine is that we have to keep a physical copy of our data on external drives. The plan is to Copy from SAN to USB 3.0 Drives using the Physical Veeam server. If I install a second copy do I use the same database as the first install, or do I have to install a new one? Currently, I'm using 2012 SQL Express.

[Vitaliy S.]

If I'm correct, I can install a second copy of Veeam with my current licences correct?

Yes, that's correct. Your secondary backup server should be pointed to the same source hosts.

Would it be better if I just install a copy of Veeam on the Proxy machine then back up as I am now? The reason for the physical machine is that we have to keep a physical copy of our data on external drives. The plan is to Copy from SAN to USB 3.0 Drives using the Physical Veeam server.

There is no need to install Veeam backup server on the physical machine. If you want to use a physical server to process data, then you should deploy a proxy role on it and as far as I got it right you have already done that, but haven't used it in SAN mode so far.

If I install a second copy do I use the same database as the first install, or do I have to install a new one? Currently, I'm using 2012 SQL Express.

Multiple backup servers cannot use the same database. It should be a separate database, but you can keep it on the same SQL Server instance.

Now that I've set to it Appliance, it's adding the drives to the device. It was a little faster

According to the session window screenshot you've provided source storage data retrieval speed is the issue, so hotadd backup mode is fully saturating your datastore performance capabilities. Try running incremental job pass to see if there is any difference in the bottleneck detection.

On top of that, if you're going to have multiple VMs added to the job, then deploying multiple virtual proxy servers and using parallel processing (v7 feature) will definitely give you better job performance rates.

[BrandonH]

I've been using small VM's for testing. I decided to start a large one around 5 last night.. It was still going at 8 this morning.

This one has it's own LUN, it's on a bank of SAS 10k's, it wasn't also idle during the backup process. This is a heavily used server for us (GIS), so it's made for read/write speeds.

[Vitaliy S.]

Is it a hotadd mode still? You check that by clicking on the Map3 VM on the left and looking for the "hotadd" tag next to a virtual disk name in the details window on the right. Additionally, have you considered upgrading to Veeam B&R v7?

[BrandonH]

I have an e-mail in to upgrade the license file, though I haven't heard anything in a few days. I'm worried about the "Work arounds" people seem to have to do though. We have four SharePoint 2010 servers, as well as 8-10 SQL instances inside our VM setup.

[Vitaliy S.]

Ok, then you can wait for the next patch and then upgrade. As to your current performance, then given that the bottleneck is always source (even on the incremental job runs) and you're using hotadd backup mode, then it seems like the source storage cannot give VM data to the backup proxy any faster.

[BrandonH]

I just wanted to post an update. I have upgraded to 7 Ent Plus, however I'm only backing up four of or 150+ VM's. We signed the paperwork yesterday for two 3PAR 7400's. I'm eager to see how the Veeam integration works.

We've had the project funds for a while, but no drive to upgrade. After a few months of talking to different vendors, we decided to go with 3PAR. The timing netted us VERY good prices.

I'll make another post after it's in place, I think our bottlenecks should be gone now however.

[veremin]

Even without integration mechanism 3PAR tends to show pretty decent speed numbers in case of Direct SAN mode. So, I hope the purchase will make you a little bit happier.

Thanks.

[BrandonH]

I'm sure it will, we're currently using 4-5 year old EMC NS-120's, so it'll be a huge jump in tech alone. Going from the bottom rung to fairly high mid-grade.

[veremin]

Kindly, keep us updated about how your upgrade process goes and what results you get. Thanks.

[rvopat]

I came across this post as i am currently changing our current backup targets and am looking for some suggestions on what would be the best use of our setup. not sure if this belongs here or if a new topic was needed

Currently we have a Virtual machine running Veeam Ver 7 that we use to backup our vm's using hot add mode to NFS storage which is a cheap Netgear NAS Device, currently the Veeam VM is not running the iscsi initiator but we can configure that if it will benefit us.

We have 4 ESXi hosts and our production storage is a Netapp 2040 connected via iscsi.

We are finally getting rid of Symantec Backup exec and going exclusively with Veeam and we purchased a Promise VessR2600i iscsi SAN to use as a backup to disk device replacing the Netgear NAS device. Since it does not run NFS we need to find the best way to connect to it go get the best speed out of our backup.

We have a physical machine running as a proxy so we can copy full backups to external hard drives and take off site as well as run the microsoft iscsi initiator on it so we can leverage direct san mode which we have tested successfully with our current setup and backing up to the netgear NAS device which is running NFS.

my question is what would be the best way to use our new Promise Vess2600 iscsi storage so we can have our backups run as fast as possible?

Should I:

1. Connect it to the physical server that is a veeam proxy using the microsoft iscsi initiator and set the 14TB volume up as direct attached storage where the physical server basically thinks its a local drive and add a Backup repository there (basically giving the server a large E: drive with a VeeamRepository that will hold all the vrb's)?

2. Connect it to the Veeam server which is a VM using the microsoft iscsi initiator?

or do something else entirely?

Since the new storage is iscsi only i am not sure if it makes any sense to connect it to the ESXi hosts via iscsi because then the veeam server and proxy wont be able to see it as a repository correct?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello,

What proxy server is used mostly? It does make sense to connect your device to both proxy servers via iSCSI and run your jobs in LAN-free mode, but in this case you will have to create two repository servers on both proxies.

If you want to have only single repository server, then I would connect your iSCSI storage to the physical server that is used to backup your VMs in direct SAN mode. This configuration would also allow you to connect external hard drives and copy backup files for archival purposes.

BTW, have you considered using backup copy jobs to move your VM backup offsite?

Thank you!

[veremin]

As mentioned, it might be worth not decommissioning current repository completely, but using it as a secondary backup target. That being said, you can utilize newly-bought appliance as a primary backup location and obsolete device as secondary one to which backup data will be copied by backup copy jobs.

Thanks.

[rvopat]

I am currently testing with the new storage connected to the physical proxy through iSCSI and it seems to be performing fine.

If we get a new physical proxy because the machine fails or we get upgraded hardware, will the backup repository be seen by the new machine after it is connected via iscsi initiator?

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, but since backup proxy components are installed on the Windows machine you add as a backup repository, you will need to add the new machine as a repository again and run a rescan option to populate your backup console with existing backup files.

[rvopat]

Sounds straight forward enough, thank you for the reply!

[BrandonH]

So new question. I know with just VMWare snapshots you are unable to backup RDM's with Veeam. Is it possible to back them up using 3PAR snapshots?

I need to build a file server cluster, however I'm unsure of how I want to do the shared disk. If it's possible to back up RDM disk using 3PAR snapshots and Veeam, I'll more than likely go that way.

[dellock6]

Even if you do storage snapshots, Veeam is expecting a vmdk file inside that snapshot once you create a cloned volume to read it, so I would say it's not possible.
can you eventually use virtual RDM, or wait few weeks for vSphere 5.5 support, so you would be able to use large VMDK files and share them across a cluster?

Also, have a look at the new Windows 2012 R2 scale out storage features, I only quickly read about it but sounds like you can create a share-nothing cluster even for files right now.

Luca.

[BrandonH]

Most everything was put on hold, for changes that are now coming in.

We're in the process of upgrading to a Brocade FC San, with fabric A replicated via 10 Gb DWDM (Native FC) from our main office to our BDC. This is along side our 10 Gb DWDM Ethernet.

The plan is to have our 3PAR 7400's replicate via FC. We should also now be able to use the storage snapshots with Veeam. We're also replacing three hosts and adding two to the mix (Datacenter licencing has brought a lot of growth). I'm planning to build a new cluster from the ground up, migrating everything from the old into the new 5.5 cluster.

I'm eager to see the results.