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47 Posts
0
1974
Direct Attached Backups
Has anyone attempted any type of SAN Direct Access backups for the VNXe? I have yet to test, but we are currently evaluating VEEAM. We are getting good results with the proxy appliance method, very similar to VMWare's VDR. However can I add the VMFS volumes as an iSCSI Volume to a Windows Server, provided I give READ-ONLY Access. Then the backup sofware will read the VMSnapshots directly from the windows host, rather than the ESXi host. Currious if anyone has already tried or if its just not supported.
mpgordon
39 Posts
0
March 21st, 2012 06:00
To answer you initial questions direct attached 2-way storage is not supported in VNXe. The 2-way support is being considered for a future release. 3-way is the only option at this point.
studionc
11 Posts
1
February 27th, 2012 06:00
We tried with veeam B&R 6 trying backup jobs of a VM sitting on a RAID6 NL SAS datastore 6 disks:
You need to "configure" the datastore through the microsoft iscsi initiator without mounting it, nor assigning any driver letter or initializing the block device as this destroy the VMFS file system.
We compared the backup performance between the Direct san access and the virtual appliance mode and in our case the performance was abiut the same.
Case1:
Physical server 4 cores 2ghz 8 gb ram direct connection to vnxe 2x1gb nics
(windows 2008 with veeam b&r 6 proxy)
RESULT: full backup job abt. 42MB/s
Case2:
VM 4 cores 8 gb 2,4ghz 8 gb ram using veeam virtual appliance mode
(windows 2008 wth veeam b&r proxy)
RESULT: full backup job abt. 46MB/s
Considering there is no way on the VNXe to limit read only access to a host we preferred to avoid configuring the datastores on the win 2008 server to avoid any problem....
It is really bad that such a san misses a basic feature as the "read only" ACL on iscsi.....
captainflannel
47 Posts
2
February 27th, 2012 10:00
Glad to hear it would be possible. For our enviroment I would feel the same, without a READONLY permission to much is at stake. READONLY permissions for these purposes should certainly be an available feature. Can this be added as a feature request?
mpgordon
39 Posts
0
March 21st, 2012 06:00
We can add READONLY but it is not being considered at this point for a future release. If 2-way is supported is this a lower priority?
captainflannel
47 Posts
0
March 22nd, 2012 10:00
If by design 2-way is soon supported, READONLY would not be as necessary. As the 2-way would allow for backup and Restore. So long as proper documentation is available to ensure the backup host does not create any type of curruption to the vmfs.