VMware Cloud Community
khughes
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

LAN Free Backups / VMFS attached to NTFS Server?

So in my quest of looking for backup solutions I have noticed a lot of new talk about "LAN free backups" where backups would travel on your storage network (FC / iSCSI) and I was looking to see how one would do that?  I may be way behind the times on this but I was told during the 3.x days that you should keep your VMFS volumes completely isolated from any non-ESX server.  If I'm reading the documentation correctly you would need read access to your VMFS volumes on the server conducting the backups, which would be a Windows server.

I can see the obvious benefit by moving from Ethernet to FC for performance but what about the risk of corrupting the VMFS volumes?  Also is this more acceptable with higher-end SANs vs entry level SANs that only have access controls by HBA cards?

-- Kyle "RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "
Reply
0 Kudos
5 Replies
habibalby
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hi,

My environment is ISCSI and I use veeam to backup my VMs.

  • Veeam Backup and Replication installed on a Windows 2008 VM Enterprise, 6 GB mem and 4 vCPUs and Four vNICs, one to access vCenter/ESX as the Service Console/Management on different subnet/vLAn. One for production, to access it RDP or manage the VM, and two for iSCSI connections for MPIO/iSCSI initiatiation only.
  • AX4 sets on different vLAN totaly isolated from all other networks and it has got only the iSCSI network connect to it.
  • Target store, LUN presented directly as RDM to the Veeam VM and formatted as NTFS.
  • Backup speed acheived, first full backup sometime it reaches 120 Kbps.
Best Regards, Hussain Al Sayed Consider awarding points for "correct" or "helpful".
khughes
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I'm currently looking at Veeam, I haven't had much experiance with iSCSI but we're a FC shop so I wasn't sure how the interaction / connection rules would come into place here as all the access roles come from FC HBA adapters.

-- Kyle "RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "
Reply
0 Kudos
habibalby
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hi,

The FC SAN Storage the same as the iSCSI the only difference is the way how they are connected. In your FC SAN Storage, create one LUN and present it to the Veeam VM either via RDM/Proxing ESX or direct Access using the Windows 2008 iSCSI initiator. This will allow you to access the LUN directly.

Focus only on one ESX, create a vSwitch with Service Console without vmnic attached to it, then add the ESX to the Veeam Machine using the newly created Service Console.

Create a Backup Job targetting VMs on the ESX that added to the Veeam VM, make sure when you create the job is Direct SAN Access. This option, will allow the backup to go within the ESX Server itself, without interfering the LAN.

Hope it helps.

Thanks,

S.Hussain

Best Regards, Hussain Al Sayed Consider awarding points for "correct" or "helpful".
khughes
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I ended up just using virtual appliance mode which isn't exactly the same but it works better than network and without the worry of attaching multiple vmfs luns to my windows backup server. Thanks for the info.

-- Kyle "RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "
Reply
0 Kudos
habibalby
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Do what I have described above and you will impressed with the backup speed you gonna see. I'm reaching around 100, 300 and 500 MB/s and with the Incremental backup it reach more than 1GB/s

Best Regards, Hussain Al Sayed Consider awarding points for "correct" or "helpful".
Reply
0 Kudos