Veeam and Equallogic

Question

Hi

I our test lab we have Veeam backing up volumes on the Equallogic using SAN Transfer mode. It runs great (400MB's+), but there's doubts in my mind going live with this, just because Equallogic dont allow read-only access at the intitiator level. So there's the potential for the Veeam Windows box to trash the VMFS volumes.

If you're using Veeam on your Equallogics, what transfer mode are you using?

Another option is to use Virtual Appliance Mode, but that would mean making our new Veeam storage servers into VMware hosts (complexity and cost...)

If there any official papers that I can read for Veeam/EQL? As Im not getting much help from our supplier due to Dell only really supporting their own backup solutions.

Thanks

Origin3k · Answer

We use HotAdd Mode because i dont like it when a windows server mounts my VMFS Datastore. If you do so please automount disable and automount scrub from diskpart.

We use vRanger/vSphere/EQL but it supports LanFree aka SANmode in the same way as Veeam.

Regards

Joerg

cryolyte · Answer

I've been on Equallogic for about a month now, but have run Veeam in direct SAN access mode for well over a year. I wrote a blog post discussing this issue:

http://itstuffilearnedtoday.blogspot.com/2013/02/direct-san-connection-for-veeam.html

In short, when you install Veeam it disables automount. There is another setting called "san Policy=OfflineAll" that you should change as well.

I recently read on the Veeam forums that you can make the volumes read only by using the following series of commands:

Run diskpart
Enter list volume
Enter select volume X (where X is the correct volume number from the previous command)
Enter att vol set readonly
Enter detail vol and ensure the read-only bit is set

HOWEVER, I haven't had time to test this. Link to post so that you can follow along too: http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15976

There is ANOTHER wrench in here, though. According to a link in the tail end of this discussion http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15976, installation of a Microsoft Service Pack fails due to automount being disabled. My concern is that at some point they might decide to turn automount on so that installation of something can occur without a hitch. Maybe I'm paranoid, but this would be (VERY) a bad thing.

Wish we could specify read-only access to volumes, then this wouldn't be a worry at all.

I'm currently working on a Powershell script that will sever all iSCSI connections, which I plan to run religiously before patching. My next project thereafter will be to cobble something together that check to ensure the automount is disabled on boot. I'd love to get it to run before Microsoft loads the iSCSI Initiator service, but I'm still in the research phase.

joergriether · Answer

It´s about time EQL finally integrates read-only access control per lun. and i don´t see any real life reason why this should be too hard to do ;-) So please EQL integrate it - we´d appreciate it ;-)

Stephan_84 · Answer

Would like to get the read only Option too!

EqualLogic

Veeam and Equallogic

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