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LiamCurtis
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Is there a true LAN-FREE Fibre Channel Restore/Recovery solution for VMWare?

Hello All,

We have been using VCB and it backs up quite quickly, but as most people know, it is not possible to restore via SAN. I have done some test restores using Converter Standalone over gigabit ethernet and although things start out at 29 MB/s, things eventually slow down to like 5 MB/s. This is not good for larger VM's.

I think I saw somewhere that VEEAM had a solution that could restore via SAN, but that doesn't seem to be the case (unless their new Sure Backup product will do this)

I have tried using fastscp, but that tops out at 30 mbps for me....

thanks much

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ealaqqad
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi LiamCurtis,

I could give you a definite answer for a part of your question, which is if Veeam support LAN-Free restore. I am positive neither Veeam backup & replicaiton neither Vizioncore vRanger support LAN-Free restore at the moment. Please look at Veeam product manager answer at their forum:

http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2992

I am not sure if what you are looking for is just to speed up your recovery. If you are only worried about the speed of recovery then you should still consider Veeam backup & replication. Establish one server with sufficient storage in the DR or your backup site & get Veeam to replicated to your DR server.

The advantages of Veeam Replicatoin is that it allow you to keep multiple versions to revert to at a later stage. Let's assume you schedule Veeam to replicate every 12 hours & you decide to keep 12 versions of the replicaiton. In case you have a problem with your original VM, you can recover your machine on your DR server state up to 6 days back. Its like have an instaneous restore of your VM from an incremental backup. As Veeam only replicate the changes of the VM after the initial replication it will not kill your network bandwidth in the manner you would expect.

You might even want to look at my post which show how Veeam allow you to test your DR or backup site at anytime without affecting your production not even your replicaiton at: Testing Veeam Backup & Replication Replica Testing Procedure

I hope this help, if it does please reward points.

Enjoy,

Eiad Al-Aqqad

System X & Storage Technical Specialist

Founder of http://www.VirtualizationTeam.com &

Regards, Eiad Al-Aqqad Technology Consultant @ VMware b: http://www.VirtualizationTeam.com b: http://www.TSMGuru.com
LiamCurtis
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks Eiad!

Veeam is a great tool...may have to resort to it, but was hoping for a true SAN solution....

Maybe we will see something cool on Monday from Veeam... (edit-the SureBackup launch they have been hyping)

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ealaqqad
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi LiamCurtis,

I really hope Veeam come up with LAN-Free restore, though I believe it would not be that easy of task to acheive.

As a lan-free restore in my opinion will more than likely require being able to integrate with the storage box it self. Doing that will mean a good amount of work will have to be done for each hardware vendor. I believe VMware should provide the API for that for it to work out. VCB did not have that capabilities, though I am not sure if the VMware vStorage API is capable of doing that. Though I will have to admit VMware & its partners have always been good in suprising me & proofing there is no limit to what they can come up with.

I hope this help some one, if it does please reward points.

Enjoy,

Eiad Al-Aqqad

System X & Storage Technical Specialist

Founder of http://www.VirtualizationTeam.com

Regards, Eiad Al-Aqqad Technology Consultant @ VMware b: http://www.VirtualizationTeam.com b: http://www.TSMGuru.com
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