Creating VM in local ESXi datastore for backing up VM from SAN datastore with VMXNet 3

[AlbertWT]

Hi All,

I'd like to know how did you configure your backup server as a VM ?

my idea is to utilize the local VMFS3 datastore on my 3x ESXi servers,

by installing the 3rd party application (like Veeam Backup 5 or Backup Exec 2010) into Windows Server 2008 R2 VM

equipped with very big hard drive size (8 GB OS + 1 TB data partition VMDK) on each of the local datastore to backup the VM inside the SAN.

What I've got:

VMware vSphere 4 Essential - ESXi 4.0 (no hot add)

Dell Power Edge 2950 with 2.5 TB multiple VMFS3 extent on top of - RAID 5 (6x 500GB SATAII 7200rpm)

Dell MD3000i iSCSI SAN over Gigabit Ethernet

The Windows Server 2008 R2 VM configuration:

2x CPU @ 2.33 GHz

4 GB RAM

VMXNet3 NIC --> for better connectivity of the backup between the local ESXi datastore and the iSCSI-SAN datastore.

Here is the reason I'm doing this is that:

1. I don't have the extra NIC to connect my physical server into the iSCSI SAN switch, therefore i can't use -SAN backup mode.

2. I only use the lowest VMware license available which doesn't support hardware Hot-add feature.

Would this be optimal configuration ?

Any kind of help and suggestion to implement VM backup as VM would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Kind Regards,

AWT

[golddiggie · Accepted solution]

From what I can see of what you're thinking of doing, you won't get any benefit from using the VMXNET3 NIC, compared with using an e1000 NIC... All your traffic will be on 1Gb connections, since you're going from SAN to local disk... IF you had the VM's on the SAN, or same storage, then the VMXNET3 NIC would be going at internal traffic speeds (could get you better than 1Gb, but I'd advise testing before committing)...

Also, you won't be able to use an 8GB OS volume under Server 2008 R2... Bare minium is 32GB (most use 40GB, which is what vSphere will use when you tell it 2008 R2 for the OS of the VM)...

VMware VCP4

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[AlbertWT]

Thanks for the reply man.

I appreciate it.

Kind Regards,

AWT