Backup with vRanger using NFS to a Data Domain appliance...

[jamieorth]

Anyone out there doing this? We are but are having random failures where it appears that the NFS mount is timing out. When we go through a CIFS connection to the Data Domain appliance via the server that vRanger is installed we never have a failure, but our backup window is exceeded.

This is our vSwitch config:

vSwitch0 - 3 pNics, vmnic10, vmnic4, vmnic0 | Service Console Port (vlan id 11) active to vmnic0, standby to vmnic4 | vRangerbackup port group (no vlan ID), vmotion disabled, active adapter vmnic10, standby vmnic0 | Vmotion port group (vlan id 20, active adapter vmnic 4, standby adapter vmnic0.

The NFS mount only uses the vRanger port group so the primary vmnic10 is used which is an Intel Gigabit VT Quad Port Server Adapter. The other pNics are on different cards, one being another Intel 82571EB and the vmnic0 is an onboard Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708. I have read that it's not good practice to use separate vendors on the same port group.

Any of the experts want to chime in on this config?

Regards...

Jamie

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[RParker · Accepted solution]

I'd say you have an NFS problem. Try pushing a huge file to that NFS (not backup) and see what happens.

It should be pretty easy. I don't know how you have it setup, but I would attach the NFS to the vRanger VM directly, and not try to push the backups to the NFS mount.

So if your vRanger VM is called VCB and your datastore is mounted as NFS01, you should mount NFS01 on VCB via another NIC. And don't use the ESX host as the mount, rather mount the NFS inside the VM direct.