Thanks for confirming that vm proxy nodes cannot be shared between Avamar servers.

In our environment, we cannot dedicate a single Avamar server for vm image level backups because each business group (department or tenant, if you prefer) must backup to a different DD Boost account, as described.

I feel there could be another problem (even if you deploy separate proxies for each Business Units), registering Same vCenter to different Avamar Servers.

Please elaborate on the vCenter problem.

Your reply may make or break our planned Avamar architecture and therefore our project and deployment.

Please let me know if I need to explain our currently planned architecture better. (You can also refer to the previous thread I linked to in the opening post).

Thanks!

When you register the vCenter with Avamar it creates a Domain and client on Avamar with the necessary signatures. So, if you try to register that with other servers, there could be a conflict.

I know a vCenter server does not care if multiple backup software (from different vendors, even) all use VADP + hotadd to backup vmdk snapshot images. I have seen this is many environments.

Therefore it is logical to assume that multiple Avamar servers doing VADP + hotadd to a single vCenter would not cause problems.

I appreciate you are trying to help, but can you give me something solid to go on with about this, such as the page number on which Avamar guide, or a link to the KB you got this information from?

Associating multiple Avamar systems with the same vCenter will not cause problems in and of itself. The number of Avamar systems you can associate with a vCenter depends mainly on the resources available to the vCenter server.

Thanks Ian, that's what I thought.

It is also what I saw in multiple environments, that is why I was sure multiple Avamar servers to the same vCenter will be fine.

Do you have any suggestion to mitigate the wasted resources issue discussed previously, where instead of sharing a single proxy node, every Avamar server needs to deploy their own?

Each proxy can only be registered to a single Avamar Server. I can't think of a practical way to work around this. I've sent a note to some of my colleagues to see if they have any ideas.

I've also sent a note to the product manager for virtualization to bring this specific issue to his attention.

Thanks.

If only each subdomain in an Avamar server could map to their own respective DD Boost Account this wouldn't be an issue.

I could then simply deploy one (1) Avamar server to handle all business groups by segregating them using subdomains, each with their own DataDomain storage hard-quota limit (because each DD Boost Account will a have hard-quota).

In this scenario, all Avamar vm proxy nodes will just be owned by that one single Avamar server. Problem solved.

Let's hope this will be possible in the next version

RLeon