consolidated backup and multiathing

[allineed]

Hello,

does anybody using consolidated backup in production?

How do you handle the missing multipathing feature?

Is there a new version comming up?

Thanks

Thomas

[Byron_Zhao]

Using single path. Since it is a backup solution, single path is fine.

[kix1979]

There is a new version coming, since we are on the 1.0 release of the product. At some point it will probably support multi-pathing, but for now you cannot have more then one path to the LUNs. If you do have more then one path, VCB will not work properly.

[davidbarclay]

I still go with dual HBAs in my VCB server, but instead of multipathing the VMFS I dedicated one path to the VMFS LUNs and one path to my NTFS LUN where I write the backups.

I try and keep the NTFS LUN on different spindles ensuring I get maximum write performance. Made a difference in performance and uses a HBA that would be otherwise sitting idle!

Dave

[acr]

Yep, single path is the supported route, but id guess multipath is on the horizon..

[markzz]

We utilize VCB in Production and have done so for about 5 months. Since it was release as a production release version.

It has been very stable and fast.

The multi pathing issue was a contentious issue for us also but considering it's only used for backup it's an acceptable risk.

I'm sure I've read that VMWare not only don't support Multi pathing but they don't support multipathing software on the VCB server.

We have powerpath installed on the VCB server, it doesn't appear to have effected the VCB functionality. I suspect if we trespassed the server to the other SP it VCB will fail.

As has been stated VMware have committed to supporting mutlipathing in a future release. What release and when will it be available has not yet been stated, as far as I'm aware.

[CB1]

I could use some help with VCB. We have a Proxy server setup and we also have Netbackup Media Server and Powerpath installed on it to. When I run Vcbmounter on my proxy and it connects and starts its download and then I get the following on the proxy server

\[2007-03-08 13:06:48.235 'BlockList' 1208 warning] Could not log out (fhamivlap0

1:tsols51)

\[2007-03-08 13:06:51.391 'vcbMounter' 1208 warning] Snapshot deletion failed. At

tempting to clean up snapshot database...

\[2007-03-08 13:10:23.030 'vcbMounter' 1208 error] Error: Snapshot remove failed:

Unable to access a file since it is locked.

\[2007-03-08 13:10:23.030 'vcbMounter' 1208 error] An error occured, cleaning up.

..

\[2007-03-08 13:10:23.468 'vcbMounter' 1208 warning] Snapshot deletion failed. At

tempting to clean up snapshot database...

Would this be because of Powerpath having the LUN locked?

[kix1979]

Do you have multiple VMDKs and are they on seperate LUNS? Check to make sure the names are unique.

[CB1]

It appears I only see 1 lun for each LUN assigned. I was reading in another post that I need to make sure that the LUN id's are the same. Does the Proxy Lun ID need to match ESX or Virtual Center or do all 3 need to match?

Do you know what steps I need to do to verify Lun IDs ?

[bister]

We use 3 HBA in our VCB proxy. 2 are connected to VMDK LUN, 1 is connected to the tape library. 1 path for the VMDK LUNs is disabled at fabric level (zoning disabled). So we are ready to switch (in case of a seldom failure).